Russia's invasion of Ukraine becomes entrenched

Volodymir Zelenski is the king of communication: he has already won the war of content, images and external positioning by exposing the atrocities committed by Russian troops in different areas of Ukraine, which have practically wiped out entire cities, in several cases leaving a trail of corpses.

The Ukrainian president continues to face the Kremlin, not only has he withstood almost two months of intense bombardment with heavy artillery, especially missiles, but he also decorates Ukrainian soldiers and from the Kiev trench he makes speeches to touch the heartstrings of the West through telematic messages to the parliaments of a group of countries.

On 5 April, he spoke in the Spanish Congress - to a packed audience in the chamber - with the full government, legislators, ambassadors, special guests and, of course, the press. More than 650 people listened to Zelenski in situ through several screens distributed inside the building.

"Imagine mothers writing contact details of relatives on their children's backs in case they are killed in a bombing; imagine people in Europe living in a cellar for more than a month... It is April 2022 but it seems like April 1937 when the whole world heard about the devastation in one of your cities, in Guernica," said the Ukrainian president in his speech.

Aware of the importance of the media and how powerful the message is through the media and social networks, Zelenski has participated in twelve Parliaments to which he has taken a sensitive message, almost always loaded with symbolism specific to each country.

In front of the Bundestag he asked legislators to avoid a new stone wall that seeks to defeat democracy; in Westminster he appealed to the spirit of Churchill who should have led the British nation in the Second World War and before the US Congress the Ukrainian leader said that he also had a dream. 

To virtually everyone he has called for more sanctions against Russia to stop the bombing and bring it to a ceasefire and he has not ceased to call for more military hardware. 

In particular he has sought the shelter of Israel -Zelenski is of Jewish origin- urging condemnation of Russia for the atrocities it is carrying out in the middle of 2022 with war crimes and crimes against humanity; he demanded sanctions on the Knesset, he asked Prime Minister Naftali Bennett to borrow the Iron Dome and the defence companies to sell him the Pegasus spy system. Israel has decided not to participate with anything.

Nor has it condemned the images of dead bodies of civilians with their hands tied and shot, or other civilians shot in the back of the head, or the pictures of streets with civilians lying on the ground next to their bicycles or vehicles deliberately destroyed by shrapnel. 

The withdrawal of Russian troops from Kiev and its surroundings to concentrate on the east and south of Ukraine, on the border with Belarus and Russia and in the coastal area with access to the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea, has made it possible for humanitarian aid, Ukrainian soldiers and NGOs to come in to help the population that had been hiding for weeks without food, water, electricity or heating. 

What they have found on entering many localities around the capital is a mass of rubble, collapsed buildings, areas obliterated by bombs, people hiding in cellars and hundreds of corpses. 

Zelenski loudly denounces "the biggest war crimes since the Second World War", which must be investigated and punished with determination by the relevant courts. 

The town of Bucha, 71 kilometres from Kiev, has shaken with its images of civilians murdered, tortured and shot at point-blank range. In one grave, 340 corpses were found. 

In his address to the UN Security Council, also on 5 April, prior to his meeting with Spain, the Ukrainian leader again called for unity and a more vigorous response to stop Russia ignoring the UN, international agreements, treaties and the Geneva Convention itself. 

"If this continues, countries will rely solely on the power of their own forces to ensure their security and not on the law or international institutions," Zelenski asserted forcefully via videoconference to the UN.

He used his speech to call for reform to overcome the Kremlin's vetoes. The UN Security Council is made up of 15 members, five of which are permanent: China, the United States, the Russian Federation, France and the United Kingdom; and 10 members are elected every two years by the General Assembly. 

Ukraine, as well as the United States and other European countries, proposed Russia's expulsion from the UN Human Rights Council, a proposal that was finally consummated and which has nothing to do with being expelled from the Security Council as some media outlets have confusingly reported. 

António Guterres, head of the UN, has been harshly criticised in various circuits because in the current conflict, announced since 4 December in the Washington Post, he has lacked initiatives to stop it. Not even at the negotiating tables proposed by Turkey on Turkish soil, between the Russian and Ukrainian delegations, has the UN been present, whether it was Guterres or Martin Griffiths, recently appointed by him to the role of peace mediator between Russia and Ukraine. A position he took on more than a month after the invasion began. 

Zelenski reminds the UN that, if it does not show greater capacity against Russia, the precedent will be very bad because any other country could follow suit. 

He also denounced a genocide in his country that is coming to light as Russian soldiers retreat to concentrate their battles in the Donbas region and in this death corridor Mariupol is dying because no humanitarian aid, food or medicine is getting in. Russian soldiers have encircled the city and are applying a Leningrad-style closure, trying to overcome the morale of the Ukrainian population and soldiers. 

There is a horror, says Olena Kurenkova, trapped in Ukraine - along with her family - she has been fleeing the shelling of the troops, first leaving Kiev to take refuge in the family home in Irpin 50 kilometres from the capital; then the siege was deadly with shelling every 15 minutes forcing thousands to flee to Poland. 

The Ukrainian journalist tells me about her and her family's ordeal to survive: "After the heavy shelling in Irpin, me, my mother and grandmother and the pet, we went to Cherkasy to take refuge in a friend's house; my father, grandfather and brother stayed in Iripin in our mother's house. My brother was wounded when he tried to move in his car, he was taken to a hospital in Kiev and a few days later a bomb destroyed our house".

Kurenkova is grateful that after several days without communication with her family members, they are once again reunited in Cherkasy waiting for her brother to be released from hospital. 

