Putin war crimes writ large
Time and again since Vladimir Putin launched his illegal invasion of democratic Ukraine, claims of Russian war crimes have been so horrifying that they have seemed barely credible. A detailed new report by forensic investigators from the 57-nation, Vienna-based Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe should put paid to any such reservations. It is grim reading and shows why the Russian tyrant and the thugs around him have forsaken any right to be regarded as civilised members of the international community.
No other conclusion is possible given the cases detailed by the OSCE. They include a one-year-old boy who was sexually abused by Russian soldiers; a 78-year-old woman raped by them, and Russian troops’ gang-rape of 25 girls and women aged 14 to 24 in a basement in Bucha, a city in the Kyiv province, that resulted in nine of the victims becoming pregnant. Elsewhere in Bucha, investigators found the bodies of 18 men, women and children in another basement, “some with their ears cut off, while others had their teeth pulled out”.
The OSCE investigators highlighted what they termed the “alarming phenomenon” of Russia’s “establishment and use of so-called filtration centres” where an estimated 1.3 million Ukrainians have been held and transported without consent to Russia or the Russian-speaking territories of Donetsk and Luhansk. Ukrainians also have been used as human shields by Russian forces. The report speaks of “a widespread or systematic attack against” Ukrainian civilians that were “grave breaches” of international humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions. It provides evidence of Ukrainians being shot dead with their hands tied behind their backs and torture chambers where victims were executed.
The murderous assaults set out in the report occurred between April and June. With Mr Putin’s Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu last weekend ordering a “further increase in military pressure” on Ukraine, the situation has probably deteriorated. Russia is using Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, Zaporizhzhia, to store weapons and launch missile strikes against southern Ukraine. Local authorities report “a deluge of fire” raining down on residential areas, with the toll being taken by General Shoigu’s “refocused” assault becoming clearer. Indiscriminate missile strikes are hitting mainly civilian targets. One such strike last Thursday on Vinnytsia had no conceivable military objective. It demolished apartment blocks and offices. Several children, including a four-year-old girl pushing a stroller, were among 23 people killed. When he launched his assault on February 24, Mr Putin spoke of a “special military operation” that had orders to attack with “precision”. What has unfolded is the antithesis of precision.
The OSCE, a respected multilateral forum for dialogue and negotiation founded during the early stages of Cold War detente in the 1970s, has produced the chapter and verse of Russia’s atrocities. Russia and its servile ally Belarus, ironically, are both putative members of the OSCE. The report should leave leaders of the world’s democracies in no doubt about the need to remain determined to defeat Mr Putin’s rampaging aggression. Any inclination to give in to the dictator’s apparent belief that the West does not have the ticker for a protracted fight over Ukraine’s sovereignty must be resisted.
Protesters who gathered in Canberra last weekend to mark the eighth anniversary of the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, which killed 298 people including 38 Australians and Australian residents, were right when they called for Mr Putin’s eventual trial for war crimes.