Nat'l Security Adviser Says Kremlin War Crimes Were 'Planned' at 'Highest Level'
As Russia’s atrocities in Ukraine mount, there are now concerns that these acts may not have been the spontaneous and heinous work of a few rogue troops on the ground. Rather, it is now believed that this may all be a part of the Kremlin’s playbook.
From illegal land mines to thermobaric bombs, and from child-seeking missiles to the rape of children, Russia’s behavior in Ukraine has been simply ungodly. Now it is beginning to look like this is a feature of their war and not a fluke.
National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Sunday that alleged war crimes committed by Russia against civilians in Ukraine were “planned” by the “highest levels of the Russian government,” citing declassified intelligence documents.
Advertisement - story continues below“We, in fact, before the war began declassified intelligence and presented it,” Sullivan said, “indicating that there was a plan from the highest levels of the Russian government to target civilians who oppose the invasion, to cause violence against them, to organize efforts to brutalize them in order to try to terrorize the population and subjugate it. So this is something that was planned.”
And that wasn’t all.
Sullivan made the comments during an interview on ABC’ s “This Week,” telling host Jonathan Karl that “horrifying” images of mass casualties in Ukraine were “downright shocking,” although they were “not surprising.”
“I think there certainly are cases where individual soldiers or individual units got frustrated because the Ukrainians were beating them back,” Sullivan said. “They had been told they were going to have a glorious victory and just ride into Kyiv without any opposition with the Ukrainians welcoming them. And when that didn’t happen, I do think some of these units engaged in these acts of brutality, these atrocities, these war crimes even without direction from above.”
Advertisement - story continues below“But make no mistake, the larger issue of broad-scale war crimes and atrocities in Ukraine lies at the feet of the Kremlin and lies at the feet of the Russian president,” he added.
The US an other nations have already begun suggesting that Vladimir Putin should tried for war crimes, but there doesn’t yet appear to be any mechanism in movement that could bring the Russia President to the International Criminal Court.
