“Ukraine is, today, a slaughterhouse right in the heart of Europe,” Clooney said during an informal meeting of the UN Security Council in New York. Clooney is part of an international task force advising Ukraine on its legal options in the wake of Russia’s third-month military invasion. President Biden has said that Russian President Vladimir Putin is a “war criminal” who should be tried for war crimes as the horrors of Moscow’s deadly invasion of Ukraine continue to grow. “Putin’s war of aggression is so outrageous that even after repeated warnings from the long criminal record of the United States and Russia, Ukrainians could not believe that this could happen,” Clooney said. “And I still read news headlines without knowing how to edit them.” Amal Clooney at the UN Security Council meeting in New York on Wednesday. (Timothy A. Clary / AFP via Getty Images) “Are thousands of children deported violently to Russia?” she continued. “Could it be that teenagers are rushing on the street in front of their family and neighbors? Was a building that had the word “children” really bombed? And are the citizens in Mariupol today being systematically tortured and starved to death? “Unfortunately, the answer is yes.” The International Criminal Court (ICC) has officially launched an investigation into possible war crimes in Ukraine a week after the Russian invasion on February 24. “This is a time when we need to mobilize the law and send it into battle,” said ICC prosecutor Karim Khan at the meeting. “Not on the side of Ukraine against the Russian Federation or on the side of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, but on the side of humanity.” The Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine said this week that a total of 8,653 alleged war crimes have been registered in the office. At least 217 children are reported killed in the war. On Thursday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres visited Ukraine, where evidence of mass killings of civilians was found following the withdrawal of Russian forces from the city. According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, at least 2,829 Ukrainian civilians have been killed since the start of the war in Russia. But the body believes the actual death toll is likely to be much higher.
