Crying and dying

Can’t be bystander to Ukraine horrors

As you read this sentence, civilians (mothers, fathers, children, babies and the elderly) are suffering horribly at the hands of the Russian occupiers in Ukraine. Those who are not killed in daily shellings and aerial attacks frequently face long hospitalization as a result of severed limbs, ghastly wounds from shrapnel and torture, and even madness.

Those civilians who manage to escape from the killing fields in eastern Ukraine live daily with horrific memories of the brutality and barbarity to which they were subjected and/ or witnessed, and often suffer all but complete debilitating psychological problems. Not a few wish they were dead instead.

I am cognizant of all of this as I just left Ukraine, where I spent three weeks interviewing survivors about what they were subjected to in the east by the Russians. As the interviewees related to me, bombings, shelling and the explosive sounds of the firing of tanks, rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns, and Kalashnikovs were rarely at pause. In fact, they are more constant than the air-raid warnings that screech morning, noon and night all across the country.

My primary interest in conducting the interviews was to obtain accounts that the International Criminal Court in The Hague could potentially use in issuing warrants for some of the worst Russian perpetrators of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and possibly genocidal acts.

One never becomes totally inured to the stories of the victims of the atrocities. Never. This I also know, for I’ve been interviewing such individuals for the past 20 years, among the villages dotting the thousand hills of Rwanda; along the Chad/Darfur, Sudan, border; the Nuba Mountains of Sudan and refugee camps in South Sudan and Uganda. And now Ukraine. I only mention this because the stories I took down over the past three weeks in Ukraine were as harrowing, devastating and unforgettable as any I’ve ever conducted.

What follows is a mere fraction of what I heard, but the excerpts from what were extremely long interviews (the longest of which was 73 handwritten pages) are representative of the horrors, fear and pain that are ubiquitous in Ukraine today thanks to the Russians’ all-out attempt to subjugate, at least part of, if not totally, the people of Ukraine yet again.

■ “I made my husband promise that if the Russians ever tried to take me away to stab me repeatedly in the chest, heart and lungs until I was dead” (a young-looking woman of 43 who was sweet but fiercely afraid and full of hatred for the Russian occupiers).

■ “One morning, about 5:30 a.m., four people [a mother, 70 years old; her son, about 40, and two men in their early to mid-30s] were standing near a bonfire in order to warm up (the electricity had been cut off as a result of Russian shelling), and a bomb hit a field near them. All four were instantly killed. Neighbors rushed to them, covered them with blankets, and left them where they were.

“Days later, family members collected the bodies of the two men. The bodies of the mother and son remained in the field for three weeks. No family members ever appeared to bury them. Finally some former neighbors dug graves and buried them nearby” (A Ukrainian woman in her 60s, who, upon escaping from Mariupol, moved with her badly injured grandson, who had been hit with shrapnel from a bomb, to Germany).

■ “A 70-year-old man in the punishment cell next to mine was dragged out of his cell by the Orcs [a particularly derogatory slur the Ukrainians use to refer to Russian soldiers; its source is apparently the acclaimed “Lord of the Rings series” by J.R.R. Tolkien.] We [all of the other political prisoners] listened as the Russians beat him, tossed water on him to make him to come to quicker than he normally would have, and then beat him again, over and over again.

“We could hear the sound of the rubber batons smashing his body, along with the man’s screams, which got fainter and fainter. We also heard the Orcs shoving the man back down the corridor to his cell, thrusting him, and slamming the metal door, and his weeping for hours” (A Ukrainian mayor who was incarcerated because he refused to collaborate with the Russians).

■ “One Saturday my husband and I took a walk in a park, and an explosion [came out of nowhere], and we dove to the ground in order to not be hit by the shrapnel from the bomb. When we dared to look up, the mothers and their children were staring at us like we were crazy. None of them, apparently, had experienced what we had in Mariupol, which the Russians shelled around the clock” (the 43-year-old woman who made her husband promise he would stab her).

My heart is heavy as I prepare to leave this war-torn country. It is even heavier knowing that the Republicans in Congress—driven by former President Trump, who has said he will not OK an agreement until it’s perfect: “I like perfect!”—are withholding desperately needed money for Ukraine, primarily for medicine and weapons.

I detest war. But even more than war, I detest the brutality innocent civilians are subjected to by brutal dictators, rogue armies, vicious militia, etc. And as long as I am able to I plan to help such individuals in any way I possibly can, I plan to do so.

I simply cannot abide being a bystander. What about you?