Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., told the Washington Examiner this week that on his recent visit to Ukraine he witnessed “indisputable” proof of “war crimes being committed.”
Daines, who had been in Slovakia for a meeting with government officials, received an invitation to spend two days in Kyiv and Bucha, one of the locations where alleged war crimes have been reported.
Daines told the Examiner that Ukrainians “want Americans, and the world, to know about [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s atrocities against innocent people of Ukraine [that] are happening now, and not after time has passed, in the aftermath of the evil and bloodshed.”
Although Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to Ukraine this week, Daines said, “I thought the absence of any American official in Ukraine since Feb. 24 was conspicuous.
"It was time for an American to be there, and when they invited me to come, I said I would do it, and I was proud to show that Americans stand shoulder to shoulder with the people of Ukraine in their fight for freedom.”
Daines said that he watched Ukrainian officers exhume “civilians, women, children” from what he described as “shallow graves,” saying, “the stench of death was still very much apparent. At one moment, I had to put my hand and my jacket over my nose because it was awful.”
He said that during his trip, “I saw things that I would wish nobody would ever have to see in their lifetime. I stood literally on the edge of the shallow graves that were full of innocent, murdered Ukrainians. It was indisputable — the evidence is related to war crimes being committed.”
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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