This monstrous butchery is a sickening war crime
VLADIMIR Putin has descended into the moral abyss with the barbarous escalation of his offensive against Ukraine. Nothing and nobody is safe from his indiscriminate savagery, not even children.
In recent days, as his armed forces have unleashed ever more deadly firepower, a six-year-old girl was killed as shells hit her family’s apartment in the port city of Mariupul, while another, called Polina, was shot dead along with her parents by Russian soldiers in Kyiv.
Putin describes his invasion as “a special operation” but it is nothing short of a war crime. Cluster bombs and cruise missiles have been deployed against civilians. Health centres, residential blocks, offices, schools and even ambulances have been targeted.
One of the most harrowing images came in a television report from the underground basement of a children’s hospital in Kyiv, where gravely ill patients have had to shelter from the raids, while exhausted doctors tended to youngsters brought into the facility with severe injuries.
Yet in all its sickening horror, Putin’s resort to such monstrous butchery is a tribute to the incredible resilience of the Ukrainian people. Consumed by megalomania, the Russian leader thought that his invasion would result in a swift victory. According to Western intelligence his plan was to overrun the country in 48 hours, seize the capital Kiev and install a puppet regime. But despite their superior numbers, the Russians have been thwarted by the defenders’ extraordinary determination.
Yesterday the Ukrainian Defence Ministry claimed that total Russian casualties could be as high as 5,710, while the invader is also estimated to have lost 846 armoured vehicles, 198 tanks, 29 aircraft, 29 helicopters and 77 artillery pieces.
Battered and bewildered by this fightback, the Kremlin is lashing out wildly. As Dmytro Kuelba, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister, put it: “Putin is unable to break Ukraine down. He commits war crimes out of fury.”
While the Russians are embracing the darkness of inhumanity, the Ukrainians are writing an inspirational passage in European history with their valour.
“We will stay hard and brave to the end,” one woman told the BBC yesterday. Astonishing acts of fortitude have abounded, like the refusal of the garrison on Snake Island to surrender even in the face of a murderous barrage of Russian missiles.
The spirit of resistance is embodied in the nation’s President Volodymr Zelensky, who has refused to leave his post in the capital and instead has used his influence to embolden his people for the titanic struggle. Once a comic actor on television, he has risen magnificently to the challenge, exuding the same kind of patriotic leadership that Churchill showed in 1940.
But this is not just a war waged by the politicians and armed forces. It is also a fight of the ordinary Ukrainian citizens, who are in the frontline both as targets for Russian firepower and as another barrier of defence. Their determination is characterised by their construction of roadside checkpoints, willingness to take up arms, queues to stock up blood banks and manufacture of petrol bombs, or Molotov cocktails. The term “Molotov cocktail” was coined by the Finns during their fight against the Soviet invader from November 1939 to March 1940. As Stalin’s Foreign Minister, Vyacheslav Molotov was one of the architects of the invasion, but Soviet complacency about a rapid triumph was confounded by the Finns’ guerrilla tactics and indomitable outlook. Altogether, almost 170,000 Soviet personnel lost their lives before Stalin reached a deal accepting the independence of Finland.
The Ukrainians are now showing the same tenacity and creativity. They are motivated by national pride in Ukraine, which, contrary to the Kremlin’s smears about its lack of “genuine statehood”, actually has a powerful sense of heritage, identity and unity. This was shown in the 1991 referendum when 92.3 per cent of the population voted to break away from the Soviet Union.
The Ukrainians are also far better trained and equipped now than they were in 2014, when Russia first menaced their land and took Crimea.
Ukraine’s arsenal is increasingly well-stocked, not just with rifles and guns, but also a range of potent weapons from Western countries.
All this has borne fruit in recent days, as Russia is shaken by the ferocity of Ukraine’s defence of its homeland.
Russia may still win, given the size of their armed forces and cruelty of Putin.
But the war has proved far harder than the Kremlin expected. Whatever the military outcome, Ukraine is already the moral victor.