“Since the beginning of the conflict, Russian forces have indiscriminately and disproportionately bombed and shelled civilian objects, causing heavy civilian casualties. The Russian forces have ignored their Geneva convention obligations to focus their attacks on combatants, and appear to take few safeguards to protect civilians: It is this carpet-bombing campaign which has been responsible for the vast majority of civilian deaths in the conflict.”
The quote above is from a news release detailing the testimony of an official from the Human Rights Watch organization before the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Anyone keeping up with the news since Russia illegally invaded Ukraine in February, 2022 will be familiar with the atrocities it describes.
The sordid history piles up rapid-fire…Slowly, insidiously, that history becomes ‘just the way things are’—if not quite accepted, at least normalized.
They reflect Russian President Vladimir Putin’s long-running penchant for using the tools of invasion, indiscriminate bombing, murder, poisoning, child abduction, political persecution and torture to achieve his aims of quashing all dissent from within and bringing to heel other countries he seeks to invade, occupy and control.
The particular passage above is dated, however, February 29, 2000.
The country in question then was not Ukraine, but Chechnya, which had been part of the former Soviet Union before its breakup in 1991.
Russia’s invasion in an attempt to retake control in 1994 failed two years later under then Russian President Boris Yeltsin. But by the time of the Human Rights Watch Report in 2000, Vladimir Putin had assumed the Russian presidency, and the situation had changed very quickly. Putin, following a template he has more recently sought to effect in Ukraine, pursued a reign of terror that toppled the Chechen government, held sham elections to install a puppet regime, and ultimately quashed all dissent and any further dreams of independence.
Adding insult to that injury in the years since: the Chechen military has played an instrumental role throughout Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.
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If you want to catch up with a real world horror story of just how savage and heinous Vladimir Putin’s invasion and intended elimination of Ukrainian national identity is, you need look no further than this exhaustively sourced and collated report from Wikipedia under the headline, “Child abductions in the Russo-Ukrainian War.”
Reports of the sheer number of Ukrainian children taken from their homes amidst the maelstrom of war and relocated to be “adopted” by Russian families vary. Notably, the highest estimates come from Russia, as if they were bragging, reporting numbers in excess of 700,000. Ukraine’s official count from 2022 stands at 19,546, though more recent reports suggest thousands more.
The important point is that all are staggering numbers. Even one family subjected to such grief reflects wanton disregard for the most basic, sacred, universally held rights of families to not have their children stolen from them as a tool of war.
No such action would, of course, take place without the express approval of the person named in the screenshot above, which is a legally binding indictment issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) accusing Vladimir Putin of being a war criminal, charged with the:
“unlawful transfer…from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation…The crimes were allegedly committed in Ukrainian occupied territory at least from 24 February 2022. There are reasonable grounds to believe that Mr Putin bears individual criminal responsibility for the aforementioned crimes, (i) for having committed the acts directly, jointly with others and/or through others…”
As an accused criminal by a widely recognized international judicial body, Putin risks arrest, detention and prosecution anytime he lands on the soil of any of the 125 countries (out of 193 total) who have signed onto the ICC. The body includes almost the entirety of the European Union, England, Canada, Australia, and most of Asia, Africa and South America.
Notably absent from that list: Russia, China, India, North Korea, Sudan…and the United States.
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Before we discuss the photo above, I’d like to reiterate a point from the previous section.
This man, this Vladimir Putin, MAKES A PRACTICE OF STEALING CHILDREN FROM FAMILIES and relocating them to another country.
He makes a daily habit of SENDING MISSILES AND BOMBS INTO CIVILIAN NEIGHBORHOODS, HOSPITALS, SCHOOLS, DAYCARE CENTERS AND POWER STATIONS in order to kill and maim innocent people and terrorize those who survive the onslaughts.
We have a word for this kind of activity: “monstrous.”
And it is important that we not equivocate in asserting that the person perpetrating them is a monster.
Google “How many people has Putin assassinated?” and up comes a list of 82 people, with little notes in the far margin under the heading “Method.”
