Max Boot discusses the recently discovered and confirmed massacres in Bucha, Ukraine, by Russian forces:
But it is one thing to kill civilians with bombs and missiles. It is another to kill them with bullets to the back of the head. This is a different level of evil — the kind of organized atrocity that Europe has not seen since the Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia in 1995. Russia’s “anti-Nazi” operation has led Russian troops to act precisely as the Nazis once did. If there is any justice in the world, Russian war criminals, from Putin on down, will someday face the kind of justice that the Nazis received at Nuremberg.
This, sadly, is the Russian way of war. It is how Putin’s forces fought in Chechnya and Syria — and before that, how Soviet forces fought in Afghanistan and in central Europe during World War II. They commit war crimes to terrorize the population into surrender. But it hasn’t worked in Ukraine. Russia’s savagery has simply caused the Ukrainians to resist all the harder because they know they are fighting not just for their freedom but for their very survival. [WaPo]
Katyn massacre exhumation (Wikipedia)
Boot is right, but doesn’t go far enough. Implementing horrible, gutting tactics, such as mass execution of civilians, or the destruction of the Polish military officer class during the invasion of Poland in World War II, known as the Katyn Massacre, is all about future PsyOps, the creation of a national persona of savagery such that it’ll discourage potential future adversaries from engaging Russia on the battlefield.
It’s future terror tactics.
But Russia’s apparent incompetence in battle is a major danger to the leaders and soldiers who have authorized and engaged in this terrible activity, and they remain heavily armed, including the option of using their nuclear weapons. How this’ll play out remains to be seen. So far, the oligarchs and Russian people have failed to put a stop to the carnage, despite high personal costs for many. Are they mislead, as many analysts have suggested? Or is Putin such a terror-laden figure that no one dares to go up against him?
