Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has made a direct request to Joe Biden that the US designates Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism, the Washington Post reports.
This would be a rare and radical sanction, but Zelenskiy has been firm in putting pressure on the west to assist in Ukraine’s resistance to Russia’s invasion, and this is no exception as his country endures atrocities from its northern neighbor.
He asked the US president in a recent phone call, but the question has not previously been reported, the Post adds, citing unnamed sources, who apparently indicated that “Biden did not commit to specific actions during the call.”
The Ukrainian President compared Putin’s savage troops to ISIS monsters on April 4th .He claimed that the savage Russian soldiers ripped out victims’ tongues, crushed people under tanks “for pleasure” and raped and butchered mums in front of their children. He stunned the UN Security Council with his claims in a videocall — accusing Vladimir Putin’s thugs of “the most terrible war crimes seen since the end of World War II”, and calling for Nuremberg-style trials.
The Post reports that “even during the Cold War, Washington refrained from designating the Soviet Union in this manner despite Moscow’s support for groups considered terrorist actors throughout the 1970s and 1980s.”
Justification for the designation would have to be arrived at by secretary of state Antony Blinken.
The designation is normally applied to nations that “repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism,” according to a State Department fact sheet cited by the Post, which adds that there are four countries on the department’s list right now: North Korea, Cuba, Iran and Syria.
Former US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson reportedly ordered his department to “outline the case” for naming Russia a state sponsor of terrorism , after a former Russian spy and double agent was poisoned in the United Kingdom.
While the designation was not made, the Trump administration did join the United Kingdom, France and Germany in condemning Russia for the attack on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, England, on March 4. Trump called it a “very sad situation” and said it “looks like the Russians were behind it.”
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THE GUARDIAN/ YL
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