A sampling:
“Explosive placed on private SUV”… “Poisoning with poisoned letter”… “Either shot during gunfight or tortured to death in private prison”…”Shot by rifle during gunfight”… “died from exsanguination after cutting off his hand” (exsanguination being the “the action of draining a person, animal, or organ of blood”)…”Explosive placed underneath private car”…”Poisoning with radionuclide polonium”...“Shot twice in the head after trying to flee”…”Shot in the neck”…
The sordid history piles up rapid-fire, and the great danger is that our eyes glaze over, our psyche’s defenses kicking in to manage the horror we feel, and we literally turn the page or turn off the gadget to maintain some semblance of mental and emotional equilibrium. Slowly, insidiously, that history becomes just the way things are—if not quite accepted, at least normalized.
Making it all the more imperative that we continue to remember and proclaim: “THIS IS NOT NORMAL! NOT NORMAL!!”
And: we should never accept such a man into the human circle of mutual respect until he has been apprehended and brought to justice for his many crimes against humanity.
Which brings us to the photo above.
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Back in February, the president and vice-president of the United States invited Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to the White House, where they joined in an ambush of the man whose country had been invaded by Putin two years earlier. They berated him for ostensibly not showing sufficient appreciation for the aid the U.S. had supplied to his country’s war effort, and angrily told him he “didn’t have the cards” to effectively participate in negotiations to end the war and save his nation.
Then they expelled him and his delegation without even feeding them the lunch that had been built into the day’s schedule.
Fast forward to August 15 and we see the American president excitedly awaiting the arrival of the plane carrying Vladimir Putin to land on American soil. Having arranged to roll out a literal red carpet they both walked on, the president is seen clapping his hands in anticipation, then joining Putin for an extended warm handshake while Air Force fighter jets flew overhead and cameras clicked for all the world to see.
It was as if he were welcoming a hero and old friend, and nothing in the ensuing days diminished his oft-stated respect and admiration for his Russian counterpart who directly embodies everything that United States history and diplomacy have stood firmly against since its founding.
For his part, the U.S. vice-president had this to say last week about Putin:
“I’ve actually never met Putin. The president did that meeting. I’ve talked to him on the phone a number of times, You know, it’s interesting. He’s more soft-spoken than you would necessarily expect. You know that the American media has a particular image of him. He’s soft spoken in a certain way. He’s very deliberate; he’s very careful. And I think, fundamentally, he’s a person who looks out for the interests, as he sees it, of Russia.”
Just a president looking out for his country, as all presidents do, right? Which is why, the vice-president claimed, Putin “respects” the president because, in a kind of mutual admiration society and mirror image, he “looks out for the interests of the American people.”
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I recognize we do not live in a perfect and just world, and that sometimes, we must hold our noses and deal with odious people and circumstances to advance, if only incrementally, a cause we hold dear.
But that goal should not, ever, mean a willingness, even eagerness, to host an international pariah and criminal on American soil. To which we add the pomp and majesty befitting an admired statesman rather than a butcher who is actively seeking the extermination of a sovereign nation and subjugation forevermore of its people.
Then “negotiating” with him on a proposed “land swap” that the “New York Times” analyst (and refugee from Russia) Masha Gessen accurately summarized thusly:
“So let’s talk about ‘land swap.’ This phrase seems to refer to Putin’s offer to take a piece of Ukraine in exchange for not threatening an even bigger piece of Ukraine. This is not what we normally think of as a swap. It’s what we think of as extortion.”
In sum, any recognition, respect and even warmth toward an evil man who stands aggressively against every notion of the freedom and self-determination that is fundamental to our own nation should never be tolerated nor normalized, least of all with a red carpet welcome.
We must not fall into the trap of thinking his evils are just the ways of the world, which we must accept and move on from for the sake of our peace of mind. History tells us, resoundingly, to never under-estimate the ambitions nor will to power of a tyrant.
Our imperative is to remember and keep uppermost in mind that this tyrant is a murderer, torturer and child kidnapper, with the blood and terror of millions on his hands—and trails of tears left all over the long swath of destruction and heartbreak he has left in his wake.
