U.S. President Joe Biden stands onstage with children waving flags after he delivered remarks ahead of the one yr anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, outside the Royal Castle, in Warsaw, Poland, February 21, 2023.
Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters
WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden spoke to a crowd of 1000’s in Warsaw, Poland, on Tuesday to mark the approaching one-year mark since Russia invaded Ukraine, vowing to support beleaguered Ukraine and placing the war within the broader context of a struggle between authoritarianism and democracy.
“One yr ago, the world was bracing for the autumn of Kyiv,” Biden said on the Warsaw Royal Castle Gardens as the group waved Polish flags. “Well I’ve just come from a visit to Kyiv and I can report Kyiv stands strong, Kyiv stands proud, it stands tall and most vital, it stands free.”
Biden’s remarks follow a surprise 23-hour visit to Ukraine’s war-weary capital on Monday. Under extraordinary secrecy, Biden traveled by plane, then by train for 10 hours overnight to face shoulder-to-shoulder in solidarity with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The one-year anniversary of the invasion is Friday.
Tuesday’s speech struck an analogous tone to others Biden has made, including one he gave in Warsaw nearly a yr ago. Since his 2020 presidential campaign, Biden has posited himself as a champion of democracy, arguing the U.S. and world is at a crossroads.
“When President Putin ordered his tanks to roll into Ukraine he thought we might roll over. He was fallacious,” Biden said. “He thought NATO would fracture and divide. As an alternative NATO is more united, more unified than ever before.”
The remarks further highlighted the U.S. commitment to Ukraine, which goals to repel a renewed Russian assault that began shortly before the one-year anniversary of the conflict.
“One yr into this war, Putin now not doubts the strength of our coalition, but he still doubts our conviction. He doubts our endurance,” Biden said. “But there needs to be little doubt, our support for Ukraine is not going to waiver. NATO is not going to be divided and we is not going to tire.”
U.S. President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy meet in Kyiv, Ukraine on February 20, 2023.
Presidency of Ukraine | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
Biden, who flew aboard a militarized Boeing 757 within the predawn hours on Sunday, arrived in Kyiv some 20 hours later to fulfill Zelenskyy and first lady Olena Zelenska.
“This was a risk that Joe Biden desired to take,” White House communications director Kate Bedingfield said.
National security advisor Jake Sullivan called the visit “historic” and “unprecedented in modern times.” He said the Kremlin had advance notice that Biden would travel to Kyiv.
While in Kyiv, the U.S. president announced a latest weapons package for Ukraine price about $500 million. The Pentagon said the help will come directly from its arsenals, and can include additional ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, together with Javelins, tactical vehicles and anti-armor rockets.
The newest military aid package, the thirty second such installment, brings U.S. military aid commitment to almost $30 billion since Moscow invaded Ukraine last February. So far, the U.S. has contributed the lion’s share of Western weapons to Ukraine and deployed tons of of 1000’s of American service members to NATO-member countries to bolster defenses.
A Ukrainian service member holds a next generation light anti-tank weapon (NLAW) at a position on the front line within the north Kyiv region, Ukraine March 24, 2022.
Gleb Garanich | Reuters
As well as, the 30-member-strong group has consistently warned Russian President Vladimir Putin that an attack on one NATO member state shall be viewed as an attack on all, triggering the organization’s cornerstone Article 5. Ukraine has sought membership on the earth’s strongest military alliance since 2002 and is bordered by 4 NATO allies: Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania.
Biden’s speech also got here hours after Putin spoke in front of a joint session of the country’s Parliament. He framed the war sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a fight against the West.
Biden rebutted Putin’s statement in his speech, directly addressing the Russian people at one point.
“Tonight I speak over again again to the people of Russia: The US and the people of Europe don’t seek to regulate or destroy Russia,” Biden said. “The West was not planning to attack Russia. Hundreds of thousands of Russian residents who only wish to live in peace with their neighbors aren’t the enemy.”
Putin also announced Russia would suspend its participation within the Recent START Treaty, the only real remaining major nuclear agreement between Russia and the U.S.
