You have probably seen this: “Putin honors Russian brigade accused of Bucha atrocities.” Yes, why wouldn’t he? (Article here.)
• When I visited Latvia in 2016, I learned of a media outlet called “Meduza,” based in Riga. It is a Russian outlet, founded by Russian journalists, who were unable to practice journalism — real journalism — in their country. Meduza is valuable and important.
This is a report from Meduza, filed yesterday. If you have the stomach, read it. “‘I can do whatever I want to you’: Russian soldiers raped and murdered Ukrainian civilians in the village of Bogdanivka.”
• Hanna Liubakova, the Belarusian journalist, circulated a video and said,
Three-year-old Artsiom was injured during the morning shelling of Lviv, Ukraine. He and his mother came from Kharkiv to escape the war. But a Russian missile found them in a city that was supposed to be safe. Russians randomly bomb cities to remind about their presence and scare.
What is this but terrorization? Is there any gray in this war? Is Putin defensible, except by those who are indefensible themselves?
• Hanna circulated another video, saying, “Children and women from the AzovStal bunker ask for a humanitarian corridor.” This is Mariupol. “They have not seen the sun for more than a month, and food supplies are running out.”
• Anna Myroniuk is a Ukrainian journalist, the head of investigations at the Kyiv Independent. She wrote something personal: “I Didn’t Think My Mother Would Escape Putin Twice.” In a matter-of-fact, almost cool way, she gives powerful testimony. Her mother’s experience reflects that of Ukraine in general.
This lady, the journalist’s mother, is from eastern Ukraine. When Putin invaded in 2014, she was forced to flee, west. Where did she go? To Bucha, “a small, pleasant town outside Kyiv,” as her daughter writes.
• You may have seen that Putin’s forces have installed a statue of Lenin. They are also flying Soviet flags, frequently. For years, critics of mine have told me, sternly, “Putin’s Russia is not the Soviet Union, you know.” Fair enough. So you think Vlad will tell his guys to cut it out?
Can you deny a certain . . . continuity? A certain kinship? A certain sympathy? A pride?
• A report by Yaroslav Trofimov in the Wall Street Journal is headed, “In Ukraine’s South, Russian Occupiers Tighten the Screws.” The subheading is, “The Russians are installing pro-Moscow politicians and hunting for dissenters.” Trofimov’s report begins,
In the city of Melitopol, like many others in the area, red, blue and white Russian flags now fly atop public buildings. Russian security forces patrol the streets and soldiers man checkpoints, inspecting people’s identification documents and looking through the contents of their mobile phones, residents say.
And so on and so forth.
Democracies must never recognize as legitimate the Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine. Never. Remember the experience of the Baltic states. We never recognized the legitimacy of Soviet control. “Realists” in Washington said, “Come on, we have to recognize the facts on the ground. These are just the facts of life.” But the U.S. government, in the end, never bent. And this was very, very important to the Balts. It meant the world to them. And it made their eventual breaking away easier.
• When I visited Ukraine in 2019, a prominent journalist, Vitaly Portnikov, made an interesting point to me. In the early part of the 20th century, various empires came to an end. But the Russian empire kept going — because Soviet Communism sustained it, for 70-plus years. I thought of this when reading an essay by Walter Russell Mead: “The End of Russia’s Empire? Moscow has a stake in the Ukraine war that is greater than Putin’s career.”
• John Chipman is the director-general and CEO of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, in London. He wrote something stark:
In this century, no act has been so brazenly & repeatedly evil in inter-state affairs than Russia’s attack on Ukraine. Every principle of international law, diplomacy, civilisation & humanity has been broken. Diplomacy is an inadequate answer, military victory is the only reply.
Is this over-the-top? Or simply realistic?
• In my view, Ukraine ought to be more of a cause, among Americans. This is a freedom struggle, and a geopolitical crisis: Once more, an expansionist dictator is redrawing borders by force and subjugating nations and peoples. You think Putin and his guys will be sated by Ukraine? Just listen to them.
Anyway, more later, of course . . .