‘Putin trying to wipe out Ukrainians’: US President Joe Biden accuses Russia of ‘genocide’

U.S. President Joe Biden said for the first time on Tuesday that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine amounts to genocide and then qualified the statement by saying that a legal process would make the final determination.

Biden used the term genocide in a speech at an ethanol plant in Iowa and later stood by the description as he prepared to board Air Force One.

“Yes, I called it genocide because it has become clearer and clearer that Putin is just trying to wipe out the idea of being able to be Ukrainian and the evidence is mounting," Biden told reporters.

He added: "We’ll let the lawyers decide internationally whether or not it qualifies, but it sure seems that way to me." Biden has repeatedly called Russian President Vladimir Putin a war criminal, but he has not declared that Russia has committed genocide in Ukraine.

"Your family budget, your ability to fill up your tank, none of it should hinge on whether a dictator declares war and commits genocide a half a world away," Biden said at an event in Iowa on fuel prices. The president referred to expensive gasoline as a "Putin price hike."

Under international law, genocide is an intent to destroy - in whole or in part - a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. According to the U.N. convention, this includes killings; serious bodily or mental harm; inflicting lethal conditions, and measures to prevent births, among other means.

Biden has made a handful of statements about the war that U.S. officials have later had to walk back. The president stirred controversy on a recent trip to Poland when he ad-libbed a line at the end of a speech and said that Putin should not be allowed to remain in power. The White House clarified that U.S. policy was not to seek regime change.

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Genocide, considered the most serious international offense, was first used to describe the Nazi Holocaust. It was established in 1948 as a crime under international law in a United Nations convention.

Since the end of the Cold War, the State Department has formally used the term seven times. These were to describe massacres in Bosnia, Rwanda, Iraq, and Darfur; the Islamic State’s attacks on Yazidis and other minorities; China’s treatment of Uighurs and other Muslims, and this year over the Myanmar army’s persecution of the Rohingya minority. China denies the genocide claims.

At the State Department, such a determination normally follows a meticulous internal process. Still, the final decision is up to the secretary of state, who weighs whether the move would advance American interests, officials said.