‘War criminal’: US slams Vladimir Putin’s close ally
A top US official has broken ranks to accuse one of Vladimir Putin’s closest allies of playing a key role in Russia’s assault on Ukraine.
World
Don't miss out on the headlines from World. Followed categories will be added to My News.
The US justice chief has branded Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of Russia’s mercenary Wagner military force fighting in Ukraine, a war criminal.
Attorney General Merrick Garland told a Senate hearing on Wednesday that the Justice Department is helping Ukraine investigate war crimes allegedly committed since Russia’s invasion, including by the semi-private Wagner military group.
Mr Prigozhin has been a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and although Wagner operates mostly independently from the Russian army, it has had a key role in the assault on Ukraine.
“Mr Prigozhin, who runs this thing, is in my view a war criminal,” Mr Garland told the hearing.
“Maybe that’s inappropriate for me to say as a judge before getting all the evidence. But I think we have more than sufficient evidence at this point for me to feel that way.
“That group, which is responsible for the attacks on the Ukrainians in the Donbass, including by bringing in prisoners from Russian prison camps - it’s just an unfathomable what they are doing.”
Ukraine’s prosecutor general Andriy Kostin has said that Kyiv is investigating Prigozhin for war crimes, and Garland said the US is aiding Ukraine in its probes.
In January the US formally designated Wagner as a transnational criminal organization, putting it in league with Italian mafia groups and Japanese and Russian organized crime.
The designation allows wider sanctions on the group’s sprawling global network, which includes mercenary operations as well as businesses in Africa.
US legislators are pressing the administration of President Joe Biden to designate Wagner a terrorist group.
Prigozhin was indicted by the justice department in 2018 for interference in US elections by the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency, which he also controls.
UKRAINE’S UNEXPECTED CALL ON CHINA-RUSSIA ARMS DEAL
Ukraine’s head of military intelligence has brushed aside claims that China is considering furnishing arms to Russia, telling US media that he saw no “signs that such things are even being discussed”.
Senior US officials have said as recently as Sunday that they were “confident” China was considering the supply of lethal equipment to Moscow, with a diplomatic pressure campaign underway to discourage it from doing so.
But when asked about the possibility in a lengthy interview with Voice of America published on Monday, Ukrainian military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov said: “I do not share this opinion.”
“As of now, I do not think that China will agree to the transfer of weapons to Russia,” he said.
“I do not see any signs that such things are even being discussed.”
It comes as US officials confirmed they are “confident” that China is considering providing lethal aid to Russian in its war against Ukraine.
In a rare interview, CIA director William Burns told CBS while China hasn’t yet made the decision to transfer lethal aid to Russia, he shed light on the logic behind the Biden administration's decision to make this intelligence public.
“We’re confident that the Chinese leadership is considering the provision of lethal equipment to Russia,” Mr Burns said.
“We also don’t see that a final decision has been made yet, and we don’t see evidence of actual shipments of lethal equipment.”
The US have launched a broad diplomatic offensive over the past week to warn China against providing such lethal assistance, which experts say could have a profound impact on the war in Ukraine as it enters its second year.
Beijing so far has forcefully denied the allegations.
Media reports, including in The Wall Street Journal and NBC, have cited unidentified US officials as saying China is weighing whether to provide drones and certain munitions to Russia.
German weekly Der Spiegel has reported that Beijing and Moscow are negotiating the possible purchase from a Chinese firm of 100 strike drones for use in Ukraine.
Earlier this month, Secretary of State Antony Blinken shared US concerns directly with China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, during a tense meeting in the margins of the Munich security conference. On Wednesday, Wang met in Moscow with President Vladimir Putin, underscoring the close ties between their countries.
US officials said Chinese companies are already providing nonlethal equipment to Russia.
On Sunday, the US national security advisor Jake Sullivan went onto several morning talk shows to reinforce Washington’s warnings.
He said the United States would remain “vigilant” about Chinese military supplies to Russia and that there would be consequences should Beijing send lethal weaponry.
“We will continue to send a strong message that we believe that sending military aid to Russia at this time … would be a bad mistake, and China should want no part of it,” Mr Sullivan said on CNN.
RUSSIA RAMPS UP ATTACKS
Ukrainian troops are increasingly under intense pressure in the near-destroyed frontline city of Bakhmut, where Russian forces have stepped up heavy assaults after months of fighting in what has become the bloodiest battle of Moscow’s one-year invasion.
The former eastern industrial hub has become largely a political objective despite having already been reduced to rubble, causing high casualties on both sides.
As combat raged, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said on Tuesday that the priority for Ukraine was to fight off Russia’s invasion with allies’ backing and that in the “long-term” the nation would join the alliance.
