The rhetorical clash between the United States and Russia escalated on Wednesday when President Biden said he believed Russia’s President Vladimir V. Putin was a “war criminal” and a top Russian official said the comment was “unacceptable and unforgivable.”
Mr. Biden answered a reporter’s question as he left an event at the White House. Later, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that Mr. Biden “speaked from his heart and spoke from what he saw on television.”
In the weeks since Russia invaded Ukraine, there have been attacks on refugee escape routes, densely populated civilian neighborhoods, schools, hospitals and, on Wednesday, a theater used as a bomb shelter.
On Wednesday, International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan held a virtual meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky in Ukraine. Late last month, Mr Khan said he was seeking permission to open an investigation into the war, and that his office had already found “a reasonable basis” to believe war crimes had been committed. He said it had “identified potential cases that would be admissible.”
The Kremlin responded on Wednesday to Biden’s comment with a lengthy criticism that it was Western countries, rather than Russia, that were threatening world peace.
Dmitri Peskov, a spokesman for Mr Putin, told state-run news outlet Tass that Mr Biden’s comments were “unacceptable and unforgivable on the part of the head of state, whose bombs have killed hundreds of thousands of people around the world. †
Last month, Mr Putin spoke to reporters in his country about “the fundamental threats that irresponsible Western politicians consistently and unceremoniously created for Russia from year to year”.
Mr Biden’s unscripted comments on Wednesday echoed reports US officials have made recently.
Vice President Kamala Harris was in Warsaw on March 10, a day after an apparent Russian strike destroyed a maternity ward in Mariupol. Would the United States support an investigation into allegations that Russia has committed war crimes, a reporter asked Ms. Harris.
“Absolutely,” said Ms. Harris, though she did not directly accuse Russia of committing war crimes.
Later that same day, US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield told BBC NewsHour that the Russian attacks on civilians “constitute war crimes; there are attacks on civilians that cannot be justified by any – in any way.”
Mr Biden has long criticized Mr Putin, including in a television interview with ABC News that aired last year. In the interview, when Mr. Biden was asked if he thought Mr. Putin was a “murderer,” he replied, “Mmm hmm, I do.”
The Kremlin recalled its ambassador to Washington after those comments were broadcast, and Mr Putin in response quoted a Russian rhyme in the schoolyard, saying: “When I was a kid, when we argued in the courtyard, we said, ‘If you someone is calling names, that’s really your name.’”