Russia invokes Napoleon in comments directed at France

National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby pushed back Sunday against some members of Congress who have criticized the level of US funding for Ukraine. 

Allegations against Russia: Kirby also weighed in on the crimes against humanity declaration against the Kremlin announced by Vice President Kamala Harris on Saturday.

“We hope (it) will galvanize the rest of the world to likewise continue to want to hold — and to support investigative efforts to hold — Russia accountable for the war crimes and the atrocities that they are conducting inside Ukraine,” Kirby said on MSNBC. 

“That designation, crimes against humanity, demonstrates that we believe that this is a systematic effort by the Kremlin,” he added.

Read more about the crimes against humanity designation and war crimes prosecution here. 

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US has concerns over China’s support of Russia’s military, specifically that Beijing is considering supplying Moscow with deadly weapons.

CNN’s Natasha Bertrand reported on these concerns Saturday, citing US officials.

“The concern that we have now is based on information we have that they’re considering providing lethal support, and we’ve made very clear to them that that would cause a serious problem for us and in our relationship,” Blinken said.

Blinken clarified that “lethal support” refers to weapons, among other items.

“There’s a whole gamut of things that — that fit in that category, everything from ammunition to the weapons themselves,” he told CBS.

CNN reported Saturday there are signs that Beijing wants to “creep up to the line” of providing lethal military aid to Russia without getting caught, according to US officials, who would not describe in detail the intelligence guiding the US in that assessment.

In an interview with NBC Sunday, Blinken also declined to provide what evidence the US has, but said he believed it would be “out there soon.”

Officials shared the intelligence with allies and partners at the Munich Security Conference over the last several days.

Aid for Ukraine: On weapons and equipment the US plans to provide to Ukraine, Blinken would not say whether he expects a policy change to greenlight US fighter jets. Blinken said it was challenging to train Ukrainian fighters on unfamiliar equipment, but reiterated that the US continues to engage with Kyiv about what they need.

He said it would be critical to to prepare Ukraine for what Blinken predicts will be its own counteroffensive against Russia.

The US government declared Sunday that Russia has committed crimes against humanity in its invasion of Ukraine.

The declaration marks the strongest accusation yet from the US as it seeks to punish Moscow for its war of aggression.

The US government declared last March that members of the Russian armed forces had committed war crimes in Ukraine. President Joe Biden has gone as far as saying that atrocities at the hands of Moscow’s troops qualify as “genocide.”

While the latest crimes against humanity determination is significant, it remains largely symbolic for now. It does not immediately trigger any specific consequences, nor does it give the US the ability to prosecute Russians involved with perpetrating crimes.

However, it could provide international bodies, such as the International Criminal Court, with evidence to effectively try to prosecute those crimes.

Here’s what you need to know about a few key facets of this story:

Still looking for answers? Read a full analysis on war crimes prosecutions here.

Two leading Republicans in the US House of Representatives called on President Joe Biden on Sunday to increase military support to Ukraine.

Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio and Rep. Mike McCaul of Texas said in a joint interview on CNN’s State of the Union that bipartisan support remains strong for the Ukraine war effort.

McCaul, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, warned that hedging support for Ukraine could prolong the conflict with Russia, which could play to Moscow’s advantage and allow anti-Ukraine dissent to build. 

When asked if he believes the US is considering sending F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, he replied, “I hope so,” adding: “I think the momentum is building for this to happen.”

Turner, who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, also defended congressional support for Ukraine, despite some House Republicans co-signing a “Ukraine Fatigue” resolution calling for the US to cut off military and financial aid.

Turner equated the resolution to a letter from some House Democrats asking the White House to pursue diplomacy between Russia and Ukraine, a letter the signees retracted shortly after.

When CNN’s Pamela Brown parsed the differences between the retracted letter from Democrats and the Republican resolution to suspend funding to Ukraine altogether, Turner replied, “You can’t retract a letter from Putin hearing it.”

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov on Sunday accused the United States of being the “main provocateur” of global tensions, in response to remarks about targeting Crimea from a top US diplomat.

“(US Under Secretary of State Victoria) Nuland belongs to a very large camp of the most aggressive hawks in American politics. This is a point-of-view well-known to us. It once again emphasizes the depth of our differences. It once again emphasizes, probably, the role of the United States as the main provocateur of the international tension,” Peskov said in an interview on the Russia-1 state-owned TV channel.  

Some context: Nuland said Friday that Washington supports Ukraine’s strikes on military installations in Crimea, calling them “legitimate targets.” 

Crimea is home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, which is based at Sevastopol. The peninsula has acted as a launching pad for Moscow’s invasion, with Russian troops pouring into Ukraine’s south from the annexed region.

It was forcibly seized by Russia in 2014 – soon after Ukrainian protesters helped topple pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych – when thousands of Russian special-operations troops wearing unmarked uniforms deployed around the peninsula in early March that year.

Two weeks later, Russia completed its annexation of Crimea in a referendum, slammed by Ukraine and most of the world as illegitimate, and at the time considered the biggest land-grab on Europe since World War II.

As the anniversary of Vladimir Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine approaches, a Russian warship armed with one of Moscow’s most powerful weapons pulled into a port on South Africa’s east coast this weekend.

