Silence on Ukraine War Crimes

About ten months of war between Russia and Ukraine and counting. Hundreds of people of the neighborhood have lost their lives for the vested interests of others, mainly the US and the West. Two prospering states have cost their economies amounting to billions of dollars and loss of huge infrastructure to the war. The external military debt of Ukraine has gone up to $100 billion by the end of 2022. Russia’s spending on the war too will not be less than what it has cost to Ukraine. The leaders of both countries shall rethink what they have achieved so far after a cost of so many billions.

The world is facing the consequences in terms of the food and energy crisis, the highest ever inflation has crippled down the least developed economies while the citizens in the West too are facing the extreme economic crisis. Frustration, hunger and agony have gone to the limits among the citizens of the warring countries. The worst victims are the warring soldiers that are fighting in the harsh winter when the rest of the world has gone to the Christmas holidays. Their emotional and psychological pressures are bursting out to the captive soldiers and civilians as seen in the videos of their ‘war crimes’ that are getting viral.

Earlier, some videos of the “Russian soldiers” got viral, which the Russian authorities termed fake and brought forth the actual ones. Now, some videos of the Ukrainian soldiers are going viral on social media. Even the US media has also picked them up. Perhaps, this is the first time that something against Ukraine got published, reflecting the ‘war crimes’ by the Ukrainian soldiers. The series of videos that surfaced on social media last week has ignited a debate over whether Ukrainian forces committed war crimes or acted in self-defense as they tried to capture a group of Russian soldiers who were then killed.

First video showing Ukrainian servicemen shooting Russian soldiers lying on the ground who had surrendered has been circulating on the Internet since November 18, 2022. According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, the Ukrainian military deliberately killed ten people who had laid down their arms, and this is not an isolated war crime, but a common practice within the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU).

The Russian Federation opened a criminal case for murder and cruel treatment of prisoners of war. Russian Human Rights Commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova appealed to international organizations – the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the Council of Europe, Amnesty International, the International Committee of the Red Cross and others – to condemn the shooting of prisoners and conduct an objective and impartial investigation into the violation of rules of war.

“The cold-blooded killers who opened fire on unarmed prisoners of war lying on the ground were so sure of their impunity that they videotaped their criminal actions. The footage of the sadistic massacre once again confirmed the Nazi nature of the Kiev authorities, who have been encouraging murder, torture, and mockery of civilians and prisoners of war for a long time,” reads the resolution.

In the West, the new facts of war crimes by the Ukrainian military did not cause a broad reaction among officials, despite the fact that they were spread by foreign media. For example, the US only said that it was “monitoring this situation”.

By refusing to directly condemn the shooting of Russian Prisoners of War by AFU fighters, the United States is reinforcing a sense of impunity for neo-Nazis in Ukraine, the Russian embassy in Washington said. They described as cynical an attempt by US officials to divert public attention from the massacre of the Russians to the subject of alleged Russian war crimes. The US generally prefers to turn a blind eye to the illegal actions of the Ukrainian military. Experts believe that the West is interested in hiding the crimes of the AFU, as many of them take place with the knowledge of Kiev’s foreign handlers.

Experts note that Kiev cares little about the facts of war crimes uncovered by the AFU and the militants fighting on their side, as it is confident that there will be no condemnation by the West. The maximum their handlers will do is to declare such actions inadmissible and then try to hush them up. Hence all these commissions of inquiry, talk of tribunals for Russia, complete disregard for the crimes of the AFU and accusations against Russia in the spirit of the most likely. And in this attempt to whitewash the Kiev regime and smear Moscow, Westerners are totally violating their own values and demonstrating double standards.

Western countries have spent too much money on Ukraine and gone too far in their support to retreat. They have created an image of a victim to the Republic, which needs to be helped in every way possible and which opposes the “global evil” represented by Russia. If we now start admitting any wrongdoing on the part of the Kiev regime, let alone war crimes, it will destroy the whole image it had carefully created. The question will arise: how can the West, with its ideals, support war criminals?