President Biden's off-the-cuff comments have sometimes landed him in trouble, but he clarified Tuesday afternoon that he did mean to call Russian President Vladimir Putin's Ukraine war "genocide."
"Yes, I called it genocide," he told reporters on the airport tarmac in Des Moines, Iowa. "It has become clearer and clearer that Putin is just trying to wipe out the idea of even being, being able to be Ukrainian." He said "the evidence is mounting" of "the horrible things that the Russians have done in Ukraine," and this week is "different than it was last week." But Biden also made it clear that this is still in the realm of his opinion and not legally binding. "We'll let the lawyers decide internationally whether or not it qualifies, but it sure seems that way to me," he said.
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