US President Joe Biden’s administration needs to “make Europe bleed even harder” to stay in power. He wrote it on Telegram Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova. “Do the countries of the European Union realize that Washington is involving them in a direct confrontation with Russia under the NATO flag?”, she wrote.
“The West is hysterically feeding its population with claims about Russia’s alleged imminent aggression against Western countries – added Zakharova – and this means only one thing: the Biden administration must make Europe bleed even harder to avoid the collapse of its own government and the US economy.”
Meanwhile the Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of Russia Dmitry Medvedev considers it necessary to respond to Western sanctions. In his Telegram channel, he called for turning life in the West into a “complete nightmare”, causing maximum damage to hostile countries.
“Every day we must try to cause maximum harm to those countries that imposed these restrictions against our country and all our citizens,” called the deputy head of the Security Council of the Russian Federation. “We must cause damage everywhere, paralyze the work of their companies and government bodies. Cause problems in their most important technologies and strike them mercilessly, literally destroying their energy, industry, transportation, banking and social services.”
“We turn their life into a completely crazy nightmare,” Medvedev concluded, offering to be guided by the Old Testament principle of “an eye for an eye.”
The dossier: “Moscow subjected Mariupol to starvation”
Russia engaged in a “deliberate pattern” of starvation tactics during the 85-day siege of the Ukrainian city of Mariupol in early 2022. This amounts to a war crime, according to a new dossier presented to the International Criminal Court by Global Rights Compliance lawyers, working in collaboration with the Ukrainian government. The document alleges that Russia and its leaders intended to kill and harm large numbers of civilians.
An estimated 22,000 people were killed during the encirclement and capture of the city of Mariupol at the start of the war in Ukraine. Civilians were left without water, gas or electricity within days of the siege as temperatures dropped to minus 10°C. Catriona Murdoch, partner at Global Rights Compliance, said the aim of the research was “to see if there was a broader narrative” that proved a deliberate denial of food and other life-sustaining services by the Russian military and his leadership, a starvation strategy that could be considered a war crime.
“What we could see was that there were four phases in the Russian attack, starting with raids on civilian infrastructure, with the supply of electricity, heating and water being cut off. Then humanitarian evacuations were denied and even attacked, while the passage of aid was prevented,” Murdoch added. “In phase three, remaining critical infrastructure was targeted, civilians were terrorized with aid and water points bombed. Finally, in phase four, Russia engaged in strategic attacks to destroy or occupy remaining infrastructure” .