The frigate Admiral Gorshkov — carrying hypersonic Zircon missiles, according to President Putin — has a “Z” and “V” crudely painted in white on its blackened smokestack, just like the Russian tanks and artillery pieces that rolled into Ukraine a year ago.

It is participating in a 10-day naval exercise in the Indian Ocean alongside South African and Chinese warships, war games that South Africa says have long been planned.

But the timing of the exercises has Western diplomats privately incensed and publicly critical, and they risk an embarrassing backlash for the government in Pretoria.

On the basis of realpolitik alone, freezing out Russia or, at the very least, postponing the naval exercises, may have seemed like a smarter choice.

Ukraine’s biggest supporters, the United States and countries in the European Union, are also big trade partners for South Africa.

European Union and US two-way trade with South Africa outstrips Russian economic ties many times over. And though Russia promises more trade deals, its battered economy is unlikely to provide the direct investment that South Africa desperately needs.

Read the full analysis here.

Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Sunday invoked Napoleon in accusing France and other western countries of attempting to “change the government” in Moscow.

“France did not begin with Macron, but the remains of Napoleon, revered at the state level, rest in the center of Paris. So that France understands everything, and so does Russia,” spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Sunday. 

The comments came in response to an interview French President Emmanuel Macron gave newspaper Le Journal Le Dimanche, in which he said: “I want the defeat of Russia in Ukraine and I want that Ukraine can defend its position, but I am convinced that at the end this won’t end militarily. I don’t think, like some, that Russia should be defeated completely, attacked on its on soil. These commentators want above all to erase Russia. That has never been France’s position and it will never be.”

Moscow also accused France and the “West” of trying “to change the government” in Moscow, alluding to Macron’s comments that several attempts of regime change have happened in Russia but “all ended in failure”. 

Macron vowed to increase support to Ukraine to guarantee Russia’s defeat during his speech at the Munich Security Conference on Friday.

“This is clear – we can’t let it [Russia] win if we want a stable international order and lasting peace,” Macron said.

“We must absolutely strengthen our support and our effort to help the Ukrainian people and army’s resistance and allow them to carry out the counter-offensive that alone will allow credible negotiations on the terms chosen by Ukraine,” he said, adding that the coming weeks and months are decisive.

CNN’s Xiaofei Xu and Marguerite Lacroix contributed to this post.

Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny is fond of a phrase, “the wonderful Russia of the future,” his shorthand for a country without President Vladimir Putin.

But in the year that has passed since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia has gone back to a dark, repressive past.

Over the last 12 months, Putin’s government has crushed the remnants of Russia’s civil society and presided over his country’s first military mobilization since World War II. Political opponents such as Navalny are in prison or out of the country. And Putin has made it clear that he seeks to reassert Russia as an empire in which Ukraine has no place as an independent state.

Since last February’s invasion, Putin has shrugged off protests and international sanctions. Independent media and human rights groups have been branded as foreign agents or shut down entirely.

Russia is now in an uncertain new phase, and it’s clear there will be no rewind, no return to the status quo ante, for ordinary citizens.

So is Putin’s grip on power unchallenged? Rumors are now flying inside the country about another wave of mobilization. And in Moscow, signs of elite competition are beginning to emerge, even as some Russians are seeing through the cracks in the wall of state propaganda.

Ukrainian officials have been warning for weeks that Russia may be preparing a major new assault, perhaps to coincide with the anniversary of the 2022 invasion.

Back in September, Putin ordered a “partial mobilization” after a swift and unexpected Ukrainian counteroffensive that chased Russian forces out of the northeastern Kharkiv region and set the stage for Ukraine’s recapture of the southern city of Kherson.

Many of those troops have now gone through the training pipeline, further fueling speculation that Russia is committed to a manpower-intensive war of attrition.

Read the full analysis piece here.

Russia’s ambassador to the United States has labeled accusations of Russian war crimes in Ukraine an “excuse” made up by Washington to escalate the conflict.

On Saturday both US Vice-President Kamala Harris and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington had determined Russia had committed crimes against humanity.

According to state news agency TASS, Ambassador Anatoly Antonov responded by saying: “We consider such insinuations as an attempt, unprecedented in terms of its cynicism, to demonize Russia in the course of a hybrid war, unleashed against us. There is no doubt that the purpose of such attacks is to justify Washington’s own actions to fuel the Ukrainian crisis.”

The ambassador accused the US of saying one thing and acting “in the opposite direction” by supplying Ukraine with heavy armorment, intelligence and training. “How can we trust the West and try to come to any type of agreement after all these statements and actions?” the diplomat said.

Anatoly Antonov also accused US of “turning a blind eye to the atrocities of the Zelensky regime,” such as “the horrific scenes of the shootings of unarmed captured Russian soldiers.”

Harris’ speech at the Munich Security Conference, days before the anniversary of Moscow’s invasion, cited evidence of indiscriminate Russian attacks that deliberately targeted civilians, including the bombing of a maternity hospital that killed a pregnant mother and of a theater in Mariupol, where hundreds were killed.

The vice president spoke of the horrific images out of Bucha that showed men and women shot and left to rot in the streets and reports by the United Nations of a 4-year-old girl who was sexually assaulted by a Russian soldier.