What is happening?
This week in Ukraine, Bucha, a city outside the capital Kyiv, was liberated by Ukrainian forces. And the deluge of videos and photos of civilians killed by Russian forces hit the Internet.
What is happening?
Photos and videos of civilians with bound hands, shot. Satellite images showing evidence of mass graves. The BBC published a report about a mother whose 27-year-old son was shot by Russian forces in a Jeep, which then drove off.
What is happening?
Men, woman, old and young, and children are being killed. Kids. There are more detailed reports on Twitter alleging some truly heinous acts by Russian forces.
Alleging the kinds of indiscriminate killing of civilians that we all thought were relics of another time – but it looks increasingly like we were wrong. It’s happening right now.
What is happening?
Ria Novosti, a newspaper published by a Russian state news agency, recently put out an editorial piece stating that the “Nazi-fication” of Ukraine has become so entrenched in Ukrainian society that all Nazi organisations must be wiped out and the masses, which are generally made up of Nazis, must be re-educated and that this will take a generation. This is the gist of the piece. There is no Nazi-fication of Ukraine, this is just a lie relying on tried and true bad guys like the Nazis to get Russian public approval.
So are Russian state newspapers really calling for “re-education” today? There is a another word for it. Genocide, this is what Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is calling it. And he’s not the only one.
Eugene Finkel, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University in the United States, says on Twitter that what has happened in Bucha is evidence of genocide. And Finkel doesn’t say that lightly: “As a genocide scholar I am an empiricist, I usually dismiss rhetoric. I also take genocide claims with a truckload of salt because activists apply it almost everywhere now. Not now.
“There are actions, there is intent. It’s as genocide as it gets. Pure, simple and for all to see.”
Finkel views the article in Ria Novosti as “one of the most explicit statements of intent to destroy a national group... that I’ve ever seen”.
The rest of the world has condemned the killings, calling them horrific and brutal. Russia, meanwhile, has stated that the footage coming out of Bucha is faked. Right. Grand choreographed productions of fake dead people laying on the ground to make Russia look bad. Or there are other reports in Russian media saying that the Ukrainians did this to themselves.
It’s times like this we should remember Occam’s Razor: the simplest explanation is usually the true one. What seems more likely? That Russia invaded a sovereign nation and a city its army occupied is littered with civilian corpses because Russian forces killed them for whatever reason, or that all those corpses were staged and faked by the Ukrainians upon re-entering the city. It’s ludicrous even to consider.
This is where we are.
We can only hope that what happened in Bucha is an isolated incident. That Zelenskyy and Finkel are wrong about this being genocide. We can only hope.
In any case, Zelenskyy had a message for Russian civilians after the evidence of killings in Bucha emerged: “This is how the Russian state will now be perceived. This is your image. Your culture and human image have died along with Ukrainians.”
I hope Zelenskyy is wrong. I hope that what we’ve seen in Bucha isn’t widespread. I hope that Russia will drop this insane invasion and the world can continue on a peaceful arc.
But that hope seems very naïve.
Most likely what is coming is going to be worse than what we’ve already seen. It will be worse than what the Ukrainians have already had to endure. It will get worse before anything gets better.
Maybe it’s because I’m a father now, but hearing of the sons and daughters killed on both sides hurts me. But it’s not just the Ukrainians. I see images of young Russian soldiers dying too. They’re just kids too. And they didn’t want this for themselves. No one wants to be ravaged by a war. And now they’re gone, lost to their mothers and fathers who were proud of them and wanted to watch them grow up.
What is happening?
A senseless war that has taken everything from too many people.
And still it continues.
Big Smile, No Teeth columnist Jason Godfrey – who once was told to give the camera a ‘big smile, no teeth’ – has worked internationally for two decades in fashion and continues to work in dramas, documentaries, and lifestyle programming. Write to him at lifestyle@thestar.com.my and check out his stuff at jasongodfrey.co. The views expressed here are entirely the writer's own.
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