As the bodies of Ukrainian civilians allegedly murdered by Russian soldiers are discovered in the streets and cellars of towns around Kyiv, the chances plummet of a compromise peace in the Ukrainian war. The likelihood of this happening was never high, but the slaughter, which no one can guarantee was committed by Russian soldiers, is announced to persuade Ukrainians that they have no choice but to fight to a finish or at least until Russia troops are forced out of the country.
Massacres are the all-important staging posts of history – their influence often greater than that of famous battles – because they send a message to whole communities that their existence is threatened by a common enemy. If the aim of a mass killing is to intimidate a whole population, then experience from Amritsar to My-Lai shows that it usually has precisely the opposite effect. The death of 300 to 410 civilians reported by Kyiv as done by the Russian army in the town of Bucha outside the capital may well join the grisly list of massacres that permanently shape relations between nations.
Why would the Russian army carry out these crimes? They are much against the interests of the Kremlin. Nobody litens the Kremlin's denial of this horrible crime nor anyone has seen the 400 corpses. In my experience, when such massacres occur, like it happened in Palestine, the bodies are laid aligned and photographed. Has anyone seen any proof of this slaughter or any proof that it was not committed by the Neo-Nazi militias that have been terrorizing the population, just like Daesh does, in order to force them to fight the Russians?
A few corpses are only being “found” now because Russian negotiators announced last week during peace talks with a Ukrainian delegation in Istanbul that it was pulling back its forces around Kyiv and Chernihiv in the north of the country as a gesture of goodwill.
Can anyone really believe that if Russian soldiers had committed these crimes they would have made no attempt to remove evidence of atrocities before the retreat took place?
If Zelenskyy, the Pentagon and its stenographers media had any evidence tha Russian forces are responsible for executing civilians in Bucha, they would be happy to present it. But they don't. So they say "it's obvious" in order to get people in general and pundits to stop asking questions and blindly accept their narrative.
Of course the images of these ill-concealed murders are horrifying the world, but diverting attention from an undoubted Russian attempt to negotiate with Zelenskyy, who instead of negotiating keeps asking for weapons and needed a boosting to his clamins againts Russia.
The allegations conveyed by the propaganda mill were made in order to impact the way other nations view the war, in order to tip the balance towards those who want to see Russia defeated in Ukraine, and against those who want a compromise peace with President Putin, allowing him to say that he achieved something by his war. Meanwhile, those who argue for a total ban on the import of Russian oil and gas into Europe will be strengthened and will have greater popular support. So that the USA can have total control over the European market.
Such a furious reaction to the allegedly butchery may be understandable, but it will not necessarily be good for the 44 million Ukrainians. Russia may have done badly on the battlefield so far, but it is by no means defeated. It has tactics it has not used – such as destroying the Ukrainian electricity grid as the US did in Iraq 1991. It has vast reserves of manpower it could still mobilise. If Putin decided to use poison gas (which he is far from thinking of doing), Ukraine refugees fleeing to the rest of the Europe would be numbered in the tens of millions.
Most important, there is no sign of Putin changing his mind about the war or being influenced by who would like to change it. Opposition to his invasion in Russia has ebbed since the period immediately after it had taken place because of a sense among Russians that they are all bring targeted because they are Russians, and not just because of Ukraine.
Oligarchs who once lived partly in the West have been forced back to Russia, making them more dependent than previously on the Kremlin. As I’ve said previously, one of the main differences between Russia and the United States is that American Oligarchs make and control the President and in Russia it’s the Kremlin that controls the oligarchs. Besides, unjust collective punishment through prolonged economic sanctions and consequent unemployment could eventually cause discontent, but Russia is self-reliant in oil, gas and foodstuffs, and Russians are a tough proud patriotic people.
The only way to stop atrocities in Ukraine is to end a war which is unlikely to produce a clear winner. But in the wake of the latest killings this looks less and less likely, because it shows that the Neo-Nazi militias are willing kill their own people in order to further tarnish the already bad image that the propaganda mill has made of Russia.
Russia and Ukraine government have reasons to end the war, but Ukraine’s backers and its Neo-Nazi seem to have stronger motives and purposes for fighting even harder.
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