Aerial footage shows almost all of Bakhmut’s buildings in ruins and smoke rising over the city once known for its sparkling wine production and salt mines.
The governor of the eastern Donetsk region Pavlo Kyrylenko said mid-February that out of the 70,000 people who lived in the city before the war, less than 5,000 civilians including 140 children remained.
“The situation around Bakhmut is extremely tense,” the commander of Ukraine’s ground forces Oleksandr Syrskyi said on social media.
“Despite taking significant losses, the enemy has dispatched its best-trained Wagner assault units to try to break through the defences of our troops and surround the city,” Syrskyi said, referring to the Russian paramilitary group.
In the basement of a residential building in Bakhmut, a soldier who goes by the call sign “Fox” said he did not know how much longer he and his comrades could hold out in the Ukrainian frontline city.
In an interview with AFP, the soldier said the Ukrainian troops fighting for Bakhmut did not have enough soldiers and ammunition and felt dispirited.
“Everyone is on edge,” Fox said.
Military observers say both Russia and Ukraine have been sustaining huge losses in the battle for the city.
Fox said it was hard to make any predictions but it was becoming increasingly hard to resist fierce Russian assaults and artillery shelling.
“We don’t feel support from our artillery,” he said.
“I think Bakhmut will most likely fall.”
Other soldiers said it was important to stay optimistic, however, despite the dire circumstances.
“If we feel down, if we are apathetic, we will not prevail. But we are in good spirits,” said a mortar gunner with the call sign “Kai”, grinning broadly.
“We haven’t run away. We’re all here.”
A fellow mortar gunner, who goes by the call sign Ded (”Granddad”), struck a similar note.
“I’m totally optimistic,” the 45-year-old Ukrainian soldier said in Russian, an assault rifle behind him.
‘NO CONDITIONS FOR PEACE’
The Kremlin on Monday acknowledged China’s proposal for a political solution in Ukraine but said the conditions for a peaceful resolution of the conflict were not in place “at the moment”.
“We paid a lot of attention to our Chinese friends’ plan,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday, adding that: “for now, we don’t see any of the conditions that are needed to bring this whole story towards peace.”
China has sought to position itself as a neutral party in the conflict while maintaining close ties with strategic ally Russia.
Beijing last week called for peace talks as it released a 12-point paper to end the war in Ukraine, which included the respect of all countries’ territorial sovereignty.
The Russian foreign ministry on Friday thanked Chinese efforts but said that any settlement of the conflict needed to recognise Russia’s control over four Ukrainian regions.
Russia claims to have annexed the regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson but never fully controlled them.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country needed to work with China, arguing “it seems to me that there is respect for our territorial integrity, security issues” in the Chinese perspective.
Zelenskyy also said he was convinced that only a country whose territory is under attack can initiate “any peace initiatives.” The publication of the proposal follows accusations from the West that China is considering arming Russia, a claim Beijing has dismissed as false.
PUTIN SLAMS WEST’S ‘SINGLE AIM’ TO BREAK UP RUSSIA
Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused NATO members of taking part in the Ukraine conflict by donating arms to the country and said the West planned to break up Russia.
“They are sending tens of billions of dollars in weapons to Ukraine. This really is participation,” Mr Putin said in an interview, which aired in Russia on Sunday local time.
“This means that they are taking part, albeit indirectly, in the crimes being carried out by the Kyiv regime,” Mr Putin said.
He said Western countries had “a single aim — to break up the former Soviet Union and its main part — the Russian Federation”.
“Only then will they maybe accept us in the so-called family of civilised peoples but only separately, every part separately.”
Mr Putin was speaking on the sidelines of a patriotic concert in Moscow late last week on the eve of the first anniversary of the start of Russia’s full-scale offensive in Ukraine.
In the interview, Mr Putin also reiterated his calls for a multipolar world and said he had “no doubt” that this would happen.
“What are we against? Against the fact that this new world that is taking shape is being built only in the interests of just one country, the United States.”
“Now that their attempts to reconfigure the world in their own likeness after the fall of the Soviet Union have led to this situation, we are obliged to react.”
– with AFP
More Coverage
Originally published as ‘War criminal’: US slams Vladimir Putin’s close ally
Read related topics:Russia & Ukraine Conflict
Join the conversation
Reporter, 31, reveals ‘affair’ with RFK Jr, 70
The New York Magazine political correspondent, 31, claimed she’d recently had a romantic relationship with the former presidential candidate, 70.
Read more
‘This could be war’: Hezbollah’s threat as Israel strikes Lebanon
Israel has bombarded Lebanon with dozens of aerial strikes after Hezbollah’s chief broke his silence, saying explosive devices crossed “all red lines” and could be “called a declaration of war”.
Read more