The days of the blue & yellow flag waving, indignant, Ukrainian villagers, chanting “Go Home” and blocking the road of incoming Russian troop carriers, who actually chose to pivot and retreat, appear to be gone. The Ukrainian woman who gave seeds to Russian occupiers so they’d grow sunflowers in the ground where they’d fall, might think twice to approach a Russian now. After a month of combat, Russian troops are war-crime-ing their way from the top of the street, to the bottom of the iceberg.
The stomachs of the Russian ground soldiers, filled with vodka & liquor pilfered from the town markets have galvanized. Whether it’s weeks of seeing their scorched tanks burn after direct hit after hit, or that lack of feeling in numb digits progressing toward frostbite, or any number of terrors and emotions that clamber onto soldiers of all stripes as a war extends and unfolds over time, they’ve stopped hesitating with the home team. They have the stomach for civilian executions now.
Depravity and horror had a heyday (actually heyweeks) in Bucha, Ukraine. Face-to-face execution of innocent, non-combatants, sometimes bound, sometimes post torture & post rape (verified to be at least 320 Ukrainian civilians massacred), is on its way to becoming hum-drum for the Russian foot soldier.
Could these cold-blooded war crimes really be by design, after specific orders from their military superiors? US Secretary of State Tony Blinken believes it’s a top-down strategy and that Russia's atrocities in Bucha were "a deliberate campaign to kill, to torture, to rape."
Like the intercepted call of a Russian soldier describing their orders from commanders to target apartment buildings because every other floor contains nothing but weapons, officers feed their hungry troops propaganda with their orders. The soldier knew there were civilians in those apartments and predicted, “It’s gonna be a slaughter.” Nevertheless heinous, those attacks for the Russian rocketeer are still random at an impersonal distance.
Earlier in the conflict, a video showed a face-to-face encounter of Russian & Ukraine soldiers in Crimea, conversing on a road rather than fighting. Not exactly playing football on Christmas, there’s a ray of hope in humanity at any hesitation to escalate. Despite Putin’s denials of any conscripts involved in the invasion, the stories of the young, first wave of green, Russian conscripts being trucked off without a clue of their destination, captured and confessing their ignorance to their apparently humane, Ukrainian captors are true. Their phone calls home and taped interviews admit as much. (Using conscripts in battle is actually against Russian law, btw.)
Weeks ago, first-hand phone calls seemed to be a hopeful sign of the Russian soldier’s mindset as dazed Russian prisoners were recorded, phoning their families at home and spilling the bad news of betrayal. The Kremlin hadn’t told them they were going to war -they didn’t want to fight -they were sorry they attacked Ukraine.
In Mariupol, a city infamous for its maternity ward and theatre marked “CHILDREN” being brazenly bombed on purpose, a news conference was held with a “panel” of Russian prisoners to broadcast expressly to Putin in Russia. Asked why they targeted small children, there was a long pause with bowed heads until one camouflaged Russian soldier spoke up; “In this situation, our nation is fascist.”
Mariupol, a surrounded port city, starving and with no way out for civilians is believed to be a ground zero for atrocities committed by the Russians. “I don’t even want to think about what’s happening in Mariupol,” said former advisor to President Zelenskiy, Igor Novikov, in an interview with Nicolle Wallace of MSNBC's Deadline: White House, “...that’s being leveled to the ground with its population.” He firmly believes, “For President Putin, undoubtedly, this is a war of genocide against the Ukrainian people.”
Ukrainian Foreign Minister, Dmytro Kuleba, chillingly articulated, “The horrors that we’ve seen in Bucha are just the tip of the iceberg of all the crimes that have been committed by (the) Russian Army in the territory of Ukraine so far. And I can tell you without hesitation but with much sorrow, that the situation in Mariupol is much worse, compared to what we’ve seen in Bucha and other cities and towns and villages nearby Kiev.”
Mariupol’s Mayor, Vadym Boichenko, has reported 5,000 of its residents have so far been killed by bombardment and street fighting. The number of child fatalities alone is 210. A hospital was bombed and 50 people burned to death. No wonder Igor doesn’t want to think about it. Who does?
Now, with over a month’s worth of battle frustrations, the Russians in country who didn’t arrive already bloodthirsty are, for the most part, on-board with up-close atrocities, along with bandit-style ransacking.
One young, Russian soldier (who’d eaten a dog his unit had shot for food) made a phone call (that was intercepted, calling a female in Russia) breathlessly described the brands of local cars he’s been able to steal, drive and maybe even take home to Russia. Laughing at the idea, she still cautioned him to stay out of Mariupol since she’d read an online post by Russian troops there who’d admitted to shooting Ukrainian kids. One armed predator was seen chasing a 13 year old girl, shooting and aiming at her legs to stop her from getting away. “Animals”, he said.
The Russian female’s warnings are perhaps a new, literal spin on the expression “don’t go there”. And an old, familiar spin on “so it goes”.