US House Foreign Affairs Committee members have accused Russian dictator Vladimir Putin of committing genocide in Ukraine. Speaking on September 6 during a visit to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Committee chairperson Michael McCaul said Putin “tried to erase a culture, a people and a religion, and that is the definition of genocide.”
Fellow Committee member Ann Wagner spoke of the “crimes against humanity, the downright genocide that this man has perpetrated.” Virginia Democrat Gerry Connolly commented that Putin had already begun actively denying the existence of Ukraine as a country and a people prior to the start of the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022. “So I think he himself made the case for genocide and his behavior subsequently has filled in blanks,” Connolly noted, according to the Associated Press.