Forty-one days of war in Ukraine have already killed thousands of people and forced 4.2 million Ukrainians into exile.
As of last Thursday, we are witnessing a new phase of the war with the gradual withdrawal of Russian forces from northeastern Ukraine, but of course this is not the end of the invasion. The Russian army is repositioning itself in the Ukrainian East with the aim of gaining control of a continuous territorial bloc between the Donbas region, the Azov Sea coast including the port of Mariupol and the Crimean peninsula. The fighting is not going to decrease, it will be concentrated in one region but it will be more intense.
Meanwhile the list of alleged war crimes is growing day by day. Despite promises of humanitarian corridors, civilians are caught in the middle of military fighting, hundreds of residential areas lie in ruins. And the liberation of the kyiv region, which could have been a relief to the population, finally turned into a nightmare when local authorities and international observers discovered new atrocities. The images of the massacre of civilians in the city of Bucha, 37 kilometers from the Ukrainian capital, have shocked the world. A new threshold of horror has been crossed in this war.
What was revealed this weekend has generated unanimous Western condemnation. The Secretary General of the UN calls for the opening of an independent investigation and the words “war crime” are echoed in various foreign ministries. Macron evokes “unbearable images” and the Spanish President speaks of a “possible genocide”. Russia responds to the accusations with an alternative truth and even convenes the UN Security Council to denounce “the provocations of the Ukrainian radicals.”
When Russia denies what happened in Bucha, it is not trying to convince the governments of the West; Today there is a global communication battle and what the main actors in the war declare is intended to send a message to third countries and the media to add supporters to their version of events.
Every time an atrocity is committed in this war, the Kremlin presents an alternate reality alluding to the responsibility of the “Ukrainian neo-Nazis”. This works for Moscow to some extent due to the historical use of lies by various countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, with the alleged existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which limits the ability of the West to present “the truth”. The relativization of the truth helps Russia.
However, among Western governments there is no doubt that what has been reported from Bucha, not only by the Ukrainian government but also by various media outlets and NGOs, is an appalling reality.
Sometimes in the development of a war there is a massacre that changes the course of history. That was the case with the bombing of the Sarajevo market in 1995, which prompted NATO to intervene against the Bosnian Serbs. Three weeks later the Dayton Accords marked the end of that war.
Will the Bucha massacre be a turning point in the Ukraine war?
No Western country is willing to enter into a direct military confrontation with Russia, a nuclear power, so the increase in pressure against Moscow will have to be in the economic field. New sanctions were imposed yesterday and others are on the way according to Western leaders. But the options in this field are increasingly narrow, since the beginning of the war various sanctions have been imposed on companies, banks, oligarchs and political leaders. Without a doubt, the weapon of hydrocarbons remains. Export revenues from this item represent between 36% and 37% of the Russian budget. The United States banned the import of Russian oil and gas shortly after the invasion of Ukraine, but US consumption of hydrocarbons from Russia was not significant, contrary to the European case. The weapon of hydrocarbons would shoot in both directions between Moscow and Brussels, which is why a consensus for its embargo has not been achieved. the EU depends on 40% of Russian hydrocarbons and for now only the Baltic countries have ceased, as of last weekend, to import gas and oil from the belligerent country.
Of course there will be a process to eventually seek to prosecute Putin and his entourage for war crimes, the Ukrainian government and about forty NGOs have begun the work of collecting evidence and documentation in the field to prove the war crimes committed by the Russian army. Everything will have to be verified, a job that will take time. Later will come the legal process in the International Criminal Court, which since the beginning of March has opened an investigation in this regard at the request of 39 countries. These processes can take years, often even a decade. The most difficult thing is to establish the chain of command from the soldiers in the field to those leaders who have given the order to massacre, for which precise evidence is often difficult to obtain. In addition, in the case of an eventual trial in the International Criminal Court there is a limitation, Russia withdrew from said Court in 2016, so its court will not be able to detain individuals on Russian soil. So unless Putin goes to an ICC member country that decides to detain him for trial, the Russian president will be almost untouchable. That is why I say that an eventual trial will not change the current course of the armed conflict. In any case, it will be rather a way of leaving a testimony in history about the existence of these crimes and those responsible.
Can you negotiate with a war criminal? Although the Bucha massacre reinforces the Ukrainian desire for resistance and even revenge, if you want to end the suffering of the war you not only can but you must negotiate with Vladimir Putin. As long as he remains at the head of the Kremlin, only he can stop the war.
Although the city of Bucha has become a symbol of the abuses perpetrated by the Russian army in Ukraine, we have not yet seen what happens in cities that remain besieged like Mariupol. War is brutality, suffering, destruction. War releases human bestiality. You need to stop her.
@B_Estefan
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