Do not believe for a moment that the 24 February full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia is “Putin’s war” and Putin’s war only. Do not imagine that the Russian people are mere innocent by-standers to the systematic attacks against civilian populations and to the bombings and shellings that are laying the country waste and reducing cities to smoking piles of rubble. The large majority of Russians who admire and support their leader’s actions are complicit to the crimes of war and crimes against humanity committed by his army in Ukraine. By being accomplices, they share the moral responsibility for these heinous crimes.
The full stadium of ecstatic youths with shining eyes who chanted slogans of Russian victory on 18 March in Moscow are carbon copies of the Hitlerjugend who once roared out their heartfelt support for their Fuhrer’s atrocities. Nor were the elders with them, there and all across Russia, any less guilty. In a sad spectacle for the whole world to see, they loudly announced their glee at the shedding of Ukrainian blood and their readiness to dance on Ukrainian graves. They could not forgive the Ukrainian people their desire to be free, independent and in charge of their own destiny.
As for President Putin sanctimoniously (and with mocking irony) quoting from the Bible at that 18 March rally, that was an obscenity pure and simple.
