MOSCOW/WASHINGTON
US President Joe Biden’s remarks that the events in Ukraine look like genocide raised concerns among some US government officials, because this has so far not been corroborated by information collected by the US intelligence, foreign news agency reported on Friday.
“Genocide includes a goal of destroying an ethnic group or nation and, so far, that is not what we are seeing,” The news agency quoted a senior unnamed US intelligence official as saying, as reported by the NBC Television.
News agency reported that Biden earlier expressed this opinion in private conversations, but his administration officials were taken aback by the president’s public statement on the issue, made in Iowa last week.
The president’s declaration of genocide in Ukraine was the third time in recent weeks that the president has tried to separate what he says are his personal views from official US policy, the channel said.
On Tuesday, Biden told journalists that he sees the events in Ukraine as genocide, adding, however, that “we’ll let the lawyers decide internationally.” Earlier, he made similar remarks during a public speech in the US state of Iowa.
Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov, commenting on Biden’s remarks, noted that the Kremlin completely disagreed with such statements. Peskov added that such remarks were unacceptable when heard from a leader of the country that killed hundreds of thousands people all over the world with its bombs.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a televised address on February 24 that in response to a request by the heads of the Donbass republics he had made a decision to carry out a special military operation. The Russian leader stressed that Moscow had no plans of occupying Ukrainian territories. After that the US, the EU, the UK and a number of other states announced that they would impose sanctions against Russian legal entities and individuals.
