President Biden said Wednesday that it is clear Vladimir Putin is targeting civilians in Ukraine and insisted that ‘nothing is off the table’ with banning Russian gas imports, a drastic move that would send energy prices soaring further.
‘It’s clear they are,’ Biden said, when asked by a reporter if Russia is targeting civilians as he left the White House for Wisconsin.
However he said it was too early to say whether Russia had committed war crimes.
‘We are following it very closely. It’s early to say that.’
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., shot back on Twitter: ‘I don’t understand why Biden says it’s too early to say #Putin is committing war crimes If he says #Russia is using banned weapons, intentionally killing civilians & unnecessarily destroying civilian property then it’s clear he is committing war crimes.’
‘Are you considering banning Russian oil imports?’ Biden was also asked. ‘Nothing is off the table,’ he said.
Republicans have long called for Biden to start pumping more oil in America and stop buying Russian gas, and now Democrats have joined in on the call – Sen. Ed Markey introduced legislation to ban Russian oil imports on Tuesday.
Biden is expected to announce further sanctions on both Russia and Belarus’s defense sector, after Ukraine announced Belarus had joined the fight on Putin’s side.
Linda Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said Wednesday that Russia has deployed cluster munitions and vacuum bombs in Ukraine, and the worst is yet to come.
‘It’s clear they are,’ Biden said, when asked by a reporter if Russia is targeting civilians as he left the White House for Wisconsin
Houses destroyed as a result of shelling by the Russian army in Bucha, Kyiv Region
Bodies are piled into a van after an explosion on Kyiv’s main television tower
Police officers remove the body of a passerby killed in yesterday’s airstrike that hit Kyiv’s main television tower in Kyiv on March 2
Thermobaric weapons – also known as vacuum bombs – are high-powered explosive that use the atmosphere itself as part of the explosion. They are among the most powerful non-nuclear weapons ever developed.
Cluster munitions explode in mid-air to rain down dozens or even hundreds of mini-bombs, which can kill indiscriminantly.
‘Russia is preparing to increase the brutality of its campaign against Ukraine,’ she said before the UN. ‘We have seen videos of Russian forces moving exceptionally lethal weaponry into Ukraine.’
Explosions burst through residential neighborhoods in Kharkiv and Kyiv Tuesday night. On Tuesday afternoon Russia’s defense ministry announced it would target Ukrainian intelligence and communications facilities in residential areas and warned civilians to flee for their own safety.
Bodies of the five victims of a rocket strike on Kyiv’s television tower were on Wednesday morning piled into a van and removed from the site by police – as the capital’s mayor Vitali Klitschko warned that Russian forces were ‘getting closer’.
Klitschko also today defiantly vowed ‘we will fight’ to defend the city, amid fears it could soon be battered by artillery fire from a 40-mile long death convoy parked nearby.
Thermobaric weapons were developed by both the U.S. and the Soviet Union in the 1960s
A thermobaric bomb explosion during the Caucasus 2016 strategic drills at Opuk range of Russia’s Southern Military District
An opening salvo on Tuesday night struck the Ukrainian capital’s largest TV tower and damaged a nearby Holocaust memorial, killing five bystanders in the process. Hours later, US intelligence said the huge Russian convoy appears to have stalled near Kyiv though it could just be regrouping for a more-determined attack.
Klitschko said that fighting is still ongoing in the cities of Bucha and Hostomel, on the outskirts of Kyiv, where a large number of destroyed Russian vehicles were pictured on Wednesday. He implored people in the city ‘not to lose endurance’, saying all critical infrastructure is still running and humanitarian supplies are being handed out.
‘I ask everyone, for security reasons, not to go outside unnecessarily. At the alarm – go to the shelters,’ he said. ‘The enemy is gathering forces closer to the capital… We are preparing and will defend Kyiv!’
As fighting raged, the humanitarian situation worsened. Roughly 660,000 people have fled Ukraine, and countless others have taken shelter underground.
And as Russia showed now signs of relenting in its attacks officials said Mariupol was under ‘full-scale genocide’ as Putin’s men unleashed a 15-hour artillery barrage while Kharkiv also came under heavy bombardment in a dark sign of what could be to come in the capital Kyiv.
Mariupol, located in the south of Ukraine on the Black Sea, has been surrounded by Russian forces and struck by artillery in an apparent attempt to bomb the city into submission as Putin’s men resort to ‘medieval’ tactics. Sergiy Orlov, the deputy mayor, said entire districts had been levelled with such heavy barrages that medics cannot get in to retrieve the dead.
‘We are near to a humanitarian catastrophe,’ he said. ‘Russian forces are several kilometers away on all sides,’ he added. ‘The Ukrainian army is brave and they will continue to defend the city, but Russia does not fight with their army, they just destroy districts… We are in a terrible situation.’
Meanwhile Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second city, came under heavy barrage in the early hours as Russian troops try to surround and seize it after days of fighting – with a rocket slamming into a university building and police station in the early hours before the city council was also struck, with one of the explosions caught in a dramatic video.
The bombardment gives a dark taste of what is likely to come for other cities such as Kyiv after analysts warned Russia’s military – having suffered heavy losses trying to pull off ambitious precision strikes – was likely to resort to surrounding cities and bombing them into submission to force a bloody victory.
Ukraine’s emergency services estimate that 2,000 civilians have been killed so-far during Russia’s invasion, though that figure is likely to be an under-count once Wednesday’s figures are tallied.
Ukraine’s armed forces said Wednesday morning that Russia is ‘trying to advance in all directions’ but are ‘being resisted everywhere and suffering losses’. It estimates that 5,840 Russian troops have been killed so far – though that figure cannot be verified.
