Depravity and Dignity

A report from the Associated Press is headed “Ukraine mourns as rescuers search the rubble of a Kyiv children’s hospital struck by a missile.” The details are ghastly, and anyone can understand avoidance of them. But the generalities, we probably ought to know.

• Olexander Scherba circulates a photo — a photo that one can bear, but that is illustrative all the same:

• What was life like at the children’s hospital before the Russian attack? Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty has a photo album:

• Ilia Ponomarenko is a leading Ukrainian journalist. (I podcasted with him in May.) He thinks some faces ought to be known:

• Putin seems in a chipper mood, after his attack on the children’s hospital. The prime minister of India sits down to tea with him:

Democratic governments have to deal with monsters from time to time. I’m not sure you have to sit down to tea with them — especially on days when they bomb children’s hospitals.

• Earlier this year, the Kremlin killed off Alexei Navalny, who was the principal opposition leader in Russia. But why not go after his widow, too? Yulia Navalnaya is in exile. The Kremlin has issued a warrant for her arrest. She has just become the chairman of the Human Rights Foundation, which is based in New York. On hearing of the arrest warrant, Ms. Navalnaya called Putin “a murderer and a war criminal,” someone who belongs in prison: “not in The Hague, in a cozy cell with a TV set, but in Russia, in the same kind of prison and the same kind of cramped cell where he killed Alexei.”

Last month, I met Yulia Navalnaya at the Oslo Freedom Forum. The dignity of that woman, the grief she contains, the courage she exhibits — all of that was remarkable.

Will she remain alive, wherever she lives, or will Putin & Co. bump her off? They are not very choosy about where their targets live.

• Good news concerning Vladimir Kara-Murza, the democracy leader and political prisoner:

(That message is from Vladimir’s wife, Evgenia.)

• The Moscow Times is a Russian news organization in exile — as all Russian media outlets, if they are independent, must be. Yesterday, the paper had to publish a report on itself:

Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office has labeled The Moscow Times “undesirable,” a designation that bans Russians from working with or having links to the organization, with criminal prosecution for violations.

• When Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, went to Washington, he went to the Reagan Institute, which was natural (even as it is natural, I suppose, for Viktor Orbán to go to the new Heritage Foundation). A taste of the event:

• A report in the Washington Post: “Russia recruits sympathizers online for sabotage in Europe, officials say.” An interesting, important story.

And here is a press release from U.S. law enforcement: “Justice Department Leads Efforts Among Federal, International, and Private Sector Partners to Disrupt Covert Russian Government-Operated Social Media Bot Farm.” A fascinating account.

Bravo to the DoJ. Glad our guys are “on it.” Hope they will continue to be.

• President Biden condemned Putin’s attack on the children’s hospital in Kyiv, calling it “a horrific reminder of Russia’s brutality.” (For his full statement, go here.) Is it too much to ask the leader of the Republican Party to do the same? I’m afraid it is.