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Comments, questions, attaboys, arguments or suggestions for future posts, songs, poems? Scroll on down below, and/or on Facebook, where you can Follow my public posts and find regular 1-minute snippets of wisdom and other musings from the world’s great thinkers and artists, accompanied always by the kind of creative photography you see on this post. https://www.facebook.com/andrew.hidas/
Deep appreciation to the photographers! Unless otherwise stated, some rights reserved under Creative Commons licensing
Homepage rotating banner photos (except for library books) by Elizabeth Haslam https://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhaslam/
Library books by Larry Rose, Redlands, California, all rights reserved, contact: larry@rosefoto.com
Putin illustration artist unknown, courtesy of Lars Lundqvist, Linköping, Sweden https://www.flickr.com/photos/arkland_swe/
Ah, where to start. dear Andrew. While not disagreeing – at all – with any of the points you make about the war criminal Putin, I think it is essential to remind ourselves that the United States has been responsible for, or participated in, countless atrocities and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians (men, women and children) in the numerous wars it has been a part of (Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Tokyo, Dresden, Hanoi, and on and on), but of course, we’re the “good guys.” Yes, I understand the differences between what Russia is attempting in Ukraine and what the U.S. was doing (or thought it was doing) in the aforementioned cities, but in the end, in my opinion, there are no good guys when it comes to the indiscriminate killing of noncombatants. It’s all monstrous.
Robby, let me just start by saying my intention here was not to paint a good guys-bad guys contrast between the U.S. and Russia, though I do believe there’s a (nuanced) case to be made there, too (more on that below). It was instead just to warn against accepting, forgetting and “normalizing” the many proven evils of Putin, just as I have written much more than once in at least a similar vein imploring readers to beware of normalizing Trump. Instead, I aimed to decry the unseemliness of hosting and thereby legitimizing such a figure with all the fanfare and friendliness we saw on display in Alaska. Treating him as a respected statesman rather than the criminal he is was a scandal, and it should remain so. Seems to me that jumping directly to the horrors of Hiroshima, et al, is part of the very problem I am citing here—should we just shrug and accept Putin’s invasion because we have slaughtered people, too?
As for all the actions you cite, yep, there are few if any white hats in the history of warfare. But I think there are plenty of gray hats on the way to the black hat that the likes of Putin and Hitler have worn. I think you have to look at both motivation and intention in discriminating between Hiroshima and Ukraine. Putin’s motivation is to swallow Ukraine and erase its identity forever. Roosevelt-Truman’s was to end a war that had been started by the other side with an attack on our land, and reliable intelligence told them a final invasion to win the war against Japan would result in several hundred thousand casualties for American troops. Glad I didn’t have to make the decision on whether to go with option A or B in that situation, but I’m certain it was a tortuous one, and it was not intended nor did it turn out to be a seizure of Japan, a kidnapping of their children for “re-education,” torturing of their leaders, etc. Quite the opposite, actually, as you well know regarding the Marshall Plan. So: there are degrees of bad and good, evil and not-so-evil. Few or none are all good. Hiroshima was indeed monstrous, as you say. But even if we just look at numbers, which would have caused more deaths on both sides—us fighting through to a final land war win, or dropping the two atomic bombs? A devil’s choice, to be sure, but sometimes we have to go with a lesser devil—it’s the quandary of the fallen, tragic world we live in.
Thanks, as always, for the conversation, and raising a finger of respectful objection!
Just to be clear, was not objecting to your point of view – just wanted to expand the context.
Got it. I often rely and am thankful for readers who indeed expand the context, fill in holes, etc.—and save me from turning these babies into 5,000 word tomes!
That red carpet tango with the tyrant made me feel a little sick. And just as I’m getting over it, the Trump FBI raids John Bolton’s home. More and more, I’m wondering whether the country I knew will ever recover.
You’ve got a lot of company in that sinking feeling, Jonathan. Looks to me like the 2026 elections are shaping up to be perhaps the most momentous in our history. If voters opt in for all that Trump has done and maintain the current Republican stranglehold on power, then we will have sealed our own fate as a former democratic beacon to the world. The hounds of hell will surely follow.
There’s been a long history of Russian aggression toward the Ukraine. For three years (1930-33), Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin orchestrated a Holodomor (Ukrainian word for kill by starvation) and millions perished. In 2014, dictator Vladimir Putin invaded and ultimately annexed Crimea under the auspices of defending the Russian culture there. Putin is now waging a war to make eastern Ukraine Russian. Trump has suggested that Russia and the United States meet to draw up a treaty designed to end the war. The treaty would cede eastern Ukraine to Russia with a promise from Putin to end any further aggression. Incidentally, the Ukraine would not be represented in this potential peace negotiation.
