President Joe Biden's impromptu assertion that Russia is committing "genocide" in Ukraine has sparked an international investigation.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe has launched a "legal review" into Russia's practices to determine whether Biden is right, CNN reported.
"It will be up to the international law experts to determine if the actions meet the legal definition of genocide under the Genocide Convention," Michael Carpenter, U.S. ambassador to the OSCE said, according to the outlet. "And the legal review based on meticulous collection of evidence is underway. That's going to take some time to be completed."
The Geneva Convention defines genocide as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group."
Biden dropped the G-word during an appearance in Menlo, Iowa on Tuesday where he was speaking about the recent impact of inflation on American families.
"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," he said.
The president later told reporters that international lawyers would ultimately decide if the events in Ukraine qualify as genocide, adding that "it sure seems that way to me."
"It has become clearer and clearer that Putin is just trying to wipe out the idea of even being — being able to be Ukrainian," he said.
"More evidence is coming out of the — literally, the horrible things that the Russians have done in Ukraine. And we're going to only learn more and more about the devastation," Biden added.
The U.S. State Department defended the president's statement but decline to open its own investigation of genocide, saying it would instead support international efforts to hold Russia accountable, Reuters reported.
"What we are doing is the most effective means of achieving that ultimate goal of accountability," department spokesperson Ned Price said during a press briefing Wednesday. "We are engaged in a process at this very moment to work with partners around the world, but in the first instance our Ukrainian partners, to help them collect, to preserve, to document, and to share evidence of atrocities, potential war crimes, and yes, if that threshold, that legal threshold is reached, genocide."
Price said Biden was basing his comments on "the horrific atrocities that we've all seen in Mariupol, in Bucha, in Kharkiv."
"What the President is doing is putting a very public spotlight on the atrocities that are taking place in Ukraine right now. For us, we want the world’s attention to remain trained on this," he said.
White House Press Secretary Jenn Psaki also defended Biden's comments, saying he is "calling it like he sees it," The Washington Post reported.
"The president was speaking to what we all see," she said. "What he feels is clear as day in terms of the atrocities happening on the ground."
Russia reacted to Biden's comments by accusing the U.S. of hypocrisy.
"We consider this kind of effort to distort the situation unacceptable," Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters, according to Reuters. "This is hardly acceptable from a president of the United States, a country that has committed well-known crimes in recent times."
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