OPINION:
The entire world was recently shocked by evidence of war crimes by the Russian troops who occupied the small Ukrainian town of Bucha, a once-peaceful suburb of Kyiv. After the Russian defeat at Kyiv by the Ukrainians and the Russian evacuation, many bodies were found strewn on the street or in shallow graves. Credible firsthand newspaper reports and videos documented the slaughter of over 300 victims.
These included men, women and children, some tortured in a basement and some with bound hands, executed with the hallmark KGB/FSB shot in the head. In a land where mass graves of Josef Stalin’s victims are still being discovered, recent mass graves of Ukrainians were uncovered. This was a frightening deja vu in a land where Stalin killed at least six million in 1933-34.
Shortly after the terrible discoveries in Bucha, there was a Russian missile attack on the packed train station at Kramatorsk that was filled with fleeing refugees. The 52 dead and several hundred wounded were almost entirely women, children and elderly. The attack on a fleeing refugee crowd — not on a railway bridge or other military target — served no military purpose. It was a designed attack on the innocent solely to spread terror.
Citizen armies fight mostly for hearth and home — in defense of their land, families and way of life. The Roman warrior Horatius mythically asked what better reason to fight and die than defending the ashes of his fathers and temples of his gods. Soldiers also fight for one another, embodied in the concept of honor. Napoleon famously said that men will do amazing things for certain pieces of colored ribbon.
Our military academy at West Point summarized these values in its motto: “Duty, Honor, Country.” The great Red Army, which famously played a major role in saving the world from Adolf Hitler, deeply commemorated the same values of motherland and honor in its songs. These are much sung on the great Russian holiday of Victory Day in early November. The values are still so deeply honored in Russia that Estonia’s movement of a Red Army memorial nearly led to a rupture in relations with Russia.
The war in Ukraine is not fought in defense of hearth and home, but is a war of conquest of a free, distinct Ukrainian people determined to resist new enslavement. Whatever illusions may have been created by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s propaganda organs, the heroic defense of Kyiv surely proves he has launched a war of enslavement — not liberation. Slaves do not stand up so bravely to massive tanks and helicopters.
After the slaughter and torture of Bucha, there is also no honor left for any Russian soldier involved in Mr. Putin’s mad enterprise. The missile attack on fleeing refugees is neither a military act of war, nor the act of true soldiers. It is the act of criminals pretending to be soldiers. There are no medals for courage worth having bestowed for cowardly attacks on women and children, refugees or bound captives.
Recently, Mr. Putin confirmed his criminal use of terror war on civilians by appointing new commanding officer, Gen. Alexander Dvornikov, the butcher of Syria, whose cavernous face could have come from a horror novel. He is reported to have used gas and torture in Syria. Gen. Dvornikov’s appointment is Mr. Putin’s confirmation that there are to be no limits on his brutal war in Ukraine. He is famous for his slaughter with artillery of many thousands of Syrians through indiscriminate artillery fire, reducing Aleppo and other large Syrian cities to ashes with brutal renegade Chechen mercenaries.
Mr. Putin avoided all service in Afghanistan or any other dangerous place during his KGB service spent safely in East Germany while other brave Russians fought the Afghan War. Mr. Putin, renown as “Putin the Poisoner” for the many opponents he has poisoned, has never once faced the carnage he has created or even a single combat incident.
As I saw the terribly sad pictures of the Bucha dead, I thought back many years to seeing the bodies of friends killed in Vietnam. So deeply sad to remember them in life and know that only memories remain. Likewise seeing so long ago the bodies of our enemies in Vietnam, I felt deeply saddened for them as well, knowing they had mothers and friends who would never again see them.
Imagine the horror of women, children and refugees killed, not in war, but in slaughter like the Nazis. Only someone like Mr. Putin, who has never seen combat, and who is indifferent to human suffering could order such atrocities. There is neither honor nor defense of hearth and home in mad Vlad’s invasion of Ukraine.
He is, as his brave poisoned political opponent Alexei Navalny said, a pretend statesman who is actually a pathetic poisoner. As writer Maxim Gorky’s long-ago description of Stalin, Mr. Putin is a flea magnified by terror into a fearsome creature.
• John O’Neill, a New York Times #1 bestselling author, and Sarah Wynne are the co-authors of “The Dancer and The Devil” (Regnery, April 26, 2022), a forthcoming account of murders and biowar by Josef Stalin, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. Mr. O’Neill is a Naval Academy graduate and decorated Vietnam combat veteran.
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