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Russian troops in Ukraine are committing not just war crimes, but genocide, which the civilized world must stop, said Michael McCaul, the chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives, during a hearing in the US Congress on Wednesday in Washington.

“It is long past time for the US and its allies to give Ukraine the weapons it needs to win,” said McCaul, a Republican congressman from Texas, stressing that Ukrainians must free themselves “from Russian terror.”

Having visited Ukraine and heard firsthand about the crimes of the Russians in Ukraine, he said that he believes that these testimonies will help lawmakers and voters understand why the United States, while supporting Ukraine, is also acting in its own national interests.

“These are more than war crimes. This is more than crimes against humanity. What we are witnessing in Ukraine is genocide,” McCall said at the hearings of the Committee, to which he invited the Prosecutor General of Ukraine Andrii Kostin and two victims of Russian aggression – a woman who survived the occupation in the Kherson region and a teenager who was forcibly deported to Russia from eastern Ukraine.

Watch the hearing “Exposing Putin’s Crimes: Evidence of Russian War Crimes and Other Atrocities in Ukraine” with Ukrainian translation:

“The body was cut with knives.” The story of Lyubov from Kherson region and Roman from Donetsk region

Sitting with her back to the camera that was broadcasting the session in Congress, a 57-year-old woman, who gave only her first name – Love, said that she was tortured, cut her body with knives, beaten, forced to undress and threatened to rape and kill her for five days. In a voice trembling with excitement, the woman said that she was once forced to dig her own grave. She said her house was robbed.

Unlike many people who were detained with her, the woman managed to escape and go abroad. But the fate of other people who were tortured together with her is unknown to her. She said that such torture is experienced by thousands of people in the occupied territories who want not only to expel Russian troops from the territory of Ukraine, but also demand justice – punishment of those guilty of war crimes.

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Another certificate on behalf of Romana, a 16-year-old Ukrainian teenager, an orphan from the Donetsk region, who was forcibly taken to Russia, was provided by his lawyer, Kateryna Bobrovska. The occupation authorities sent the boy to a medical institution, where he was told that he would have another family in Russia, although he had relatives in Ukraine who could take care of him. New documents were made for the boy in Donetsk, and later he was sent to Russia “on vacation” together with other children.

In Russia, a group of children from Ukraine was visited by the Children’s Commissioner of the Russian Federation, Maria Lvova-Belova, who, according to the lawyer, told the children that they would soon be adopted by Russian families. Roman was sent to a family that tried to “re-educate” him, he was forcibly given a Russian passport and forced to act in propaganda stories. But with the help of volunteers, the boy managed to return to Ukraine.

It is easy to return Ukrainian children if Russia is forced to do it – Kostin

According to the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office, residents, including children, are being forcibly relocated to other occupied territories or to Russia in territories still controlled by Russian troops. About 20,000 Ukrainian children were forcibly deported, and only a small fraction of them returned home, the Ukrainian Prosecutor General said during the hearing Andriy Kostin.

He emphasized that all these children can and should be returned home, but strong international pressure is needed for this.

“We need strong, united pressure on the Russian leadership to return Ukrainian children home. It’s easy if they want to do it. There is international legislation that can be used to return children through third countries, through international organizations, to their families and to their country,” Kostin said.

According to him, it is “historically significant” that the first arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes committed during this full-scale aggression was issued against the current president of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin and, as he said, “the ombudsman for the rights of the child in quotation marks” Maria Lvova-Belova.

“Now the whole world has seen that Putin is a suspect in a war crime, and the pressure on him and his government to return our children to our children must be worldwide, including the countries of the Global South and others who are still trying to be neutral.” Kostin emphasized.

Kostin said that since the beginning of the war in February 2022, almost 80,000 cases of war crimes have been registered in Ukraine. According to him, about 20 torture chambers were found only in the liberated territory of Kherson region, and more than 1,000 survivors testified about the torture they were subjected to – electric shocks, beatings, forced to strip naked, and threats to mutilate and kill.

“To break the will of the Ukrainian people, Russia has used terror through barbaric war crimes, from sexual violence, including the rape of children and the elderly, to mass executions and torture, all directed against innocent civilians,” Kostin said.

According to Kostin, more than 60 cases of rape have been documented in the Kherson region alone.

“You can’t be human and not feel the pain of Ukrainians” – Congressman Meeks

Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives Michael McCallwho chaired the meeting, believes that these crimes fully fall under the definition of “genocide”.

“By definition, genocide is “the intention to completely or partially destroy a people, including by forcibly transferring the children of one group to another group.” Putin and high-ranking Kremlin officials have made it clear that they intend to systematically destroy the existence of Ukraine,” McCall said.

According to him, the free world cannot allow this. “History will judge this moment and ask what we did to stop it. No country can remain neutral in the face of such evil. The free world should not tolerate genocide,” the congressman emphasized.

His colleague is a Democrat Gregory Meeks said that “it is impossible to be human and not feel the evil that was inflicted on the witnesses and other Ukrainians present at the meeting.”

“I want them to know that I feel their pain. We hear your voice and the voice of the whole nation. We cannot allow this suffering to be in vain,” said Congressman Meeks.

Congress has approved about $113 billion in economic, humanitarian and military spending to help Ukraine. US President Joe Biden has repeatedly stated that the United States will help Ukraine “as much as it takes” to repel the Russian invasion. But according to polls, support for this aid has weakened somewhat recently, and voices calling for peace talks with Russia are increasingly being heard.

But congressional leaders, many of whom have personally visited Ukraine over the past year, say more needs to be done to ensure that Ukraine wins, so that it can liberate all of its territories. They expect Ukraine to need billions of dollars in additional aid in the coming months.

As Voice of America reported, on the day the hearings were held, the Pentagon announced a new package of security assistance to Ukraine in the amount of $325 million. According to the spokespersons of the US Department of Defense, it included, among other things, additional ammunition for HIMARS, shells for artillery, high-precision anti-aircraft missiles and other equipment.