The images bring to mind Srebrenica, the Bosnian town where Serb troops tortured and summarily executed thousands of Bosnians, mostly men and boys, in 1995. The international community branded that horrible chapter of the Bosnian war as genocide, and it’s with the specter of Srebrenica that the world now must investigate the atrocities revealed this weekend in Bucha, a small Ukrainian town northwest of Kyiv.
Bodies of men in civilian clothes lay in the streets, some of them with their hands bound behind their backs. They were shot dead while Russian troops occupied the small town for about a month, Ukrainian officials and witnesses say. Some had gunshot wounds to the head. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy even said some victims had been decapitated.
As many as 118 bodies had been buried in mass graves, said the town’s mayor. Some bodies were found stuffed into manholes. Human Rights Watch reported it had documented evidence of repeated rape and summary executions by the Russian military in the Kyiv, Chernihiv and Kharkiv regions.
It’s not enough that the Western world sees what happened in Bucha. In a video released Sunday night, Zelenskyy said it was vital that Russians, particularly Russian mothers, see it as well.
“I want every mother of every Russian soldier to see the bodies of the killed people in Bucha, in Irpin, in Hostomel,” Zelenskyy said. “Why were ordinary civilians in an ordinary peaceful city tortured to death?
“Russian mothers! Even if you raised looters, how did they also become butchers?” he continued. “You couldn’t be unaware of what’s inside your children. You couldn’t overlook that they are deprived of everything human. No soul. No heart.”
Well before Bucha, Western leaders had been calling for an investigation into war crimes committed by Russian soldiers, and by the architect of the brutality inflicted on Ukraine, Vladimir Putin. But the harrowing carnage depicted in footage from Bucha cements the need for an exhaustive, unfettered probe into atrocities in Ukraine.
Under international law, the intentional killing of civilians or prisoners of war amounts to a war crime. So does the rape or torture of civilians or war prisoners. The law applies to soldiers who commit or abet the acts, as well as commanders who knew or had reason to know about the crimes but did nothing to intervene.
Prosecuting those responsible for what happened in Bucha, from Russian soldiers to Putin himself, essentially would amount to a symbolic exercise. The International Court of Justice gets its enforcement authority from the United Nations Security Council, and Russia still wields veto power on that body.
But the meaning of such a prosecution would be far from trivial. A war crimes conviction indelibly stains, even if the criminal never serves a day behind bars. It brands the person convicted as a butcher, and that’s something no amount of time or propaganda can erase.
Sadly, the images from Bucha are not surprising. They fit into a continuum of indefensible actions taken by Putin that include the bombing of a maternity hospital in the southern port city of Mariupol, and deliberate missile attacks and shelling on scores of apartment buildings, schools and other civilian edifices across the country. The barbarity seen in Bucha sickens, but in the context of Putin’s actions since the invasion began Feb. 24, it hardly seems like an aberration in the Kremlin’s blueprint for Ukraine.
Reaction from the West to the scenes in Bucha has been swift and strong. Two European leaders, Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, said the actions of Russian soldiers should be construed as “genocide.” Zelenskyy characterized it the same way. On Monday, President Joe Biden called Putin “a war criminal,” adding that “we have to gather all the detail so this can be an actual … war crimes trial.”
Predictably, Russian leaders deny committing any atrocities in Bucha. Putin’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, said what happened in that Kyiv region town was a “fake attack,” an exercise in propaganda “fomented on all channels and social media by Ukrainian representatives and their Western patrons.”
Lavrov’s denial only bolsters Zelenskyy’s call for Russians to look beyond Kremlin-controlled media to learn what really happened in Bucha. Lately, polls show a burgeoning number of Russians rallying behind Putin and his invasion of Ukraine, principally because Russian state media continues to paint the Kremlin as a benevolent entity rescuing Ukraine from a corrupt, fascist regime in Kyiv. A lens into the atrocities in Bucha should help Russians understand where the malevolence really lies.
Despite these wrenching images from Bucha, Western leaders should not lose sight of the most immediate goal — an end to this destructive, needless war, coupled with a peace that ensures Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. The atrocities will make negotiations that much more difficult. But as long as channels remain open between Ukraine and Russia, dialogue should continue. Dialogue doesn’t mean capitulation.
Still, a long-term scenario is emerging — one that was impossible to envision in the context of the world before the invasion of Ukraine. A Russia led by Putin can no longer be trusted as a geopolitical and economic partner. As long as Putin remains in power, he and his government should be made to endure as a pariah state, disconnected from Western banks, trade and nations that espouse free will and the rule of law. That scenario should also include accountability for Putin for the mounting tally of war crimes in Ukraine.
Whenever that happens, the corpses of Bucha surely will be Exhibit #1.
