Stop Russian atrocities: war crimes in Ukraine
Echo opinion published in The Washington Post:
The scale of Russian atrocities in Ukraine is staggering
Moscow’s forces are now close to stamping out the last military resistance in the besieged port of Mariupol and have launched at least the initial phase of their long-awaited offensive to seize the country’s eastern Donbas region, according to an announcement Monday by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. This phase is likely to see a different kind of fighting than the failed Russian campaign to take Kyiv, the capital. Instead of urban combat, there will be more fighting in rural areas, over open ground, among tank and artillery units. Fortunately, the United States and its allies have managed to supply Ukraine with at least some heavy artillery, tanks and rocket launchers, though it still needs more.
What probably will not change, however, is the brutality with which Russian soldiers conduct themselves toward Ukraine’s civilian population. Between their officer corps’ lack of tactical finesse and the dehumanizing training conditions they tolerate for rank-and-file soldiers, Russia’s forces have earned a reputation both for indiscriminate bombardment of urban areas and for up-close-and-personal cruelty wherever they have fought in the past quarter-century: Chechnya, Georgia, Syria and, now, Ukraine.
The atrocities revealed after the Russian retreat from Kyiv’s suburbs are not surprising in light of that history, but they shock the conscience nonetheless. Some 900 civilian bodies have been found, most of them shot dead at close range, according to local police. The corpse of one Ukrainian resident of Bucha, Ivan Monastyrskyi, had bullet holes in the calves and “his arms were stretched out at strange angles between slats of wood with nails through them,” according to a report in The Post by Louisa Loveluck and Serhiy Morgunov.
The mayor of Mariupol has estimated that at least 21,000 civilians have died in the Russian siege, though that cannot be verified independently. His assertion that bodies were “carpeted through the streets” of Mariupol would seem extravagant but for Russia’s use of artillery and bombs against hospitals and schools — and the fact that independent journalists and human rights observers who have visited places such as Bucha have, indeed, found bodies lying in their streets.
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| Horrifying images from Ukraine spark renewed calls for war crime investigations- execution of Ukrainian civilians. |
What probably will not change, however, is the brutality with which Russian soldiers conduct themselves toward Ukraine’s civilian population. Between their officer corps’ lack of tactical finesse and the dehumanizing training conditions they tolerate for rank-and-file soldiers, Russia’s forces have earned a reputation both for indiscriminate bombardment of urban areas and for up-close-and-personal cruelty wherever they have fought in the past quarter-century: Chechnya, Georgia, Syria and, now, Ukraine.
The atrocities revealed after the Russian retreat from Kyiv’s suburbs are not surprising in light of that history, but they shock the conscience nonetheless. Some 900 civilian bodies have been found, most of them shot dead at close range, according to local police. The corpse of one Ukrainian resident of Bucha, Ivan Monastyrskyi, had bullet holes in the calves and “his arms were stretched out at strange angles between slats of wood with nails through them,” according to a report in The Post by Louisa Loveluck and Serhiy Morgunov.
The mayor of Mariupol has estimated that at least 21,000 civilians have died in the Russian siege, though that cannot be verified independently. His assertion that bodies were “carpeted through the streets” of Mariupol would seem extravagant but for Russia’s use of artillery and bombs against hospitals and schools — and the fact that independent journalists and human rights observers who have visited places such as Bucha have, indeed, found bodies lying in their streets.
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| Russian war crimes in Ukraine are atrocities. |
Russia’s way of war, in short, includes war crimes. Certainly the record of President Vladimir Putin’s previous campaigns offers no hint that anyone in the chain of command will be held accountable for excesses. To the contrary, confronted with unmistakable evidence of its troops’ culpability, Russia regularly issues official propaganda asserting that its enemy, in this case Ukraine, has actually committed the atrocities so as to blame them on Russia.
Any decent end to this conflict would include a full investigation and punishment for war crimes. A realistic view, however, must acknowledge that actually putting Mr. Putin and his fellow perpetrators on trial is an aspiration, not a likelihood. Nevertheless, the world must not lose sight of Russian atrocities in the fighting to come, which, even when conducted outside of Ukraine’s cities, will put farmers and villagers in Russia’s path at risk. Russia’s behavior can and should motivate both Ukraine’s defenders and its supporters in the West to do anything within their lawful power to stop Russia from achieving its ends.
Any decent end to this conflict would include a full investigation and punishment for war crimes. A realistic view, however, must acknowledge that actually putting Mr. Putin and his fellow perpetrators on trial is an aspiration, not a likelihood. Nevertheless, the world must not lose sight of Russian atrocities in the fighting to come, which, even when conducted outside of Ukraine’s cities, will put farmers and villagers in Russia’s path at risk. Russia’s behavior can and should motivate both Ukraine’s defenders and its supporters in the West to do anything within their lawful power to stop Russia from achieving its ends.
Labels: Mariupol, President Volodymyr Zelensky, The Washington Post
posted by Juliana L'Heureux | 5:23 PM
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