The American ambassador to the United Nations made an emotional appeal directly to Russian soldiers on the front line of Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, during remarks at the General Assembly in New York City in Wednesday.
‘To the Russian soldiers sent to the front lines of an unjust, unnecessary war, I say your leaders are lying to you. Do not commit war crimes,’ Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said.
‘Do everything you can to put down your weapons and leave Ukraine.’
Wearing a blue and yellow scarf as a show of solidarity with Ukraine, she also praised Russian protesters who have been demonstrating against the war even as police there arrest thousands of people for doing so.
Thomas-Greenfield also issued a grim warning about the Russian leader’s ‘brutality.’ She claimed Moscow’s assault, which Ukrainian forces have put up a historic resistant to over the last week, would grow more ruthless with weapons banned under the Geneva Convention.
She was speaking ahead of the United Nations’ decisive 141 to 5 vote to immediately demand that Putin withdraw his forces from Ukraine and cease his brutal attacks. Russia, Syria, Belarus, Eritrea and North Korea voted against.
It comes as war crimes claims against Putin and Russian forces gain steam amid reports Ukrainian civilians are being targeted and slaughtered.
United States Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield speaks during an emergency meeting of the General Assembly at U.N. headquarters on Wednesday. The US voted along with 140 other countries to demand Putin withdraw his troops from Ukraine
Vasily Nebenzya, Permanent Representative of Russia to the United Nations, listens as Thomas-Greenfield speaks. Russia, Syria, Belarus, Eritrea and North Korea all voted against the resolution
‘Putin declared war, Ukraine has defended itself with great courage and vigor,’ Thomas-Greenfield said after accusing Russia of human rights abuses.
‘Russia has bombed residential apartment buildings, it has bombed sacred burial grounds, it has shelled kindergartens and orphanages and hospitals.’
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Wednesday that 6,000 Russian troops have been killed so far. More than 2,000 civilians are dead, Kyiv officials said, including nearly two dozen children.
Even as diplomats met on Wednesday Kremlin forces continued to batter Ukrainian cities and towns with air strikes and heavy shelling.
But the US ambassador said it’s now apparent that ‘Russia is preparing to increase the brutality of its campaign against Ukraine.’
‘We’ve seen videos of Russian forces moving exceptionally lethal weaponry into Ukraine, which has no place on the battlefield. That includes cluster munitions and vacuum bombs, which are banned under the Geneva Convention,’ Thomas-Greenfield said.
‘We all have seen the 40-mile long, lethal convoy charging toward Kyiv. President Putin continues to escalate, putting Russia’s nuclear forces on high alert, threatening to invade Finland and Sweden.’
Cluster munitions explode in mid-air to rain down dozens or even hundreds of mini-bombs, which can kill indiscriminately, and are banned by international law.
A view of a damaged armored vehicle after shelling in the city of Kharkiv, Ukraine on Wednesday, March 2
Fire continues to burn in a sports complex across the street from the Kyiv TV Tower on March 2. The country’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, said that at least five people were killed when a projectile struck the area on Tuesday
Andrey Goncharuk, 68, right, a member of the territorial defense speaks to a man in the backyard of a house damaged by a Russian airstrike, according to locals, in Gorenka, outside the capital
A vacuum bomb works by sucking in oxygen from the surrounding air to generate a high-temperature explosion, and is capable of vaporizing human bodies. Ukraine officials have already claimed Russians are using such weapons.
President Joe Biden said Wednesday that it is clear 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 Biden 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.
‘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
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 on Wednesday announced further sanctions on both Russia and Belarus’s defense sector, after Ukraine announced Belarus had joined the fight on Putin’s side.
The Pentagon said Wednesday that Russia has now deployed about 70 percent of the troops it had amassed on the Ukraine border, about 100,000.
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.
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.
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
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.
Biden touted American strength against the Russian regime during his State of the Union address on Tuesday, while again reiterating that U.S. troops would not deploy to Ukraine.
‘We are inflicting pain on Russia and supporting the people of Ukraine. Putin is now isolated from the world more than ever. Together with our allies – we are right now enforcing powerful economic sanctions. We are cutting off Russia´s largest banks from the international financial system. Preventing Russia´s central bank from defending the Russian Ruble making Putin´s $630 Billion ‘war fund’ worthless. We are choking off Russia´s access to technology that will sap its economic strength and weaken its military for years to come,’ he said.
The president announced a new task force to target oligarchs tied to Putin who have assets in the U.S. ‘We are joining with our European allies to find and seize your yachts your luxury apartments your private jets,’ he said.
