Andrew Bolt: Make Russia the world’s pariah while Putin the butcher rules

Images of Russian atrocities are all over social media and no one can plead “I didn’t know”, so let’s ban Daniil Medvedev from Wimbledon, cancel Russia and do all we can to end the genocide.

I loathe our cancel culture, the way people with “bad” opinions are silenced, not debated. But enough is enough: Russia’s Daniil Medvedev must be banned from Wimbledon.

I know I seem to be selling out the free speech I’ve fought for, and I agree that banning Medvedev sets a dangerous precedent, particularly for people with no sense of proportion.

What next? An ideology test to compete at the Olympics or play AFL? A ban on American athletes who don’t denounce Donald Trump?

Yet I still back the Wimbledon officials who suggest they’ll ban Medvedev, briefly world No.1 last month, from their tournament in June unless he finally denounces Russia’s horrific invasion of Ukraine.

Russia’s Daniil Medvedev must be banned from Wimbledon. Picture: Getty Images

True, we’d be asking Medvedev to risk his life. Russian President Vladimir Putin has had critics shot or poisoned, including even some in England.

But so what? See what Putin is now doing to the men, women and children in Ukraine, and tell me again we shouldn’t do every single thing in our power to stop it.

The pictures of Russian atrocities are now all over social media, and no one now can plead “I didn’t know”.

They show the bodies of women, stripped naked and probably raped, and then shot and burned. They show children shot dead. They show older men in civilian clothes, their hands tied behind their backs, who were executed and left as a warning outside their homes.

There are also photos of mass graves and cellars of murdered prisoners. One photo simply shows the hand of a woman who’d carefully painted her fingernails, looking for beauty and not the Russian bullet that left her dead in the dirt.

The pictures of Russian atrocities are now all over social media, and no one now can plead ‘I didn’t know’. Picture: Getty Images

I won’t go through the full list of horrors, or repeat what shocked Ukrainian survivors are telling journalists now that the Russians have been pushed out of their villages. Look it up yourself.

Some idealists will argue – look – here is all the evidence we need to win any debate with anyone who still dares to defend Putin.

But Ukraine has taught us the world doesn’t work that way.

In Russia, support for Putin’s genocidal war seems sky high, in part because Russian state television reports that the dead Ukrainians we see are actually fake corpses, or people killed by Ukrainians, although satellite images show many corpses found in Bucha, for instance, were lying there for three weeks, until the Russians finally fled.

Even Russia’s depraved ambassador to the United Nations said the footage of Russian war crimes he was shown was just “lies”. And he can watch Western media reports from Ukraine, uncensored.

So I have no faith that talk and the truth will end this war. In fact, I fear what Medvedev might say if he wins Wimbledon, or what propaganda Putin would make from it.

See what Putin is now doing to the men, women and children in Ukraine, and tell me again we shouldn’t do every single thing in our power to stop it. Picture: Getty Images

Well, if the truth doesn’t make Russia stop, maybe self interest will. Let Russia know what it feels like to be the world’s pariah for as long as Putin the butcher is their president.

But here we are, debating whether to let a mere tennis player play Wimbledon, when we still allow a far greater abomination – Putin’s minions to sit on the most powerful bodies of the United Nations.

How sick can a joke get when Russia even today is a member of the UN’s Human Rights Committee, alongside its ally China? Are we mad? We even let Russia last year sit in judgment of Australia in a HRC review, where these hypocrites denounced the “pressure placed by authorities on journalists who are investigating the war crimes committed by Australian military personnel in Afghanistan”.

This, from the regime that’s committed war crimes in Georgia, Chechnya, Syria, Afghanistan and now Ukraine – and not crimes by rogue soldiers, but crimes by an army as an instrument of state policy.

Let Russia know what it feels like to be the world’s pariah for as long as Putin the butcher is their president. Picture: AFP

Then there’s Russia’s even greater power as one of the five permanent members of the UN’s Security Council, which it actually chairs right now. There, again with China, it enjoys a veto vote to stop the UN doing anything to save Ukraine.

Again, we’re told the UN must be defended because, you know, free speech! – at least nations there can debate their differences. Is that really how it works? The Russian ambassador instead uses his grand position to tell the world – especially Russians – the evidence of these Russian massacres are just fakes.

When truth is so helpless, and the suffering so great, then for once I say: cancel them. Cancel Russia. Do all we can to end this genocide.