In the first week of its work, the lower house of the 119th U.S. Congress introduced the first bill calling for the recognition of the Kremlin's actions in its war against Ukraine as genocide. This was reported by Ukraine's Ambassador to Washington Oksana Markarova on her Facebook page, UNN reports.
Details
According to Markarova, this was the result of cooperation between the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington and a bipartisan group of lawmakers in the House of Representatives.
The preamble of the document states that the atrocities committed by Russian troops in Ukraine, including attacks on civilians, direct attacks on maternity hospitals and medical facilities, as well as the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, including children, to Russia and the occupied territories, meet the criteria set out in Article II of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
She also noted that the resolution part of the document condemns Russia for committing acts of genocide against the Ukrainian people, calls on the United States, in cooperation with NATO and EU allies, to take steps to support the Ukrainian government to prevent further acts of Russian genocide against the Ukrainian people, and supports tribunals and international criminal investigations to bring Russian political leaders and military personnel to justice for aggressive war, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.
Let me remind you that a draft of such a resolution has already been submitted to the 118th Congress (February 24, 2023), the ambassador said.
The ambassador emphasized that the list of war crimes committed by Russia is growing every day and that only a decisive rebuff to the aggression through weapons for Ukraine and sanctions for Russia can stop this genocide against the Ukrainian people:
To date, the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine has opened 170,090 cases of crimes related to Russian aggression (151,698 war crimes).
In Ukraine, 13,729 civilians were officially registered as killed and 26,706 wounded, including: 596 killed children, 1,728 wounded children.
4,057 criminal proceedings related to war crimes against children were registered. More than 19,000 internally displaced Ukrainian children were identified.
The Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine registered 331 cases of conflict-related sexual violence: 213 against women and 118 against men.
Russian troops destroyed and damaged 158,434 residential buildings, 3,739 educational and children's institutions, 908 medical facilities, 643 cultural facilities, 204 religious facilities, and 8,233 energy and communications facilities.
Thousands of Ukrainians in captivity in Russian prisons - 16 thousand people officially recognized as missing.
"We thank the congressmen for introducing this important resolution! All crimes committed by the Russian Federation must be reflected in American law to ensure that Russian criminals are punished and to prevent such heinous crimes in the future," Makarova concluded.
Recall
The Czech Senate has recognized the mass deportation of Crimean Tatars as an act of genocide. The decision was supported by 70 senators out of 76 present, joining other countries that had previously made a similar recognition.