Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday took heat after he refused to say whether Russian leader Vladimir Putin is a war criminal — even though Rubio pushed the same question to Rex Tillerson, one of his predecessors.
“Vladimir Putin, is he a war criminal?” Rep. Bill Keating (D-MA) asked Rubio during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing about the State Department’s fiscal year 2026 budget request.
“I think you can look at instances that have happened there and certainly characterize them as war crimes,” Rubio responded. “But our intent is to end the war.”
Keating: “Is he a war criminal?”
Rubio: “We can’t end the war without talking to Mr. Putin.”
Keating: “Just answer the question.”
Rubio: “I’m answering your question, and the answer is that war crimes have been committed, no doubt. And who’s responsible for that, there will be time and place for that accountability. But, right now the job is to end the [Russia-Ukraine war.]”
The cantankerous exchange was reminiscent of a similar exchange in 2017 — except in that hearing, Rubio, then a senator, was the one grilling a secretary of state for not definitively saying Putin is a war criminal:
“Is Vladimir Putin a war criminal?” Rubio asked Tillerson at the 2017 hearing during the first Trump term.
Tillerson: “I would not use that term.”
Rubio: “Based on all this information and what’s publicly in the record about what’s happened in Aleppo and the Russian military, you are still not prepared to say that Vladimir Putin and his military have violated the rules of war and have conducted war crimes in Aleppo.”
“There's so much information out there. It should not be hard to say that Vladimir Putin’s military has conducted war crimes in Aleppo,” Rubio added. “I find it discouraging, your inability to cite that which I think is globally accepted.”
