I have found it almost impossible to look away from the images of the carnage unleashed by Russian troops on occupied Ukrainian towns. Overcome with numbness, I masochistically zoom in on the photos of victims, studying every face, or whatever is left of it. All I can think is: “They have done this before. They are doing it again.”
The indiscriminate shelling, the looting, the evidence of rape, torture and executions, and, above all, the sense of enthusiasm with which these war crimes are being carried out are painfully familiar. In recent days, my mind has kept wandering to another photo, taken 18 years ago in Rigakhoy village in Chechnya by my mum, human rights activist Natalya Estemirova. It shows the corpses of five tiny, grey-faced children, all siblings, lined up according to height. The oldest is five years old, the youngest – twins – were not even 12 months old. The children and their mother, Maydat Tsintsayeva, were killed in a deliberate bombing by the Russians on 9 April 2004.
