WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States has seen “very credible reports” of deliberate attacks on civilians, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Sunday, adding that Washington was documenting these reports to support appropriate organizations in their potential war crimes investigation.
“We’ve seen very credible reports of deliberate attacks on civilians which would constitute a war crime,” Blinken told CNN’s “State of the Union” show. “We’ve seen very credible reports about the use of certain weapons,” he said.
“What we’re doing right now is documenting all of this, putting this all together, looking at it and making sure that as people and the appropriate organizations and institutions investigate whether war crimes have been or are being committed that we can support whatever they are doing,” Blinken added.
Russia, which denies attacking civilian areas, calls the campaign it launched on Feb. 24 a “special military operation”, saying it has no plans to occupy Ukraine.
The U.S. embassy in Ukraine on Friday sent a tweet that attacking a nuclear plant is a war crime after Russian invasion forces seized Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant in heavy fighting in southeastern Ukraine, triggering global alarm.
The State Department sent a message to all U.S. embassies in Europe telling them not to retweet the Kyiv embassy’s tweet calling the attack a war crime, according to CNN, which said it reviewed the message.
(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk and Chris Gallagher; Editing by Catherine Evans and Lisa Shumaker)
