Blinken: Images of dead Ukrainians 'a punch to the gut'
CNN
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday that the State Department would help document any atrocities the Russian military committed against Ukrainian civilians, following new images from AFP out of a town northwest of Ukraine's capital of Kyiv with the bodies at least 20 civilian men found lying strewn across the street.
"You can't help but see these images as a punch to the gut," Blinken told CNN's Dana Bash on "State of the Union" on Sunday. "Since the aggression, we've come out and said that we believe that Russian forces have committed war crimes, and we've been working to document that, to provide the information we have to the relevant instructions and organizations that will put all of this together. And there needs to be accountability for it."
Last month, the State Department formally accused Russian forces of war crimes in Ukraine. Asked Sunday whether Russian troops were committing genocide, Blinken said, "We will look hard and document everything that we see, put it all together, make sure that the relevant institutions and organizations that are looking at this, including the State Department, have everything they need to assess exactly what took place in Ukraine, who's responsible and what it amounts to."
Senate Democrats have confirmed some of President Joe Biden’s picks for the federal bench this week in the face of President-elect Donald Trump’s calls for a total GOP blockade of judicial nominations – in part because several Republicans involved with the Trump transition process have been missing votes.
Donald Trump is considering a right-wing media personality and people who have served on his US Secret Service detail to run the agency that has been plagued by its failure to preempt two alleged assassination attempts on Trump this summer, sources familiar with the president-elect’s thinking tell CNN.
President-elect Donald Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency, a nongovernmental entity helmed by billionaire Elon Musk and biotech entrepreneur and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, is expected to make a push for an end to remote work across federal agencies as a way to help reduce the federal workforce through attrition.