It took Hitler 35 days to conquer Poland. It has already taken Vladimir Putin more than twice as long not to conquer Ukraine. In fact, he did worse: he started trying eight years ago when he annexed Crimea, and he still hasn’t succeeded. Even Putin’s puppet in Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, has publicly noted this week that the war has dragged on. Monday’s annual Victory Parade in Red Square will be a strange occasion. The victory of 1945 marked an awkward contrast to the half-defeat of 2022.
However, Putin has some achievements in his name. He violated the UN Charter by launching a war without justification for self-defense. He then violated the three key principles of “customary” international law – “distinction” (meaning between fighters and civilians, only the former can be targeted), “necessity” and “proportion”.
When Western powers wage wars, they work hard to respect the “difference” in their choice of targets. Not only should you not bomb a hospital, for example, but you should not drop bombs too close to a hospital unless it has been taken for military purposes. The treatment of wounded soldiers is not the goal of war: they are “hors de combat”. Putin bombed hospitals and other medical facilities without remorse.
If his bombing was not actively aimed at civilians (this is difficult to prove), it may have been. He has repeatedly hit houses, schools, restaurants, playgrounds and non-military infrastructure. It is against the Law on Armed Conflict to attack civilian transport, but Russian forces have done so. They have recently killed civilians in executions. They are accused of forcibly deporting a million Ukrainians to Russia. This reflects Stalin’s behavior in the 1930s, as well as the retention of grain warehouses and what the Rome Statute calls “the starvation of civilians as a method of warfare.”
These actions violate the laws of war and all moral norms. As well as the parade of prisoners on television. As well as torture, rape and murder, all of which are now well attested in places like Bucha. Ukraine NOW, the Kiev government is broadcast on Telegram, published on Thursday an alleged telephone interception of a named Russian soldier who bragged to his mother about torturing “hoholi” (Russian slang for Ukrainians, such as “turnip-heads” in England) ). He described in detail what the prisoners had suffered. Both he and she laugh. It is appalling to hear a mother and son talk about actions that we would describe as “unspoken.” Of course, the recording may be fake, but there is good reason to believe that Russian torture is genuine, widespread and officially sanctioned.
In contrast to this brutal chatter, you can watch the video of a woman lit only by a torch leading Ukrainian comrades in a song, while underground at the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, they encounter what is almost certainly the last assault by of the surrounding Russian forces.
Mariupol is indeed a prime example of Putin’s method of indiscriminate destruction. Many thousands have died there, some say 20,000. Evidence from the city suggests that Putin wanted to turn it into a scene of official triumph for Victory Day. This plan has now been rejected by the Kremlin, but the victory in Mariupol, no matter how much Pirova, will certainly be delayed so that the Russians can admire it.
Why is it worth exposing these horrors, most of which are well known?
The most obvious reason is to remind people what intoxicates the speed of the modern news cycle – how disgusting Putin’s actions are. Only someone over 80 can remember such a massively organized barbarism on the European continent. To get to this point, I now leave a blank line – the column equivalent of momentary silence.
But there are also more analytical issues to raise. What does Putin think he is doing? What can he do next? The correct western answer will depend on the answers.
Some people just say Putin is crazy. Isn’t he more likely to be a horrible man who has made a terrible mistake, can’t admit it, and sees only increasing violence as a way out? According to Tom Tugendhat, chairman of the municipality’s foreign affairs committee, “Putin is like a mafia don, not a president.” His training in the KGB shows.
His terrible mistake (actually one of several) was to believe his own propaganda that he was liberating Ukraine. Convinced that the place was run by mad Nazis, he may have really expected the repressed, pro-Russian citizens of a nation he believes does not exist to welcome his tanks. This did not happen. Instead, they fought for an independent, European existence. So he directed his anger at the whole population.
Russian propaganda, which in February focused only on the Ukrainian leadership, is now denigrating the entire nation, calling for their punishment, “re-education” and forced labor. If they do not want to be released, it seems thinking, they must be completely crushed. If they do not cede their ports, cities and famous cornfields to their Russian cousins, then the place must become a desert.
If this is Putin’s attitude, there may be some logic in his policy of rampant violence. After all, it is extremely frightening to face someone without moral scruples and a lot of bombs. Terror is a powerful weapon. However, this did not work, in part because the Russian armed forces are so demoralized and incompetent, mainly because the Ukrainian resistance is so bold and well-organized.
Ukrainians have broken through the barrier of fear that the abuser is always trying to create. They’ve realized that a person who says, “If you don’t make an X, I’ll kill you” is not someone you can handle or coexist with, so you have to fight. The men and women of Azovstal seem to be making valiant and correct calculations that with their deaths, the people of their country have a better chance of living.
This, in turn, made it much more difficult for Westerners with weak hearts. All these arguments about how we need to understand why Putin thinks Ukraine is Russian, as well as the Minsk agreements or the Normandy format, have passed rather quietly, not because they are completely unworthy (they are not), but because of its stunning disproportion. beyond the pale. All this talk about “off ramps” or “golden bridges” sounds silly, because the man in question is metaphorically stripped to the waist (remember these pictures?) And – not so metaphorically – trying to kill everything that moves.
What can such a person do now? His weapon is a nuclear attack – perhaps a tactical “sub-kiloton” that could level, say, a Ukrainian airport, not a big city. This is an issue in which Ukraine – which is not a nuclear power and is not officially allied with it – has little power. Unlike conventional battle, we in the West cannot hide behind it.
Putin and his advisers are already trying to inspire nuclear terror in their brutal, semi-joking way. Connoisseurs of Western weakness, they can imagine that if they run on nuclear energy, we will do nothing more than convene a very serious meeting in protest. To prevent such an attack, we need to inform them now (though probably not through a direct public statement) that if Russia uses nuclear weapons in Ukraine, then, as James Sher of the Estonian Foreign Policy Institute says, “we will be directly interventions in the Ukrainian conflict. “
If Putin manages to break the nuclear taboo with impunity, there will be no peace in the world.
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