This article was originally published by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and is reprinted with permission.
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris has accused Russia of committing “atrocities of unimaginable proportions” in Ukraine as she traveled to Warsaw amid controversy over a Polish plan to supply fighter jets to Ukraine.
Harris’s trip, aimed at bolstering U.S. support for its Eastern European allies, has been overshadowed by an open disagreement between Warsaw and Washington over the Polish proposal, which called for sending MiG warplanes to Ukraine, by way of a U.S. military base in Germany.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has been asking the West for access to Soviet-era MiG-29 jets, some of which remained in former Warsaw Pact countries after they joined NATO.
Ukrainian Air Force pilots fly their own small fleet of those and other jets; receiving additional planes from places like Poland or Bulgaria — both NATO members — would add to Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s air forces.
But Washington rejected the Polish plan outright.
“We do not support the transfer of additional fighter aircraft to the Ukrainian Air Force at this time, and therefore have no desire to see them in our custody either,” Defense Department spokesman John Kirby said on March 9.
Asked at a joint news conference in Warsaw on March 10 with President Andrzej Duda about the jet dispute, Harris dodged a reporter’s question.
“We’re making deliveries every day, in terms of what we can do, in terms of assistance and, in particular, when you look at what we’ve been doing, as it relates to anti-tank and anti-defense systems,” she said, according to a White House transcript.
Earlier, Harris responded to reports that Russia had attacked a maternity hospital in the southern port city of Mariupol. Ukrainian officials said at least three people, including a child, were killed in the March 9 attack.
“Absolutely, there should be an investigation and we should all be watching and I have no question that the eyes of the world are on this war and what Russia has done in terms of this aggression and these atrocities,” Harris said.
“It is obvious to us that in Ukraine Russians are committing war crimes,” said Duda, whose country has taken in more than 1 million Ukrainian refugees over the two weeks of fighting.
“There are pregnant women, there are children, if you kill ordinary people you throw bombs, rockets, at housing estates, this is barbarism bearing the features of genocide,” he said.
