On its way to completing two months since it tried to take Kiev in a lightning invasion, the Russian army left key areas around the Ukrainian capital after repeated failures in its attacks.
The retreat is opening windows for the world to see the hellish living conditions under which civilians unable to leave the occupied zones have lived in recent weeks.
In the suburbs of Kiev — mainly in the cities of Irpin, Butcha and Hostomel, but also in more remote areas in the west of the city or along the road that runs north to Chernihiv and the border with Belarus — hundreds of civilian bodies were found, murdered in a cruel and systematic way.
Many of the victims were found with their hands tied behind their bodies. Individuals cowardly subjugated and killed with point-blank shots to the head. A man slumped next to his bicycle and small suitcases, as if he’d been hit while trying to hastily leave that place.
Civilians, men and women, abandoned in the middle of the street, carrying small belongings or some food. Lifeless people in mounds hidden inside dark garages, some incinerated and others still under tires and branches that must have burned for evidence to be destroyed. Hundreds of innocent people buried in mass graves — like the mayor of Motijin, murdered with her husband and son.
The Ukrainian reaction was no less fierce. Many columns of Russian armored vehicles, completely destroyed by air or ground attacks, were reduced to charred and contorted military rubbish, scattered in various parts. In Hostomel, an entire SOBR (Special Rapid Response Unit) unit was still burning when the first journalists arrived in time to document that dozens of Russian special soldiers, the feared Spetsnaz, had died during the attack.
The destruction in the early days of the war of the famous Antonov AN-225, the largest plane in the world, parked at the airport, would prove that the Ukrainians also did not care much about the accuracy of their attacks – it is unlikely that Russian troops, using the airport as a base, could benefit by launching mortars at the plane within a perimeter they already controlled.
Surrounded, probably scared and exhausted, having spent days under attack by the Ukrainian army without being sure of escape, abandoned by the nation that threw them there, promising that it would be a quick war and that they could be welcomed as heroes, the Russian soldiers turned against the civilian population trapped in the occupied areas.
The war crimes against civilians found around Kiev came just days after a video showing what were believed to be Ukrainian soldiers torturing and murdering Russian prisoners began to be shared on the internet.
In the video, which could not be independently verified, men pull three hooded prisoners out of a van before shooting them in the legs and killing them — not before forcing them to see the charred bodies of other soldiers now freed from the suffering they have suffered. those living were just beginning to feel.
Both sides, Russia and Ukraine, have officially denied that their armies committed crimes during the war. The official versions are that the images of civilians killed around Kiev and of Russian soldiers being tortured were fabricated and distributed to purchased journalists, with the intention of defaming the respective forces and provoking reactions.
Due to the large number of images and reports collected by journalists in the field, it is easy to understand that the Russian government, by disqualifying the work of these professionals, assumes that it has no argument to deny that it committed such crimes – this, in itself, would already be a proof of guilt.
On the other hand, the propagation of information (often malicious) against the Kiev Army, realizing that Ukrainian Nazi soldiers murdered in cold blood those who had collaborated with the Russians, would also not be happening if Volodymyr Zelensky’s government did not criminalize the work of journalists and authorize press access to combat areas.
Since neither Russians nor Ukrainians allow journalists to work independently, it is safe to assume that both are committing crimes.
The violence on both sides in recent days inaugurates a war fueled by hatred, by the desire for justice, revenge and the intention to double the pain suffered. In these circumstances, without observers, dialogue and agreement between the parties becomes more difficult. Each one can rely only on the wounds or propaganda that best serves him.
In a free-for-all situation, the torture of the enemy and the execution of the innocent, and even many civilian and military deaths, would be unable to stop the violence from continuing or proliferating. War crimes, despite their different proportions, make everything worse, preventing the wound opened by the conflict from being healed.
