The grotesque images of civilians being slaughtered in Ukraine echo the horrors I witnessed covering the war in Bosnia three decades ago, and President Joe Biden was right to use the word “genocide” to describe the mass murder Russia is committing in Ukraine.
Today’s atrocities are eerily reminiscent of the targeted killings in Sarajevo: civilians butchered waiting in line for bread, hospitals and schools demolished, and unarmed innocents with hands tied behind their backs executed with bullets to the head. The world experienced a new level of horror when it saw the aftermath of Russia’s missile attack in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, where at least 52 civilians were massacred in a train station while trying to evacuate.
What’s more chilling than the denials of Russia’s war criminals are the Kremlin’s brazen lies that Ukrainians are doing these things to themselves to make Russia look bad. Bosnian Serbs told the same sickening lies when they pounded the city of Sarajevo with mortars and 155 mm artillery shells from the hillsides in 1992, blaming Bosniaks for the terrifying scenes of carnage engulfing their blood-soaked city.
