The U.S. should have highlighted Russia’s mass grave plans in the run-up to the invasion of Ukraine in order to rally support and strengthen Kyiv’s ability to defend itself, according to a former defense official.
“I think [the administration] missed an opportunity to sound the alarm at an earlier stage and in a more clear fashion, that they could have done that in December, as opposed to the weeks immediately prior to the invasion,” James Anderson, former deputy undersecretary of defense for policy under President Donald Trump, told Fox News Digital.
Ukrainian officials said the bodies of 410 civilians were found in Kyiv-area towns and cities retaken as Russian forces withdrew from the area last week. In Bucha, alone, more than 100 civilians were found buried in mass graves, leading President Biden to call for a war crimes trial over Russia’s actions.
Radio Free Europe in December first reported on Moscow’s plans to standardize wartime mass grave practices, but it was only last week that those plans took on a new light: The standards apply to the “emergency burial” of fallen soldiers, with a specific size that would hold up to 1,000 bodies, as well as how to arrange the bodies and how to cover them.
For more on this story: US could have used Russian mass grave laws to rally more, early support for Ukraine: former defense official
Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/ukraine-russia-live-updates-04-08-2022
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