The evidence is there for war crimes charges, and illuminated by past precedent it only requires the will to bring Putin and his confederates to justice

 

We in this country have to endure the little “annoyances” of everyday life—like having to wade through a crowd of “adults” in Capitol Hill which seemed to suggest that more people preferred to be out wearing ridiculous “bunny” costumes than be in church on Easter, and then discovering I had wasted my time anyways when upon arrival, the mail box business was closed so I couldn’t pick up my weekend packages before I had to go to work. But in some other countries, it is just another day of crouching in cellars, hoping to get through another round of bombs and shelling.

With Ukrainian and international prosecutors gathering evidence of war crimes against Vladimir Putin and his minions—including at least two generals, Aleksandr Dvornikov (the “Butcher of Syria”) whose first act as the new commander of Russian forces in Ukraine is being reported to be the horrific bombing of the rail station in Kramatorsk, and Mikhail Mizintsev (the “Butcher of Mariupol”)—it seems less a question if there is enough evidence to charge (and convict) them of such, but if there is the will to do it. One thing for certain is the longer the Russian invasion of Ukraine continues, the more time it is giving itself to accumulate more crimes against humanity in a war that no reasonable person can justify.

I have mentioned that while Putin has used the propaganda tool of accusing the Ukrainians of being “Nazis,” in fact he himself has been using the tactics of the Nazis to justify and carry out his wars. Why should we doubt that Putin was willing to kill even Russian civilians as the “inevitable” cost of justifying a war in Chechnya by launching false flag bombings, one of which was admitted as such after FSB agents were caught red-handed planting explosive devices in an apartment building—which it claimed was to “test” the response of security forces, the latter of which had already proven itself willing (or incompetent enough) to kill Russian civilians in such operations, like slaughtering most of the hens just to get to the fox.

In the context of war crimes and crimes against humanity, Putin authorizing the use of terror bombing in Ukraine was launched after a “practice run” in Syria. Again, this had as a precedent the German bombing of Guernica in Spain in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War, which was made infamous by Picasso’s famous painting:

 

 

While the German Luftwaffe command had decided that “terror bombing” of civilian residential areas rather than “legitimate” military targets was “counter-productive,” in fact the German (and Italian) bombing of Guernica was completely indiscriminate and resulted in the leveling of three-quarters of the city, with most of the rest of the city also sustaining damage. Franco’s fascist Nationalist party claimed that the Republicans were responsible for the destruction of the city by setting fires as they retreated, and also claimed that only as low as a dozen civilians were killed.

The Nazis soon decided that the laws of war didn’t apply to them, and Guernica merely served as the “practice run” for the terror bombing of Rotterdam in May, 1940. Like Putin’s authorizing terror bombing in civilian centers in Ukraine because of Ukrainian resistance, the bombing of Rotterdam was in response to Hitler’s frustration with Dutch resistance. But Terrorangriff had its limitations; while it was employed during the “Blitz” in the UK, it was done so because of the failure of daylight raids and heavy loss of aircraft, and the  inability to locate specific targets at night, so  “area bombing”—particularly with incendiary bombs—was authorized by the German Luftwaffe command with full knowledge that civilian areas were most likely to be hit.

Not that the allies were completely “innocent,” of course; however, the destruction caused by  the bombing of Dresden—meant to “aid” the Russian forces on the eastern front to prevent the war from dragging on till end of 1945—shocked even Churchill, who decided it was counter-productive to leave German cities in ruins when the war was nearing an end anyways. The use of atomic bombs in Japan was another matter, but then no one really knew how these bombs would actually “perform” when put into action for “real.”

But what Putin and his generals are doing is the deliberate targeting not of military targets, but of civilian targets. Russian missiles and bombing raids are not targeting military sites principally—they are targeting civilian residential areas by direct order in an effort to destroy civilian morale. They did this in Syria, and now they are doing this in Ukraine, with the city of Mariupol the prime exhibit. But even the Germans—before they threw out the laws of war manual into the trash—had known that these kinds of attacks were likely to be counter-productive, because instead of reducing the will to fight, such attacks have only increased the will of the defenders to fight against them.

And that is what Putin in discovering in Ukraine. By attacking civilian centers and not focusing on “legitimate” military targets, Putin has only managed to increase the hatred of Ukrainians against himself and Russian rule. And the longer this war goes on, the more time and evidence will be accumulated by international and Ukrainian prosecutors to charge Putin and his criminal minions with war crimes and crimes against humanity, the latter further evidenced by the discovery of the apparent torture and murder of civilians in previously occupied towns like Bucha.

There probably is enough evidence already, but the next step would be what to do with Putin and his confederates if they are actually charged with crimes and subject to international arrest warrants. That certainly would make for an interesting state of international drama that the world has not seen before. At the very least, these criminals can be punished by using their frozen assets to pay the cost of rebuilding Ukraine.