A day after President Biden’s remark, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he agreed. Experts warned of hurdles to a successful prosecution.
A day after President Biden branded President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia a “ war criminal ” over civilian deaths in Ukraine, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken on Thursday echoed his assessment and said Mr. Putin would be held accountable. “Yesterday, President Biden said that, in his opinion, war crimes have been committed in Ukraine. Personally, I agree,” Mr. Blinken said, citing a list of horrific Russian attacks that have killed unarmed Ukrainians, including children. “Intentionally targeting civilians is a war crime.” But the practical obstacles to punishing Mr. Putin are huge, experts said, though his battlefield commanders in Ukraine could be more vulnerable. Complicating matters is the fact that the United States does not officially recognize the International Criminal Court, which is the main forum for prosecuting war crimes. Some experts said that declaring the Russian leader a war criminal could make it more difficult to negotiate a peace agreement with him, but that it might also give Ukraine and the West some leverage if Mr. Putin sought to bargain for immunity from any prosecution. The back-to-back comments by Mr. Biden and Mr. Blinken marked a clear change in U.S. language on the subject after weeks of noncommittal statements by American officials even as Ukrainian hospitals and apartment blocks were pounded to rubble. Two weeks ago, the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, told reporters that the United States had “not made conclusions” about whether war crimes were being committed in Ukraine, saying the question was the subject of an official legal review. Growing evidence of horrific Russian attacks on civilian targets — including the bombing on Wednesday of a Mariupol theater that may have sheltered hundreds of people driven from their homes — has made that position hard to sustain. Legal experts said U.S. officials must be mindful of not seeming to prejudge complex legal issues that may come to trial, and Mr. Biden and Mr. Blinken both couched their assessments in personal terms, stopping short of statements of U.S. government policy. “I think he is a war criminal,” Mr. Biden said in response to a reporter’s question on Wednesday. A Senate resolution unanimously approved on Tuesday condemned Mr. Putin for “alleged war crimes” in Ukraine. “The reason for all their caution is that for any crime, there’s an evidentiary standard that has to be met,” said Oona Hathaway, a professor of international law at Yale Law School who serves on a State Department legal advisory board.
