War by definition is a serious crime, which even for the defender is considered “justified” but remains morally reprehensible and abominable. At least in the current state of our Christian religion and Western morality.
But in the moralization of war and in the attempt to expose its worst manifestations, the slaughter of civilians and prisoners remains the most condemned act. As both the internationally agreed rules of war (central text here the Hague Conventions) and the post-World War II World Introspection, as to exactly what war rage and human bestiality can lead to, have established new norms of ethics and especially war crimes tribunals.
So, what happens in Ukraine?
The complaints from both sides are continuous. The massacre in Bucha a few days ago is attributed to the Russian side, that it carried out mass executions of Ukrainian citizens on its departure from the outskirts of Kiev. Russia does not answer, it is a Ukrainian internal liquidation, Russian sympathizers were killed, but they also directed, in order to set up a provocation against us.
The Russians are raping, looting, burning, leveling cities, executing civilians, bombing hospitals, civilian shelters, urban areas without a military presence, the Ukrainians complain. Offering plenty of testimonials, reports, locations.
No, the Russians do answer. You are shooting our prisoners, a few days ago a Ukrainian managing a campaign hospital came out and said that “I have ordered the doctors to castrate the Russian wounded” (although he later withdrew them…). Moscow also accuses the Azov Order and other far-right and nationalist Ukrainian militias of carrying out orgies against both Russian prisoners and Ukrainian citizens, as well as directing Russian atrocities.
Can we conclude from this controversy?
Practically and in the middle of a war very difficult. The images and reports of the hundreds of journalists in Ukraine (with dozens of them already killed, so there are more vulgar hints that “everyone is paid”), but they are indisputable. War crimes are committed constantly and mainly under the responsibility of the invader who “came into the hands of the unjust”. Civilians are being slaughtered, trapped, bombed, deprived of food and water and care, cities are being razed, prisoners are being mistreated.
Does anyone have the illusion, or rather the illusion, that on the battlefield, the invader, who has already been nurtured by Putin’s interpretation that the “nostalgic Nazis and Hitler revivalists, Ukrainians” are facing him, will behave decently? Ethically? With self-control? How after weeks of bloody battles, in several parts of the front and fruitless, or even worse for the invader, now with retreat, how will he not break out in whoever he finds in front of him?
Does anyone have the fantasy that the training of Russian soldiers, which is famous for its cruelty (with caps that are not thought of as a Western soldier) does not produce human “automatic”? Or do you think that the permanent Russian soldiers and junior officers, who have enlisted to receive a meager salary, and with huge alcohol problems (a chronic issue in the Russian armed forces) will know the Hague Conventions, or will have the ability to cool down? and behavior on the battlefield, and how will they not be looted and acquired?
But vice versa. Does anyone believe that the Ukrainian resistance is conducted “by rules”? How will the Ukrainian soldier, seeing the Russian invader, respect him, evaluate him as a “human being” when he captures him? How will she treat him? When Ukrainian President Zelensky himself calls the Russians “animals, beasts, criminals,” what exactly will his soldiers do on the ground? Does anyone believe, no matter how pro-Ukrainian, that paramilitary but unfortunately fully integrated into the Ukrainian Army, neo-Nazi and nationalist groups like the Azov Order (now “purifying” themselves as defenders of the country) will treat the Russians with military restraint? Having tattoos on them with the “Black Sun” of the SS?
Or does anyone think that in a war waged in an unprecedented “live broadcast”, each side will not take advantage of what it can, from provocations, rumors, deceptions, to expose its opponent and to justify and legitimize its own actions?
So, how can we judge what is happening in Ukraine?
1. Initially on a case by case basis and without offsets which is the “sport” of the time. Every incident, whichever side denounces it, must be thoroughly investigated. And let the relevant courts last for decades. The Yugoslav civil crimes lasted twenty years, the relevant investigations, the trials in the special International Criminal Court and even the excavations of graves, the search of DNA samples, the recording of testimonies continue. So we have to do the same sad but necessary, as a global community in Ukraine.
2. Next: The search for responsibility should also affect those who are actively responsible for or allowing the massacres. Because the local commander, the rapist, the paramilitary, maybe you can find him, maybe you can punish him. At the higher levels, however, it is a given that international justice will find it difficult to reach. Especially if the “heads” are covered by their institution, their power, the international hypocrisy that will have erased what they allowed or did not avoid. But even there, even the outcry must be recorded in the writing of the story.
3. Finally, to put an immediate end to what is happening now. The solution is one. The cessation of the war and the withdrawal of Russia from Ukraine. As it unjustly invaded, unjustly and escalated excessively, it unjustly produced its own “right” to invade, while having peaceful or even milder alternatives. The respect we owe to the Russian people, to its history, to its sacrifices, to its culture, to our neighborhood for hundreds of years in an emerging Europe of “nations”, can not serve as a beacon of responsibilities and atrocities. At the same time, the same respect and sympathy for the Ukrainian nation that is now being formed and is being persecuted, cannot be justified.
The history does not end as some had predicted, nor is it written one-dimensionally and trophy-winning.
