Opinion

Scorched earth, terror and impunity, the Putin trail

photo_camera izium-ucrania-guerra

The setbacks being suffered by the supposedly very powerful Russian army in Ukraine, the disbanding disguised as a retreat to regain momentum and the astonishing reconquest of cities and countryside by Ukrainian patriots, are allowing the atrocities committed by the Russian president's occupying forces to be seen in the heat of the moment.  

Even if we strip the successive gloomy discoveries of their propagandistic component, there are already many scenarios where ostensible evidence of the terror unleashed by the invaders sent by Vladimir Putin is concentrated. The latest graves discovered in Izium, with nearly 500 corpses with visible signs of having been atrociously tortured, add to the already voluminous book of horrors of the so-called "special military operation", which in practice has become a war without rules, where Russia's leader is daily citing the Geneva Conventions.  

The forensic investigations already being carried out by international experts, starting with those of the United Nations and the European Union, will shed as much light as possible on Russia's terrible and sinister behaviour in this operation, for which the country will most likely face a serious political, economic, social and even institutional crisis. Unlike other major conflicts in the past, it will not take long this time to learn the truth about Russia's systematic bombing of civilian targets, including especially hospitals and kindergartens.  

As an advanced disciple of Stalin and a seasoned member of the KGB, Putin has gone by the book, denying all the evidence and even blaming the Ukrainians themselves for the terror. In other words, the same as the "little father"-dictator of the Soviet Union did when he carried out the mass executions of Poland's most prominent officers and social figures, buried their corpses in the Katyn forest and blamed the Nazis.  

The withdrawal of Russian soldiers from some parts of Ukrainian territory also follows the traditional handbook: destruction of everything that can serve the enemy, looting of supplies, theft of everything of value and scorched earth. And, as we are seeing, murdering after terrible tortures citizens who have not agreed to be willingly conquered by the Russian war machine.  

Covering oneself with the mantle of victory that justifies everything

History is rich in examples of great criminals who have gone unpunished, and in more than a few cases have even been extolled as great heroes, thanks above all to the fact that the victory achieved in the end justifies the exactions and brutalities committed to achieve it. After all, it was not so long ago that the first legal instrument regulating the laws of war was established (Lieber Code, 1863).  

Putin, like China's President Xi Jinping, seeks to change the current world order based on laws and rules. The invasion of Ukraine, trampling on international law, was the trigger for this intended change, already anticipated with the annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014.  

We are thus witnessing a geopolitical struggle on a universal scale. Based on previous UN votes on the war in Ukraine, Russia is not alone. Indeed, those who would be in a numerical minority would be the democracies that demand the prevalence of such a rules-based international order.  

Therefore, if Vladimir Putin's trail of destruction and terror in Ukraine were to go unpunished, such an outcome would have to be read in terms of the defeat not only of the invaded Ukraine but also of all the liberal democracies that support it, i.e. NATO and the EU for the most part. One more reason why the West could not even accept what in popular terms might be considered a draw. Russia, despite those who run it, is too big and too eternal to disappear. Not so its president, however powerful he may be at the moment. Putin, the architect of the invasion and thus of all the horrors that followed, will not be able to remain in power once the war is over - be it by armistice, liberation or even a hard-hitting peace treaty - because someone will have to answer for those war crimes. It may be that before his downfall he will eliminate by whatever means (he has recently become fond of defenestration) all those who could serve as a dike of containment, but it is difficult to think that in the end he himself can escape the long arm of a universal justice that is already calling out to him.