'Everyone Will Be Held Accountable' — U.S. Envoy TO OSCE Condemns Russia's War Crimes In Ukraine

The U.S. ambassador to the OSCE on Friday condemned Russia’s atrocity crimes in Ukraine, calling them 'appalling', and urging that 'no one will be outside of the scope of the law', TURAN's Washington correspondent reports.

"Everyone will be held accountable at the end of the day. We very much believe that. We’re going to pursue that," Ambassador Michael Carpenter  said during a special online briefing organized by the State Department's Brussels Media Hub.

This week, the OSCE’s second expert mission delivered its report on the human rights and humanitarian aspects of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

"This is again an attempt to look at human rights violations, violations of international humanitarian law, including war crimes and crimes against humanity" he said.

Asked by TURAN's correspondent if Russia's actions could be described as terrorism, Carpenter quoted the OSCE report, which, he said. "makes it very clear that a lot of these, the magnitude and the frequency of the indiscriminate attacks carried out against civilians and civilian objects is credible evidence that hostilities were conducted in violation of international humanitarian law, meaning that they were war crimes."

"So I would certainly subscribe to that conclusion, which is reached by the authors of the report, and I think there is an element of trying to intimidate the population of Ukraine," he added.

For Carpenter, Russia's atrocities are "truly appalling and beyond the scale of simply human decency."

When asked if the Russian leadership was aware of these atrocity crimes, Carpenter said, given the fact that a lot of these crimes are publicly reported, the fact that the OSCE’s Moscow Mechanism report is publicly available, is widely covered in the media, "I think it’s fair to say that one can assume that much of the Russian leadership should be aware of what is happening"

He also reminded that Putin personally bestowed an honor on the unit that was involved in the atrocities in Bucha. "The honor is the bestowal of the title of “Guards” on this particular unit that was involved in these atrocities, and it is hard to see that, at the time that this was done in April, that the Russian leadership would have been unaware of the allegations against those units in Bucha"

Carpenter also called Belarus "a co-aggressor to this war of choice" in Ukraine. "Belarus has allowed for its airspace and its territory to be used in order to fire countless ground-launched and air-launched missiles into Ukraine that have caused enormous damage, including to civilians.  And so Belarus is a co-aggressor, full stop"

45 of the OSCE participating states invoked the Moscow Mechanism in March to investigate Russia’s human rights violations, war crimes, and crimes against humanity in Ukraine, and a report was issued in April covering the period from February 24th to April 1st.

On June 2nd, the same 45 countries again invoked the Moscow Mechanism to look at these issues over the period from April 1st to June 25th. This was done after the disclosure of the atrocities committed in Bucha and Irpin.

Asked if there'll be another report on Russia's latest atrocity actions, Carpenter told TURAN's correspondent that there is always the possibility that additional Moscow Mechanism fact-finding teams could be deployed or invoked by the membership of the OSCE.  "At this point I think probably the weight of the inquiry has shifted to the UN," he added.

"But I wouldn’t foreclose the possibility of deploying the Moscow Mechanism in the future, including not to look specifically at what is happening on the territory of Ukraine, but possibly to look at what is happening on the territory of other states" he added.

Alex Raufoglu

Washington D.C.