We are past the six weeks of war, 42 very long days that are proving to be days of fierce fighting but also days of unspeakable horrors among Ukrainian civilians. First the indiscriminate bombing of the cities, then the systematic crimes in some cities occupied from the first days of the invasion. In Bucha and the other centers framed by the violence endured, the retreating Russian military didn’t even bother to hide the evidence of its crimes. Almost everything is documented, including poor remains of the victims, satellite photos, pictures, stories and direct testimony. That doesn’t mean it will be easy to track down the perpetrators, let alone bring them to justice. In Mariupol, where the crimes are likely to have grown even larger, the Moscow army now appears to be trying to disguise the bodies with cremation. The chilling stories that are unveiled show the most inhuman face of a conflict that has escalated in a very short time.
No war is ever “clean,” but historically the worst atrocities manifest themselves when the clash becomes incendiary, protracted, troops are tested by months or years of fighting, and even ethical standards are lowered accordingly. Rather, what is observed on this occasion is a tendency to disrespect nonbelligerents from the start. Perhaps what stolen papers seem to indicate in more and more detail weighs heavily: the military preparation for the invasion was also fueled by a campaign of discredit and hatred of the enemy, who was not only the head of the Ukrainian state, but also the unwilling people again ” “denazified” and “russified”. A mechanism has been set in motion for the systematic destruction of a country that, as Putin said, does not actually exist.
Given the development of the crisis in this direction, diplomatic mobilization seems urgently needed to reach a ceasefire and put an end to the slaughter, but it must be noted that for a large part of the socalled international community this is only the case in Ukraine is one of the many wars that regularly permeate the geopolitical maps of the world. If the Western Front mobilized to support the resistance in Kyiv, and only a handful of states openly sided with the Kremlin, according to the UN vote, a large proportion of countries have opted for neutrality, which adheres to tacit and indirect Support limits aggressor. From China and India to Brazil and South Africa to the Arab countries, there is no real desire to pressure Moscow into negotiations or to quarantine it to halt its war operations. The sanctions that the US and UK have been crushing in these hours could further weaken Putin’s economy, but not bring it to its knees once and for all if it can count on other shores (and on gas sold to Europe).
The inertia of the UN, rightly emphasized after President Zelenskyi’s vigorous appeal to the Security Council, is not so much an inertia of the organization as such SecretaryGeneral Guterres is one of the most sensitive and active leaders but of its members, who want to exploit the architecture do not disturb the structures that emerged from the Second World War. With the veto powers granted to the great powers, no proposal contrary to the interests of a permanent member of the highest body of the United Nations will ever be given the green light. But if a major party, both numerically and broadly representative of the world’s population and economies, proposed a credible policy initiative, it would be difficult for Russia to ignore the risk of neartotal “encirclement.”
Therefore, the stubborn resistance of the Kiev army, which, if circulating estimates are correct, has so far been able to destroy almost 40% of the assets deployed by Moscow, is preventing the Kremlin from achieving what it considers necessary to defend itself to put . at a peace table, while nonmilitary measures to shorten the conflict are lacking. Even NATO is now predicting that the war could tragically prolong, with conceivable consequences in the form of loss of life, destruction, refugees and a global economic recession. So the shortsightedness of so many governments, which will sooner or later pay a heavy bill for their inaction (or complicity), remains troubling.