US Permanent Representative to NATO Julianne Smith said on Tuesday that the alliance was gathering evidence to hold Russian President Vladimir Putin and his team accountable for “war crimes” in Ukraine.
“What we have to do is collect the information we need to hold Putin and his team accountable in Moscow, and you can do that in a number of ways, of course it’s the way of the International Criminal Court. There is a United Nations option. There are several ways to do this,” she told a news conference in Brussels.
Responding to a question about how the United States will assist in the investigation of alleged war crimes committed by Russian forces in Ukraine, Smith said: “First of all, we need to fully understand what is happening on the front, we need to collect as much information as possible. ”
“We are now relying on first-hand reports from Ukrainian citizens. We are seeing some international organizations, NGOs are starting to collect information as well. Assembling a narrative, trying to piece together some sense of what happened, as we look again at these horrible images coming out of Bucha, but possibly in other locations as well,” he added.
Smith cautioned that it was “too early to say definitively what happened” in Bucha and other cities where alleged war crimes were committed by Russia, but added that “we are quite confident that we will be able to gather the evidence we need to hold Putin to account.”
She said one of NATO’s strategies for taking preemptive action in Ukraine has been to try to anticipate Putin’s “strategic choices.” “If you bring to their attention what we believe they might be planning, it might change their plans,” concluded the ambassador.
Source: CNN Brasil
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