This is as much about emotion as analysis. For I can’t stop asking myself, why is Putin punishing civilians, non-combatants? Why is Putin punishing children?
One thing is increasingly obvious: the horrible scenes we see from Ukraine— families bloodied, children dead— are not what euphemistically we sometimes describe in wars as “collateral damage.” I’ve seen collateral damage. Where civilians are caught under a building collapsing after artillery fire, that’s collateral damage. Where civilians are caught between enemy factions exchanging gunfire, that’s collateral damage. Even where civilians are caught in a cloud of toxic gas meant to kill enemy soldiers, that’s collateral damage.
But what we’re seeing in news reports by this generation of gutsy journalists is more than collateral damage. By most accounts I’ve read, civilians appear to actually be indiscriminately, maybe even deliberately, targeted. Or at the very least, they are shown no sympathy as entrapped bystanders to a battle as Putin pursues his internationally illegal goals.
CNN‘S international security editor Nick Paton Walsh yesterday opined from Odessa about one nearby attack, in which the Russians “seem to just be lobbing rockets into the city's suburbs.” It prompted him to say of the terrible toll of damage and death, “Even at the most generous assessment, it was through carelessness so extreme it was surely criminal.”
For good measure he also reported “three instances where apparent cluster munitions had landed in residential areas. NATO confirms that cluster bombs, which explode in mid-air and send small lethal projectiles in every direction, have dropped from Russian planes. Cluster bombs have been banned for a decade by the Oslo Convention. So for much of the world, that’s criminal too.
It’s almost as if the Ukrainian forces destroyed by this Russian assault are the collateral damage, while civilians are the ones directly in the Russians’ sights. It would make any rational government with a defiant but inferior force quiver. It also would make almost every step in Putin’s relentless bombardment a war crime.
As I watch, strangely sorry not to be seeing it all firsthand to best understand it as I used to do, I try to put myself in the shoes of the victims of these crimes, as I also used to do. Like any of you, from a safe distance thousands of miles from the war now, I can only try to imagine how it must feel to be a free country one day and under attack the next. I try, but I probably don’t even get close.
I try to imagine how it must feel to have your home pulverized, or equally scary, to wonder if it will be. I try to imagine how it must feel to have your work shut down and your income cut off, the prospects of renewal in a suddenly war-torn country dim. I try to imagine how it feels to see your schools and your hospitals and your bridges reduced to rubble. And how it feels to lose water and power and heat in the dead of winter with no switch to turn it all back on.
I try to imagine how it feels to be told for a third time now that your assailant will open corridors of evacuation from cities under siege, when the first two promises quickly collapsed under a barrage of shellfire.
I try to imagine the destitution of the refugees— UNICEF says there are 1.7 million so far and half of them are children. I try to imagine how defenseless Ukrainian parents must feel as they try to do the profoundly paramount job of a parent, to shelter their children… in normal circumstances from sickness and hunger and harm, but now from the bullets, from the bombs, from the trauma that every war triggers.
And I try to imagine these poor people wanting to ask Vladimir Putin questions that none can accurately, let alone logically, answer: “What did we do to deserve this? What did we ever do to you?”
I try to imagine how it feels to be attacked by a man with no scruples, a man who abandons international norms, a man whose ambitions for his own nation leave not an ounce of sympathy for the aspirations of another.
And a man whose personal history suggests no chance of contrition. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Carlos Lozada just wrote in The Washington Post about First Person, the book Putin composed more than twenty years ago as he was rising to power. “If you become jittery,” he wrote of conflicts with adversaries, “they will think that they are stronger.”
In many ways as we’ve seen these past two weeks, through their intrepid resistance and their principled president’s inspiring courage, it’s the Ukrainians who are stronger. They are living proof of Thomas Jefferson’s wise words, “When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hold on.”
I try to imagine how it feels at the end of that rope. I try, but I probably don’t even get close.
Over almost five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies and politics at home and international crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, and the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists.
Putin knows that losing the war (in any sense) threatens his survival. I believe he will do anything to retain power. This means total war that terrorizes citizens, devastates cities, and gives no hope of anything other than total military victory. Putin will also need to take out Zilinsky given his importance to the Ukrainian resistance. In the end, I believe Putin will fail militarily and his days in power will end. The question is, how many lives (Ukrainian, Russian and western) will he take before it ends?
I have heard many the reasons why we cannot get involved, and understand them intellectually, but I also have a heart that I cannot simply ignore. I fear the damage being done to us, as we sit in front of our televisions and see the carnage, the deliberate destruction of civilian structures, and we watch in horror in what can only be the deliberate killing of innocents - women, children and the elderly. I understand Putin has threatened the possibility of a nuclear response if we become directly involved, and we certainly do not want a nuclear conflagration, but does he continue to move forward under that threat to other countries after Ukraine? He already made it clear that he wants the Russian Empire back, and there are a number of sovereign nations that once comprised the Soviet Union. Are we really doing enough? Or do we become numb and desensitized to the brutality of war? Do we continue to buy Russian oil that pays for his aggression and war crimes? Do we continue to import goods and materials from Russia? Do we continue to seek Russian help in negotiating with another country, Iran, which is hell bent on hegemony over its neighbors, and has called for the extermination of Israel? Do we take a stand at some point? I understand that NATO nations will, under Article 5 unite and fight if one member is attacked. Does that mean that other democracies around the world are on their own against the wolves on the prowl? At what point do we say this shall not stand? Or do we cede the field proclaiming peace at any cost? Thank you Greg for what you had to say. It is important and much appreciated.