The days ahead could see a tightening of the noose around Vladimir Putin’s neck, but it will not be made of rope. 

President Biden has now called the Russian strongman a war criminal, in what CNN succinctly reported yesterday was “a rhetorical leap that came as civilian deaths mount in Ukraine.” While Mr. Biden’s steely new assessment of Mr. Putin — easily read as a condemnation of the brutal tactics underpinning the Russian assault on Ukraine — seemingly came as an impromptu comment while he spoke with reporters, in fact Ukraine’s president laid the groundwork. 

On the day President Zelesnky addressed Congress in an emotional appeal for more military aid to counter the Russian offensive, he also held a video conference with International Criminal Court Prosecutor, Karim Khan, who was on a visit to Ukraine. Ukraine’s presidential office stated that Mr. Zelensky “noted the importance of the decision of the International Criminal Court to start an investigation into Russia’s horrific violations of international criminal law during the invasion of Ukraine.”

Was Mr. Biden taking notes as well? It has been widely reported that Messrs. Biden and Zelesnky speak daily, and the sterner thrust of the American President’s rhetoric points to the contours of a strategy for ensnaring Mr. Putin sooner or later, presumably far away from any battlefield. 

During his meeting with Mr. Khan, Mr. Zelensky stressed that “no war crime or crime against humanity committed as a result of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine should be left unpunished. Everyone guilty must be brought to international legal and criminal responsibility — from the perpetrators to the military-political leadership of the aggressor country.” That judicial signpost points to Mr. Putin.

Mr. Zelensky’s office also stated that Mr. Khan had seen photos and videos “of the aftermath of the invasion and bombings in Mariupol and other cities — the suffering of people, including children and women.” Through relentless bombardment and artillery fire, Russian forces have already turned much of Mariupol — only a short distance from the Russian border — to rubble in a ruthless bid to beat the strategic Black Sea port city into complete submission. 

It was not clear if he had seen photos of Russia’s Wednesday airstrike on a theater in Mariupol where up to 1,000 men, women, and children were thought to have taken shelter before the bombardment. The city council said today that Russian forces are dropping from 50 to 100 bombs on Mariupol every day and that, encircled since March 2, the city is cut off from electricity, water, gas, mobile networks, food, and medical supplies. On Wednesday evening, the BBC reported that civilians “were emerging alive from the ruins” of the theater. 

There was additional shelling today in Kiev’s central Sviatoshynskyi district.  According to the Ukrainian State Emergency Service, two people were killed by Russian shelling around 4:30 p.m. local time in an attack that also caused multiple fires. 

Apart from such shelling attacks the streets of the capital have been quiet as the city has been under a curfew order. A Sky News reporter, Alex Crawford, said that one of the reasons Kiev’s mayor, Vitaly Klitschko, wanted residents to keep off the streets was so that authorities could more effectively track down Russian saboteurs inside city limits. 

That claim appears to be corroborated by an article in the Ukrainain Truth newspaper that says, “Russian saboteurs are everywhere and in the western regions as well.” In that report the Ukrainian interior minister, Denis Monastyrskyi, said, “We will no longer name the areas where no shelling took place or where representatives of sabotage groups were not found.” A cryptic statement, but the gist is that, as Ukrinform reports, “enemy sabotage and reconnaissance groups … can be found all over Ukraine at the moment.”

There is more news about a possible ceasefire agreement courtesy of an interview that an advisor to President Zelensky’s chief of staff and a member of Ukraine’s peace talk delegation, Mykhailo Podolyak, gave to Meduza, a Russian-language website based in Latvia and currently banned in Russia. In that interview, as translated by the Kyiv Independent, Mr. Podolyak said Ukraine has demanded the withdrawal of Russian troops to their positions secured before February 24. 

He also reportedly said that the territories occupied by Russia in 2014, i.e., Donbas and Crimea, are not part of the current discussion. How Russia will respond remains to be seen. 

In the meantime Moscow has by no means cornered the market on inscrutability. Newsweek reported that China’s ambassador to Ukraine, Fan Xianrong, praised the strength of the Ukrainian people in meeting with regional authorities in Lviv earlier in the week. “China is a friendly country for the Ukrainian people,” Mr. Xianrong said, adding: “As an ambassador, I can responsibly say that China will forever be a good force for Ukraine, both economically and politically.” 

Ukrinform reported that the Chinese ambassador also said that China “will never attack Ukraine, we will help, in particular in the economic direction.”

The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reports that the Chinese president and Mr. Biden will speak on Friday. The call’s topics will include, the White House says, “Russia’s war on Ukraine.” No word from Beijing on what specific subjects will be discussed or if Mr. Putin’s growing international isolation will be among them. 

The conversation between the two leaders will be closely followed, and will close a week that began with a sometimes tense seven-hour meeting between senior American and Chinese officials in Rome.