As Ukrainian soldiers recapture areas that have been occupied by Russia, the revelations appearing hourly in the news are nothing short of monstrous. They are not indescribable, because it’s all too easy to describe the horrors that have been discovered, and are still being found, along roadways, in ditches, and in the ruined walls of town as the Russians fall back mile by mile.
On a purely military front, Ukraine has won the Battle of Kyiv, that includes not just the recovery of all areas west of the Dnieper River, but also the area east of the city and north all the way to Chernihiv, where the last Russian troops seem be in retreat across the Belarus border. Even these estimates from Saturday evening now seem woefully out of date, as it seems the entire area around Chernihiv is clear and Russian forces are continuing to move away to the northeast. The whole of the war in Ukraine now moves to the Donbas, where Russia is both relocating forces from the north and bringing in fresh convoys of troops and equipment.
But as the tide rolls back, more and more evidence emerges of the kind of acts that Russian forces have engaged in over the last month. The images of bodies with their hands bound, slumped against a wall after having being shot, of women stripped of their clothing and left lying in a heap in the street, of local officials and their families pulled from their homes and tortured, and of bodies, so many bodies, even bodies of Russian soldiers, left to simply rot on the pavement … they are sickening. Hideous. Enraging.
What’s been seen at Bucha, at Hostomel, at Velyka Dymerka, is likely to be only the beginning of a catalog of horrors. There is always a tendency to dehumanize the enemy in any war, and that’s a danger—because once they’ve been dehumanized, it’s easy to treat them with the same disdain and cruelty that you’re supposed to be fighting against. “Those who fight monsters...” etc. But the monstrousness of these acts should never be excused or minimized.
The evidence of photographs and testimony cannot help but color the way we view this war. It should. An act of unprovoked hostility against a peaceful nation was always evil. Now that evil has been underscored in blood. That doesn’t make the men who did this orcs or trolls. It makes them evil men. Efforts are already underway to secure evidence of specific units, commanders, and soldiers involved, to catalog the recollections of survivors, and to sort through images captured on everything from cell phones to satellites so that those involved can be prosecuted and punished for their actions. The entire world has a stake in seeing that this happens.
As for claims now circulating on social media along the lines of “bad things always happen in war,” or “the United States has done bad things too” or “this happened in other countries and we ignored it “ or “this is just an excuse to get us more involved in Ukraine,” the only answer worth delivering is simply this: Fuck that.
That bad things have happened in the past is no excuse for accepting them in the present. That bad things have been done in our name doesn’t absolve us of the need to seek justice. The idea that we must shrug off torture and murder because somewhere someone else has done as much, or worse, is as hideous as anything found under the rubble in Bucha. Or at Buchenwald.
We are all the descended from, related to, and have been governed by people who have committed atrocities. That does not either taint us beyond making a judgement or absolve us from seeking to do better. Quite the opposite. It charges us to improve.
Even as the crimes being uncovered in Ukraine cannot help but generate anger and loathing, those emotions can’t overwhelm the need to prosecute the war itself in a way that seeks not just an end, the most humane outcome in an inhumane situation. Marching on Moscow, damn the nukes, full speed ahead, is no better an idea after seeing those bodies in the street than it was before. This is exactly the time to not go forward in malice, but with careful consideration and reasoned action. Hard as it might be to set aside anger and desire for vengeance, that has to be done because it remains the best way to reduce the threat of even more deaths, even more horrors.
Ukraine must be given everything it needs to draw this war to a successful conclusion. The U.S. and other nations must act to see that such evil—on every scale—can never produce the desired outcome. The leaders of all these nations are as human as the rest of us, and like the rest of us they cannot help but see their own parents, siblings, friends, and children when they look at those bodies on the streets of Ukraine. The pressure on them to do the right thing is immense. None of them knows that that right thing is.
Thank God that Joe Biden is president.
THANK YOU