Washington:
US Attorney General Merrick Garland made a surprise visit to Ukraine on Friday and vowed to hold “Russian war criminals” accountable for their actions.
“We are here today in Ukraine to speak clearly and with one voice: the perpetrators of these crimes will not get away with it,” Garland said.
At the invitation of his Ukrainian counterpart, he went to Lviv in western Ukraine to participate in the “United for Justice Conference”.
Garland told the conference that the United States stood alongside Ukrainian war crimes investigators in collecting and cataloging evidence from blast sites, including hospitals, apartment buildings and schools, excavating mass graves and studying human remains — “to tell the stories.” of those who can no longer,” according to a Justice Department transcript of his remarks.
Since the invasion began a year ago, Russia has committed atrocities on the largest scale of any conflict since World War II, he said.
The United States has signed an agreement with Ukraine, Lithuania, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Slovakia and Romania “that will strengthen our efforts to hold Russian war criminals accountable,” he said.
The visit, Garland’s second visit to Ukraine since the start of the conflict in February 2022, was not announced in advance for security reasons.
It came nearly two weeks after US President Joe Biden visited Ukraine and met President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The United States is helping Ukraine investigate war crimes and Garland labeled Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Russian mercenary Wagner, a war criminal this week.
In a statement released Feb. 24 to mark the first anniversary of the Russian invasion, Garland said his department “supports our Ukrainian partners in the pursuit of justice.”
US Vice President Kamala Harris last month accused Russia of committing crimes against humanity in Ukraine, saying Moscow’s forces had carried out “widespread and systematic” attacks on the country’s civilian population.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and is being published from a syndicated feed.)
Featured video of the day
Conrad Sangma will be sworn in as Prime Minister of Meghalaya on March 7