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Solve the following problem using Python, implementing the functions described below, one line at a time
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Description:
 def _parse_date(self, date_string):
 """Parse the date_string and return a datetime object as UTC."""

        date = datetime.strptime(date_string, self._DATE_FORMAT)
        self.date = self._TZ.localize(date).astimezone(pytz.UTC)