Justifying his call to try Russian President Vladimir Putin for war crimes, President Biden said Monday that “what’s happening in Bucha is outrageous and everyone sees it.”
A man gestures at a mass grave in the town of Bucha, northwest of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, on Sunday. Ukrainian and Western nations accused Russian troops of war crimes after the discovery of mass graves and “executed” civilians near Kyiv, prompting vows of action at the International Criminal Court. Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images/TNS
Nearly everyone in uncensored societies worldwide indeed has, as graphic images of Russian troops’ brutality against the residents of Bucha, Ukraine, became evident.
With its morgue overflowing, a mass grave had to be dug for slaughtered civilians. Ukrainian military vehicles had to weave around corpses in the road – some with their hands tied behind their backs before they were executed.
Overall, Ukrainian officials said they had found the bodies of 410 civilians in cities around Kyiv, the capital, and The Associated Press reported seeing 21 bodies, including nine in civilian clothes who were shot at close range. In one city, Motyzhyn, the bodies of the mayor, her son and her husband were found bound, blindfolded and thrown into a pit.
Human Rights Watch sees it, too. In a report issued Sunday, it said that it had “documented several cases of Russian military forces committing laws-of-war violations against civilians in occupied areas of Chernihiv, Kharkiv, and Kyiv regions of Ukraine.”
In an unflinching account, the human rights group detailed evidence of a “case of repeated rape; two cases of summary execution, one of six men, the other of one man; and other cases of unlawful violence and threats against civilians between Feb. 27 and March 14, 2022. Soldiers were implicated in looting civilian property, including food, clothing, and firewood.”
The Human Rights Watch investigation came before the revelations in Bucha, suggesting that the scope and scale of atrocities is far greater than Human Rights Watch’s geographically limited investigation. But even based on these cases, Hugh Williamson, the nonprofit’s Europe and Central Asia director, said in a statement that “the cases we documented amount to unspeakable, deliberate cruelty and violence against Ukrainian civilians. Rape, murder, and other violent acts against people in the Russian forces’ custody should be investigated as war crimes.”
Probes are already underway. One is from the International Criminal Court in the Hague, and the second, independent investigation was established after the passage of a United Nations Human Rights Council resolution. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen tweeted Monday that the European Union will soon send investigators to Ukraine to help document war crimes.
The call from Biden is “definitely justified,” Alejandro Baer, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, told an editorial writer. Speaking from Spain, Baer added that “there is evidence of war crimes being committed across Ukraine.”
Ukrainians “are being destroyed and exterminated, and this is happening in the Europe of the 21st century,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday’s “Face the Nation.” In fact, Russia’s savagery goes beyond war crimes, Zelensky said: It is “genocide,” a term also used by some European leaders, including the prime ministers of Poland and Spain. Regarding that specific charge, Baer said that “from a strictly legal and scholarly perspective, one has to look carefully whether the term applies to what’s happening on the ground.”
The West has acted with unusual alacrity in arming Ukraine and imposing sanctions. But both efforts can and must go deeper. Ukraine must be given every opportunity to protect its people against more war crimes, and even stricter economic penalties must immediately be inflicted. Most notably, every effort must be made to end, or hastily wean, European energy imports fueling Russia’s war machine, a sacrifice that is straining the hard-earned European unity on Russia.
Tragically, too often the world does avert its gaze from atrocities, and there will be no shortage of attempts at disinformation. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, for instance, called the searing images from Bucha “stage-managed anti-Russian provocation” – a claim proven false by satellite photos. These lies are likely to be echoed by Beijing, underscoring China’s complicity in Russia’s illegal and immoral war. Other countries with authoritative governments are also likely to either repeat Russia’s obscene account or censor the truth.
Those living in countries with a free and unfettered press – the kind of society Ukrainians are fighting and dying for – should not buy into this lie or the larger false narrative coming from the Kremlin. In particular, a vocal cadre of American conservatives has consistently decried the generally bipartisan consensus on Russia and Ukraine. Dissent is essential for a vibrant democracy, and that is their right. But they and others must also see Putin’s inhumanity. Denying it revictimizes those subject to such viciousness.
“If those that are witnessing and surviving the crimes themselves are exposed to this denialist propaganda, this is possibly the worst that can happen to them,” said Baer. “Because the acknowledgment at this point means at least that there is an expectation or hope for justice in the future.”
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