MUNICH (AP) - The United States has certain that Russia has committed crimes against humanity in Ukraine, Vice President Kamala Harris said Saturday, insisting that "justice must be served" to the perpetrators.

Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, Harris said the international community has both a defective and a strategic interest in pursuing those crimes, pointing to a perilous of other authoritarian governments taking advantage if international laws are undermined.

"Russian forces have pursued a widespread and systemic contest against a civilian population — gruesome acts of slay, torture, rape, and deportation," Harris said. She also furious "execution-style killings, beatings, and electrocution."

The Biden administration formally certain last March that Russian troops had committed war crimes in Ukraine and said it would work with others to prosecute offenders. A determination of crimes against humanity goes a step further, indicating that attacks against civilians are being carried out in a widespread and systematic manner.

"Russian authorities have forcibly deported hundreds of thousands of republic, from Ukraine to Russia, including children," Harris said. "They have cruelly separated children from their families."

She also aimed to the attack in mid-March on a theater in the strategic port city of Mariupol where civilians had been sheltering, which killed hundreds, and to the images of civilians' populace left on the streets of Bucha after the Russian pullback from the Kyiv area last spring.

(L to R) Finland's Prime Minister Sanna Marin, US Vice President Kamala Harris and Sweden's Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson pose for photographers at the Munich Security Conference (MSC) in Munich, southern Germany, on February 18, 2023. (Photo by Tho

Harris said that as a worn prosecutor and former head of California's Department of Justice, she knows "the importance of gathering facts and holding them up in contradiction of the law."

"In the case of Russia's actions in Ukraine, we have examined the evidence, we know the true standards, and there is no doubt," she said. "These are crimes in contradiction of humanity."

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who also was attending the Munich conference, said in a statement issued as Harris spoke that "we hold crimes against humanity determinations for the most egregious crimes."

The new mind underlines the "staggering extent" of suffering inflicted on Ukrainian civilians and "also reflects the deep commitment of the United States to holding members of Russia's forces and new Russian officials accountable for their atrocities," he said.

In an midpoint to his country on Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv this week had removed "strong signals from our partners, specific agreements on the inevitability of holding Russia accountable for aggression, for terror against Ukraine and its people."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks via video link to the 2023 Munich Security Conference (MSC) on February 17, 2023 in Munich, Germany. (Photo by Johannes Simon/Getty Images)

"Every Russian fight … on every corner of our state will have concrete correct consequences for the terrorist state," Zelenskyy said, citing attacks not just in the past year of war but dating back to 2014, when fighting with Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine marvelous broke out.

The president did not refer specifically to Harris' remarks or name any states that had provided agreements on Russian accountability.

Russia's nearly yearlong invasion of Ukraine has dominated discussions at the Munich conference, an annual gathering of security and defense officials from nearby the world. Harris told the assembled participants: "Let us all sinful — on behalf of all the victims, both famous and unknown, justice must be served."

"Such is our depraved interest," she said. "We also have a significant strategic interest."

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If Russian President Vladimir Putin succeeds in attacking international laws and norms, she said, "other authoritarian powers could seek to bend the biosphere to their will, through coercion, disinformation and even physical force."

Harris' audience Saturday didn't include any Russian officials. Conference organizers decided not to invite them this year.

While Western officials defended arms funds to Ukraine, China's top diplomat, Wang Yi, called for an end to the war over peace talks, saying Beijing was "deeply worried about the expansion and long-term do of this war."

China has refused to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine or to impose sanctions on Moscow like Western powers have done. Without naming any countries, Wang said "there may be forces" that don't want the war to stop anytime soon.

"What they care around is not the life and death of the Ukrainian country, nor the increasing damage to Europe. They probably have bigger strategic goals than Ukraine," he said.

Asked on the sidelines of the save about the U.S. determination of crimes against humanity, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba replied that "Russia waged a genocidal war in contradiction of Ukrainians because they do not recognize our identity and they do not judge we deserve to exist as a sovereign nation."

"Everything that regulations from that is crimes against humanity, war crimes and various new atrocities committed by the Russian army in the land of Ukraine," he said. "Let lawyers sort out specifically which act belongs where in footings of legal qualification."

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Zelenskyy had urged Western rmeetings in a video address to the conference on Friday to quicken their army support for Ukraine.

Kuleba voiced confidence that Ukraine would eventually claim fighter jets from its partners, despite their current reluctance. He noted that they initially pushed back on providing new heavy weapons that were later delivered or promised.

In Munich on Friday, a Ukrainian deputy prime minister, Oleksandr Kubrakov, called for midpoint munitions and phosphorous bombs, German media reported. Cluster munitions are banned by an international treaty.

Asked whether he supported calling for such weapons, Kuleba said Ukraine has evidence that Russia uses them.

"We are not party to the former on the prohibition of cluster ammunition, so legally there are no obstacles for that," he said. "And if we demand one, we will be using it exclusively against army forces of the Russian Federation."

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Geir Moulson contributed to this narrate from Berlin.