It is easy, I think, for the world in general to get numb to war crimes committed by Russia against Ukraine. But it is not easy for Ukrainians. Virtually every day, Putin’s men target Ukrainian schools, hospitals, apartment buildings, etc. For today’s report from Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, go here.
• Few Westerners, I think, realize how openly genocidal Russian officials are — I mean, in their words, as well as their actions. I think Westerners would be shocked, if they knew — even some of those sympathetic to the Kremlin. Dmitry Medvedev is very open. He has had a career as Putin’s No. 2. (He was No. 2 even when he, Medvedev, had the title “president.”) Today, he is deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia (whose chairman, of course, is Putin).
Medvedev’s 🇷🇺 new genocidal message: Ukraine is a cancerous tumor. The existence of any Ukrainian state is a mortal threat to Ukrainians. Their only choice is to become Russians or die.
CC: those who think Russia is interested in freezing the conflict. https://t.co/F6RNTus5KW pic.twitter.com/hoZlb0OOEN— Yaroslav Trofimov (@yarotrof) January 17, 2024
• One of the things you hear from people who oppose U.S. support of Ukraine — and anyone’s support of Ukraine — is that the Ukrainians had a chance for a negotiated peace in early 2022 and declined it (so great, apparently, was their thirst for war). Yaroslav Trofimov, as you know, is the chief foreign-affairs correspondent of the Wall Street Journal. He addresses this question of peace negotiations in his new book. And the Journal has excerpted the relevant portion: here.
• Journalism in the Ukraine war has been excellent and often very brave. There is no end of stories to read — many of them painful, many of them inspiring. Some of them both. Let me recommend a dispatch from Christopher Miller, of the Financial Times. The heading is “The last Russia-Ukraine border crossing.” I will paste a paragraph:
One woman says she stopped sending her child to school because he was being taught that Russia — not Ukraine — was his “motherland” and was forced to sing the Russian national anthem daily. When the woman ignored a verbal warning from a school administrator by phone that she must send her child back to class, she was paid a visit by armed Russian soldiers. If the child didn’t return to school the next day, they would pay the family another visit to “take care of the situation”, which the woman understood to mean shoot them.
• A dispatch from RFE/RL is headed “How One Elderly Ukrainian Made Her Way Home From Russia.”
The Russian volunteers assisting Hanna knew the only remaining way to get her out of Russia would be via the Kolotilovka-Pokrovka border crossing between Russia’s western Belgorod region and Ukraine’s Sumy region. The last 2 kilometers of that journey, they warned her, must be made on foot.
“That’s OK,” the 86-year-old mother of four said, despite the freezing temperatures. “I will make it. I have my cane.”
What a woman. And bless those Russian volunteers, forever.