Mounting crimes against humanity
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of its ex-Soviet neighbor, the war has claimed the lives of greater than 8,000 civilians and led to almost 13,300 injuries, in keeping with U.N. estimates.
“Our data is simply the tip of the iceberg,” United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said in an announcement Tuesday releasing the figures.
“The toll on civilians is unbearable. Amid electricity and water shortages through the cold winter months, nearly 18 million persons are in dire need of humanitarian assistance. Some 14 million people have been displaced from their homes,” he added.
Turk said that about 90% of the civilian casualties recorded were attributable to the usage of explosive weapons with a large impact area. He added the actual figures are likely substantially higher because armed conflict can delay fatality reports.
“Brutality won’t ever grind down the desire of the free,” Biden said Tuesday, “and Ukraine won’t ever be a victory for Russia. Never.”
The U.S. and international organizations have also outlined widespread allegations of war crimes committed by Russia within the last yr. Over the weekend, Vice President Kamala Harris said the U.S. has determined Russian forces have committed “crimes against humanity” in Ukraine.
“Russian forces have pursued a widespread and systemic attack against a civilian population — gruesome acts of murder, torture, rape and deportation,” Harris said in remarks before the Munich Security Conference on Saturday.
“We’ve examined the evidence. We all know the legal standards. And there is no such thing as a doubt. These are crimes against humanity,” Harris said, adding that those responsible and people complicit “shall be held to account.”
War crime prosecutor of Kharkiv Oblast stands with forensic technician and policeman at the location of a mass burial in a forest during exhumation on September 16, 2022 in Izium, Ukraine.
Yevhenii Zavhorodnii | Global Images Ukraine | Getty Images News | Getty Images
During his speech Tuesday, Biden also accused Russia of widespread crimes against humanity.
“This has been a unprecedented yr in every sense,” Biden said. “Extraordinary brutality from Russia’s forces and mercenaries. They’ve committed depravities, crimes against humanity without shame or compunction. They’ve targeted civilians with death and destruction. Used rape as a weapon of war. Stolen Ukrainian children in an try and seal Ukraine’s future.”
Earlier this month, Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Andriy Kostin, said that regional authorities have logged greater than 65,000 Russian war crimes since Moscow invaded Ukraine nearly a yr ago.
Kostin said his teams have also documented greater than 14,000 Ukrainian children forced into adoption in Russia.
“It is a direct policy geared toward demographic change by cutting out Ukrainian identity,” Kostin told an audience at Georgetown Law School in Washington.
“These actions are characteristics of the crime of genocide,” he added.
Russia has repeatedly denied its troops have committed war crimes or deliberately targeted civilians in attacks.
Last yr, the Biden administration said it suspected that between 900,000 and 1.6 million Ukrainian residents, including 260,000 children, had been detained and deported from their homes to Russia. On the time, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the conduct may breach international humanitarian agreements and constitute war crimes.
“Nobody, nobody can turn away their eyes from the atrocities Russia’s committing against the Ukrainian people,” Biden said Tuesday. “It’s abhorrent. It’s abhorrent.”
The 1949 Geneva Conventions define international legal standards and protections for humanitarian treatment during wartime and explicitly prohibit mass forced transfers of civilians.
Blinken accused Moscow of ordering the “disappearance” of 1000’s of Ukrainian civilians who don’t pass the dehumanizing “filtration” means of the deportation procedure.
The filtration camps, which have been previously described as large makeshift tents, are initial reception areas where deported Ukrainians are photographed, fingerprinted, stripped, forced to show over their mobile phones, passwords in addition to identification, after which interrogated and sometimes tortured by Russian authorities.
Read more: UN report details horrifying Ukrainian accounts of rape, torture and executions by Russian troops
Blinken also outlined on the time that there was “mounting” evidence of Russian forces deliberately separating Ukrainian children from their parents, abducting children from orphanages, confiscating Ukrainian passports and issuing Russian passports for what’s an “apparent effort to alter the demographic makeup of parts of Ukraine.”
Correction: “Hundreds of thousands of Russian residents who only wish to live in peace with their neighbors aren’t the enemy,” Biden said. An earlier version misstated the quote.