"It's not only Bucha that was occupied by the Russians for a month, but also Irpin, Mariupol, Kharkov, Mykolaiv... there are many towns and villages devastated by the Russians with enormous damage to human life. I can't understand why the Russian troops have been so cruel to us, to the people, to the civilians. If in Bucha there are hundreds of dead bodies, in Mariupol there are thousands dead," she says in dismay. 

While Zelenski has travelled to Bucha to talk to the survivors of Russian artillery and speaks of genocide, US President Joe Biden reiterates his position, calling Russian dictator Vladimir Putin a war criminal.

"This man is brutal and what happened in Bucha is outrageous... we've all seen it. Putin is responsible for what happened and must therefore answer for those crimes," he said. 

Josep Borrell, the European Union (EU) High Representative for Foreign Affairs, said that Mariupol is the Aleppo of Europe and the Guernica of Ukraine destroyed by war crimes and crimes against humanity. 

The UN has set up a commission to investigate possible war crimes and other abuses committed by Russian soldiers on Ukrainian territory against the civilian population. 

"The commission is to collect, summarise and analyse evidence of violations and abuses, including gender, and systematically record and store all information, documentation and evidence, including interviews, witness testimony and forensic evidence, in accordance with international law standards," explained Federico Villegas, president of the UN Human Rights Council. 

A few days ago, Spain joined 40 countries in filing a complaint against Putin before the International Criminal Court as a perpetrator of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

This is more of a moral condemnation and a global condemnation of Putin, given that Russia is not a member and does not recognise the powers of the Court, which is based in The Hague, Switzerland. Neither are the United States, China, India, Pakistan, Turkey and Israel.  

However, if this multi-pronged initiative succeeds, the International Criminal Court could order that Putin be barred from entering the 123 countries that make up the Court.

US military intelligence believes that the present and future of US troops is to maintain a rotating set of forces on NATO's eastern flank at permanent bases. This will be announced at the NATO meeting in Madrid in June.

Mark. A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the House Armed Services Committee that a real US presence in Europe "is a good deterrent" to present threats.

The US already has rotating units in the Baltic Republics and Poland. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began on 24 February, US troops have reinforced their flank in the Baltics as well as in Poland, Romania, Hungary and Slovakia. So far it has 100,000 US troops on European soil. 

"My advice would be to create permanent bases, but not to station them permanently. This gives the effect of permanence by circulating rotational forces through these permanent bases. By doing that, the army does not incur the costs of family moves, postal exchanges, schools, housing," Milley advised. 

Speaking at the same hearing, Pentagon chief Lloyd J. Austin III said the US is prepared to supply Ukraine with more weapons and predicted a long war. 

"We want to make sure we meet their needs and provide them with the things that are most useful to their fight. Anti-armour and anti-aircraft capabilities have been effective as has the use of unmanned aerial vehicles; an unheralded capability is the use of secure tactical radios that has allowed the Ukrainians to maintain command and control during battles with Russian forces," he said. 
 
Austin questioned the effectiveness of the Russian military, which has shown the world the weaknesses of a nuclear power: "The Russians have significant mechanised capability, but if you look at the techniques and tactics, the procedures they used were not very effective. It calls into question the training, the leadership at the NCO level and their basic logistical capability". 

For his part, Milley said in this regard that the US has trained Ukraine since 2014, the same thing happened with Afghan troops, but when they saw the Taliban threat head-on they decided not to fight and surrendered. Instead, the Ukrainians have strong leadership. 

"Zelenski has great leadership in this crisis. There is also capability at the tactical level in the captains, lieutenants and non-commissioned officers, and this training in terms of mission-type command, distributed junior-level leadership and NCO corps has been very important," Milley said. 

Allied NATO members are also willing to give Ukraine more weapons. Last Thursday, 7 April, at NATO headquarters, Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba arrived with a key agenda to call for "more arms, arms and arms" to repel the Russians.

"In recent weeks, the entire Ukrainian army and nation have shown that we know how to fight, we know how to win, but without a sustainable and sufficient supply of the weapons Ukraine has asked for, these victories will be accompanied by enormous sacrifices," he said in Brussels and in the presence of Alliance leader Jens Stoltenberg. 

Ukraine, Kuleba said, urgently needs aircraft, anti-ship missiles, personal armoured vehicles and heavy air defence systems and innovative military technology. 

"The best way to help Ukraine now is to provide it with everything it needs to contain Putin and defeat the Russian army in Ukraine so that the war does not escalate further. I think the deal Ukraine is offering is fair: you give us weapons, we sacrifice our lives and the war is contained in Ukraine," he said.

Germany recently supplied Ukraine with anti-tank weapons, other NATO allies have provided short-range man-portable anti-aircraft missiles, radars, anti-tank missiles, NLAW anti-tank weapons, thousands of rounds of ammunition, Stinger missiles and the new delivery will include armoured vehicles, tanks, coastal defence systems, medium-range anti-aircraft systems; T-72 battle tanks and drones because this is the war of the drones, in the age of drones, since they have shown their logistical effectiveness first with the Bayraktar (Turkish-made drones) which have destroyed quite a few Russian tanks and battle tanks. 

Ukraine will now receive a hundred of the powerful US drones known as 'killer drones', the Switchblades are precision-engineered. 

Peace will continue to await in a 'stalemate' between the Russian and Ukrainian delegations' talks, with the Kremlin signalling that it has shown goodwill by withdrawing its troops from Kiev and its environs and denying war crimes in Bucha and other cities while intensifying its offensive in Mariupol, Odessa and other cities in the south and east. It continues to hover in the air, amid mutual accusations from Kiev and Moscow, which warn of the possible use of chemical weapons against Ukrainians. Peace is a pipe dream.