Read it, if you can bear it. And if you can’t bear it, (1) I understand (fully) and (2) at least be aware of it. Deniers will deny. They are doing so even now. The fog machine never rests. “Horrors of Ukraine’s Bucha Laid Bare on Yablunska Street.”
• Bethan McKernan writes, “I am a parachute journalist in Ukraine. I’ve seen many awful things in the Middle East, but the scale of the violence here has left me stunned.” A report from her is headed “With bloodied gloves, forensic teams uncover gruesome secrets of Bucha in Ukraine.”
• “Satellite images show bodies lay in Bucha for weeks, despite Russian claims.”
• From Shaun Walker (one of the reporters whose work has been most eye-opening): “After Russians’ retreat, scarred Ukrainian village recounts month of terror.”
• Simon Shuster of Time writes,
We’ve all seen the images. But nothing prepared me for the hellscape on the highway into Kyiv today. Bus stops full of bullet holes. Piles of bricks where homes once stood. Commuter cars crushed under tanks. So many people’s lives.
• Hanna Liubakova (invaluable) reports,
Almost 50 people were burned alive in the Mariupol hospital. The mayor Vadim Boychenko said that Russian troops destroyed more than 90% of the city’s infrastructure. At least 5000 people have been killed during the first month of the occupation.
• The headline of this article is “Execution of Village Mayor Becomes Symbol of Russian Brutality in Ukraine.” It begins,
Mayor Olha Sukhenko took care of her village like a family for more than a decade, locals say, sprucing up public buildings, organizing concerts and settling disputes.
When the Russian army withdrew last week after a monthlong occupation, her neighbors found Ms. Sukhenko’s lifeless body in a shallow grave, her hands bound. Her husband and son lay next to her, dead.
• Another article begins,
Russian forces in Ukraine appear to be using a new type of weapon as they step up attacks on civilian targets: an advanced land mine equipped with sensors that can detect when people walk nearby.
Charming.
• The Spectator is not screwing around. Its cover shows Putin, his face illustrated in human skulls. The piece by Fraser Nelson, the editor, is titled “Putin’s terror: the politics of war crimes.” He writes,
The story of the mass grave found in Bucha shocked the world because it represents how fast things have deteriorated and that we are now seeing the kind of barbarism Europe thought it had left behind. The pictures of dead children and the corpses with their hands and feet bound were proof that nothing has changed, and a reminder of our impotence: all of Ukraine’s allies have ruled out direct conflict with Russia.
• Here is a piece from Foreign Policy: “Russia’s Ukraine Propaganda Has Turned Fully Genocidal: Egged on by the language of annihilation and extermination, Russian soldiers have become willing executioners.” What is contained in that piece is very important to know.
• This is very important too: “Russia’s genocide handbook: The evidence of atrocity and of intent mounts.” Timothy Snyder writes,
Russia has just issued a genocide handbook for its war on Ukraine. The Russian official press agency “RIA Novosti” published last Sunday an explicit program for the complete elimination of the Ukrainian nation as such. It is still available for viewing, and has now been translated several times into English.
More from Professor Snyder:
As I have been saying since the war began, “denazification” in official Russian usage just means the destruction of the Ukrainian state and nation. A “Nazi,” as the genocide manual explains, is simply a human being who self-identifies as Ukrainian.
Opposing U.S. aid to Ukraine, Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Republican congresswoman, said, “You have to ask, is this money and is this United States military equipment falling into the hands of Nazis in Ukraine?”
A few more sentences from Snyder:
The genocide handbook explains that the Russian policy of “denazification” is not directed against Nazis in the sense that the word is normally used. The handbook grants, with no hesitation, that there is no evidence that Nazism, as generally understood, is important in Ukraine. It operates within the special Russian definition of “Nazi”: a Nazi is a Ukrainian who refuses to admit being a Russian.
• “What’s happening in Ukraine is genocide. Period.” An op-ed by Eugene Finkel, author of Ordinary Jews: Choice and Survival during the Holocaust.
• Maybe get acquainted with one more victim. As Visegrád 24, a news aggregator, says,
The Lithuanian film director Mantas Kvedaravičius was taken prisoner by Russians and executed with a shot to the head and chest in Mariupol. His body was then tossed into the street. May he rest in peace.
• A phrase has been in my head: “Face the slaughter.” In 2014, Ethan Gutmann published his book The Slaughter, which is about organ harvesting and other horrors in China. My review was titled “Face The Slaughter.” Again, one must — we should — face it.