Eighty-seven years ago, a German dictator made a similar argument for the annexation of the Sudetenland, a section of western Czechoslovakia heavily populated by Germans. He claimed the Germans there were being discriminated against by the Czech government. At the Munich Conference, France and Great Britain reached a compromise with this German leader. Germany would annex the Sudetenland in exchange for a promise from this German dictator to end any further aggression in Europe. A year later, Germany invaded Poland, igniting the Second World War. Incidentally, Czechoslovakia was not represented at the Munich Conference.
Robert, this is when we trot out the observation most always attributed to Mark Twain though he never actually said it: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” It’s a fine maxim in any case, but it actually doesn’t apply here, because it may indeed be repeating itself by the time Trump finally decides on one whim or other to just give away part of Ukraine no matter how loudly Zelensky and his European allies cry foul. And it certainly doesn’t require a PhD in either history or behavioral psychology to know what will happen after we reward Putin’s aggression: It will be “Look out, Europe!” time as Putin eyes the further expansion of Russia in order to reclaim the previous empire he thinks Gorbachev gave away for free.
I would like to add a comment about Trump welcoming Putin with a red carpet. It seems quite appropriate to me. Afterall, Putin is a commie with a tendency to get a kick out of seeing others bleed.
Sometime it’s benefit to show up a little late to the party. The above comments are case in point. Worth the read, they were.
To tack starboard a little on the theme, it seems the “they go low, we go high” attitude which many of us adopted in the early days of Trumpism is now being abandoned as ineffective in the face of obvious malicious intent. Newsome has put on a pretty dark gray hat lately with winning effect so far. What does this race to the bottom portend for our threadbare democracy? How far down are all of us willing to go to turn away the current regime, and never again witness our president rolling out red carpets and obsequious applause to the likes of Putin?
I’m with you, Dennis: I get as much a kick & food for thought out of the Comment section as I do in the thinkin’ & writin’ I do beforehand.
Yes, I think Michelle Obama’s “going high” is fine and preferable for normal times vs. normal opponents, but this power grab by Trump & the Project 25 architects is so off the rails that normal courtesies & norms simply don’t apply. Then the “Don’t bring a knife to a gun fight” maxim kicks in, and the battle needs to be fought at every turn, just as savagely as the opponents are behaving. I know this risks another metaphor about not wrestling with pigs, but I don’t see any alternative to going as low as we have to go. It’s really worth remembering that despite the truth that both parties have long engaged in gerrymandering, ONLY Democrats have put forth bills to outlaw the practice in recent years, and Newsom said he would halt his own effort in California if Texas back offs. So it’s still more of a defensive effort, but yes, a down & dirty one, as it has to be in order to have even a chance of avoiding the steamroller. I’ve read, though, that if every state now jumps into this mid-decade redistricting gambit, Democrats will come out net losers, so it may all come to nought. Better, though, than just lying down to be squashed.
The long-term cost of all this? Very possibly drastic & bad, but Trump’s dreams of joining Putin and Kim Jong in an unholy tyrant trinity are destined to come true absent extreme concerted effort to stop him.
First let me say that I do not have a paid subscription to anyone who writes on Substack. There are more than a few that I would consider and would like to encourage and support, but there is so much more than I can read every day, and so I just don’t. But if you were to ask me to fork over a few bucks a month for this kind of independent journalism, with the opportunity to engage in meaningful and extended dialog, I’d be clickin right now to sign up.
And speaking of clicking…… Would someone please create an option to “remind me to get back to this later” with a text or email or calendar reminder? I almost didn’t make it back to your piece, and that would have been a real loss… for me.
So, my comments …..Your decision to focus on the kidnapping children aspect of Putin’s “accomplishments” shakes me to my core. Everyone repeats it in reciting the litany of his “accomplishments,” but never (that I’ve seen) has anyone given this horror a sharper focus as you have. I greatly appreciate you for forcing me to really think about this, more than I ever have. I’ve decided it is unique in the pantheon of horrors. Bombing and killing is one and done. One day you’re here and the next you’re not. Yes, those who loved you will grieve a lifetime but that’s a kind of pain we can all relate to. We’ve all lost someone. Fortunately not to war, but living life mourning and missing someone isn’t new to anyone. Bombing and maiming is worse cause it’s not one and done.
