Putin has been a war criminal for years. Nobody cared until now.

Last week, President Biden described Russian President Vladimir Putin as “a war criminal” for ordering attacks on innocent civilians in Ukraine. For Syrians, Biden’s comments are welcome but about seven years too late, considering that the Russian military has been committing war crimes there (in collaboration with Bashar al-Assad’s regime) since 2015. Perhaps if the world had held Putin accountable then, he wouldn’t be committing war crimes in Ukraine now.

Biden’s response to a reporter’s shouted question last Thursday came after administration officials spent weeks dancing around the term “war criminal,” pending a formal legal review. But Biden was just acknowledging what everyone could see: Russian forces are committing blatant and deliberate attacks on civilians all over Ukraine. In his speech to the Israeli parliament on Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky compared the Russian attacks on Ukraine to the Holocaust.