Harris affirms NATO commitment, supports Russia war crime probe

Vice President Harris on Thursday affirmed U.S. commitment to the NATO alliance and its collective defense during a trip to Poland amid Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine.

She also voiced support for a war crimes investigation into Russia over its strikes on civilian areas.

“The United States commitment to Article 5 is ironclad,” Harris said at a news conference in Warsaw following a meeting with Polish President Andrzej Duda. “The United States is prepared to defend every inch of NATO territory. The United States takes seriously that an attack against one is an attack against all.”

Harris also announced that two Patriot missile-defense systems that the U.S. had promised to send to Poland had been delivered. And she said that the U.S. would contribute $50 million through the United Nations food program to assist with humanitarian aid to Ukraine. 

Harris condemned Russian attacks on civilian areas in Ukraine — calling them “atrocities of unimaginable proportion” — including the strike on a maternity hospital in the city of Mariupol.   

The vice president also expressed U.S. support for a U.N. war crimes investigation into Russia, saying the U.S. would participate in the probe at the International Court of Justice as “appropriate and necessary.”

“We all watched the television coverage of just yesterday,” Harris said.

“Pregnant women going for healthcare? Being injured by, I don’t know, a missile, a bomb? In an unprovoked and unjustified war where a powerful country is trying to take over another country, violate its sovereignty, its territorial integrity for the sake of, what, nothing that is justified or provoked?”

“Absolutely there should be an investigation and we should all be watching,” she said.  “I have no question the eyes of the world are on this war and what Russia has done.” 

Speaking alongside Harris on Thursday, Duda said there was “no question” that Russians are committing war crimes in Ukraine and said the international investigation would uncover the blame.

Harris’s trip comes just over two weeks after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a military invasion of Ukraine that has triggered international economic sanctions.   

Duda said that nearly 1.5 million refugees have fled Ukraine into Poland since the invasion.  

Harris commended the Polish government and people for taking in refugees and said the U.S. was prepared to provide support.

Both Harris and Duda sought to underscore the strength of relations between the two countries despite a recent dust-up over a Polish plan to send fighter jets to Ukraine.

Just before Harris landed in Poland, the Pentagon rejected the Polish proposal to transfer MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine that would have involved them being transferred to Ukraine from a U.S.-NATO air base in Germany. U.S. officials expressed surprise by the Polish offer.

“The United States and Poland are united in what we have done and are prepared to do to help Ukraine and the people of Ukraine, full stop,” Harris said Thursday in response to a question about the episode and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s request for more airpower.

The vice president said that U.S. security assistance to Ukraine is ongoing.

Duda described the situation as “extremely complicated” and said Poland “behaved in such a way as a reliable member of NATO such behave.”

Updated at 9:23 a.m.