Bucha- When War Criminals Can't Even Be Bothered To Lie Properly

When evidence is left out for the world to see, you're setting your own noose

Malachy Browne @malachybrowne

Not true, Russia. Here's the evidence. nytimes.com/2022/04/04/wor…

MFA Russia 🇷🇺 @mfa_russia

⚡ Official Statement by @mod_russia ⚡ All the photos and videos published by the Kiev regime in Bucha are just another provocation. Facts 👉 https://t.co/L91uGBs4r5 ❗ This confirms conclusively this is another #hoax by the Kiev regime for the Western media. https://t.co/VO3umSNwkE

In another time and place, Russia may have been able to get away with claiming that Ukraine orchestrated its claims of genocide in Bucha. Not in the sense that anyone in the West would’ve believed them, of course. But there may not have been a way to prove that Russia was lying from beginning to end.

Now, with photography the power of satellite technology, it’s become possible- and relatively easy- to verify the facts on the ground. And the facts are that the Russians are lousy liars who couldn’t even be bothered to cover their tracks. They left bodies out in the open, and mass graves easy to find and uncover. Disproving Russian claims have taken virtually no effort at all. As a result, the entire world- at least those parts of the world willing to see the truth for what it is- knows that Russia is lying.

The question now is what comes next. How will the West hold Russia accountable for atrocities and crimes committed by its troops? Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is asking for a Nuremberg-style tribunal, which seems to make sense. Just as happened during the wars in Bosnia and Croatia, there will be soldiers charged with war crimes. But there will also be higher-ranking commanders who will bear responsibility for the actions of soldiers under their command.

The process of collecting evidence will continue as the war continues. We can hope for peace, but the reality on the ground is that the Russians have shown little appetite for a cessation of hostilities. This may be because of the propaganda environment they’ve created at home, where most Russians believe that the “special military operation” is intended to rid Ukraine of “Nazis.”

There’s no evidence that the Russian Army will be letting up, nor that Vladimir Putin will be negotiating in good faith. The West must continue to assume that everything that comes out of Putin’s mouth is a lie intended to bolster his standing among the Russian people. And so the West will need to continue to bolster Ukraine’s military.

Right now, Ukraine’s army has 10 Javelin anti-tank missiles for every Russian tank. As long as Ukrainian manpower can hold out- and there’s no reason to believe it can’t- Russia’s chances don’t look good. Then again, they do have the advantage of numbers. The question becomes what losses the Russian people will be willing to tolerate. The government may be low-balling the casualty figures in Ukraine, but Russian mothers will begin to understand the gravity of the situations when their sons don’t return or come home in boxes.

The war in the Donbas region has been a low-grade war of attrition since 2014, and it now looks as if Russia is beginning to concentrate its forces there. Perhaps they’re realizing that they can’t take Kyiv or other population centers and so they’re looking for something- anything- they can call a victory. Or perhaps they’re just throwing more troops into the meatgrinder with little thought to strategy or tactics. Judging by their conduct of the war to date, I’m inclined to go with door #2.

For me, the biggest surprise of the war has been the incompetence of the Russian army and the ineptitude of its field leadership. For generations, we’ve lived with the belief that the Russians possess the second most powerful war machine in the war behind the US. The war in Ukraine has shown that American intelligence has severely overestimated Russian war-fighting capabilities.

There are so many examples of Russian incompetence- general officers talking over unsecured phone lines, armor columns traveling in close formations, stretched supply lines, units running out of gas, food, water, and ammunition. It’s difficult to believe that this is the army we believed to be a world-class fighting force, yet they violated so many basic war-fighting protocols that I learned as a 2nd lieutenant in the Army Reserve.

Then there’s the reality that Ukrainians are fighting for their home and their freedom. Russians are fighting for- well, most of them aren’t really certain what they fighting for. Morale in many units is low, as is motivation. Those are things the Ukrainians have no lack of, and it helps to explain why the Russians have suffered so many setbacks.

Things became so bad for some units that they were reduced to fending for themselves- stealing food from noncombatant Ukrainians and looting stores and bakeries. These are war crimes, but the Russians appear unmoved by such concerns. They’ve also executed civilians, in many cases leaving the bodies in place for weeks until they were discovered by Ukrainian forces upon retaking towns and villages. The Russians have been sloppy, undisciplined, and lacking in compassion and humanity.

Sadly, I suspect the truth is that we are only scratching the surface and that more reports of atrocities will come to light as time passes. I sincerely hope that the people responsible for such butchery will be brought to justice and that accountability will become the rule and not the exception. And I hope that somehow, someway, Vladimir Putin will be given a cigarette and a blindfold before a firing squad puts a few bullets through his blackened heart.

Ukraine and the West deserves nothing less.

Слава Україні

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