Then how about rape as a tool of war. Horrific, and also leaves the victim with an injury that lasts the rest of their life. But stealing my kid and then selling them to another family in your (the perpetrator’s) country to live the rest of their lives with their new “adopted” family instead of me…..as a tool of war….to inflict pain on me…..to force me to surrender? Just shoot me now please. Unfathomable. So, TY for forcing me to sit down and ponder this, if only for this moment.
But what about Hiroshima asks our mutual friend? What, RM? I know that’s not how you meant it, but it’s too close, sounds too much like whataboutism to let pass without comment. Please, don’t ask me to consider Hiroshima in the context of THIS PIECE that Andrew is writing about OUR POTUS …. TODAY. That is bigger than my brain can hold.
I, we, are alive now and our elected leader puts Putin on OUR red carpet? No RM, why would you distract from that? You and Hidas are immediately summoned to Camp Cohen to address this…. And nobody’s goin’ nowhere until we address this fully and completely. (Adult intoxicants included of any and all types to facilitate our work.)
Andrew. Nice work brother. Your musings will stay with me for a good while and I will urge others to stop and ponder too. I’m proud to be a graduate of the Hidas school of ….how to string words together so people will keep reading em….I’m sure I have my diploma somewhere.
Having now exceeded my daily allotment of time for thinking and reading for ME, off to work I must go to do the same for others. ….. “It’s my work he’d say, I do it for pay”
[B. Dylan, “Hurricane”]
Jeffrey, I so very much appreciate this, thank you. Writers write partly to better understand something themselves—and how they feel about what they have (hopefully) come to understand through their efforts. But the other part has to do with being understood. There’s always a hope of that, to mine one’s consciousness, research and language skills and transmit the fruits of all that to readers clearly enough to land somewhere close to where one wanted it all to go. Sometimes it does, sometimes it lands in unexpected places—and sometimes in places one can’t even fathom from what one wrote!
In this instance, I think you got exactly what has been making me crazy about the red carpet welcome ever since I caught up to it, and why I couldn’t understand how it became just one story among hundreds of similar bombs thrown into the populace every day by the Trump Shock & Awe Air Force. It made me fear we are losing our capacity for true empathy and outrage under the reign of terror we are being subjected to with every news cycle, and if that is true, it seems a very dangerous development.
A thought experiment: let’s say a group of child predators was loose across America, stealing children from the homes, schools, churches, and parks where they play and “relocating” them to foreign countries. It starts with one, two, ten, but within weeks it grows to the hundreds and then thousands. What would we do as a nation? How much terror and desolation would people feel? Would we see any kids outside, ever? How many guns would people buy, how many police and military would be on full-alert patrol in the nation’s streets? What would our politicians do and say in response? What vows would they make? What would we NOT do to stop such a heinous practice, find and bring the perps to justice, and bring the children home?
Yet this is what Ukraine is enduring—and they (and we) KNOW who and where the evil perp is! And what do we do? We give the perp a statesman’s welcome and express admiration for how “soft-spoken” and “brilliant” he is, and for how he’s “looking out for the interests” of his people. This is vile and sickening and we need to keep calling it out as such, keep imagining ourselves, as you say, in that situation and being resolute about rejecting it and pursuing justice for it in every possible way. What we’re doing instead is NUTS! And evil, the ultimate, true and horrid collusion and tacit, laissez-faire approval of an unforgivable crime.
OK, I’ll calm down now.
For a while…
I’m very late to the thread, though I’ve been fuming and sickened by the red carpet welcome provided Putin since it occured. I recently attended a local Ukrainian Power event in Colorado Springs and a viewing of Ukrainian-made documentary, “Soldiers of Song.” The sight and testimony from this on-the-ground account of the suffering and heartache of Ukrainian people fueled my anger toward our own monster president for his worship of Putin and complete disregard and disrespect for Zelensky. The fact that a red-carpet welcome for this ruthless war criminal/invader did not meet with outrage from Congressional Republicans signals the clear path toward the end of our Constitutional Republic. There is no “tipping point” where The Donald goes too far. If there were, he long ago pushed past it. The absence of any moral compass by so many elected officials (and millions of citizens) is truly alarming. Surely the world is looking on in horror at the fall of this once-great country.
It’s not all that late for a comment, Jay—I’d venture to say it’s never too late! Needless to say, I’m with you all the way, and hope you feel a bit better for getting this off your chest. I know I do. Staying clammed up about it only adds insult to the injuries our country is being subjected to on a daily basis.