Ever since Russian troops left the region around Kiev, making room for the world to see the human cost of the invasion, which is not yet two months old, the Ukrainian president has said that Russia has committed war crimes, the worst since the Second World War.
The Biafra War, the civil wars in Central America, Liberia and Sierra Leone, conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, Bosnia and Kosovo, the famine used as a weapon of mass extermination in Somalia and Ethiopia, internal conflicts in the Democratic Republic Congo, the genocides in Rwanda, in the Darfur region and of the Rohingya people in Myanmar, the kidnapping of Yazidi women, sold as sex slaves, the fight against the Islamic State in Mosul and Aleppo – there is no lack in the world of examples of terrible atrocities committed against civilians. Despite the great popularity enjoyed by Zelensky, his rhetorical exaggeration was met with suspicion even among supporters.
The impression is also growing that the Ukrainian government is not telling the whole truth about the circumstances in which many of the deaths in the Kiev region actually took place.
The fighting has been taking place far from the eyes of journalists or independent observers, and the massive destruction of entire cities or regions occupied by Russian troops suggests that Ukrainian counterattacks may also be killing civilians trapped in conflict zones.
If it weren’t for the dispute over the port city of Mariupol, the departure of Russian troops from around Kiev would practically return the conflict to its pre-invasion condition on February 24th. In addition to no longer being a threat to the capital and the government of Zelensky, the Moscow Army, at least for the moment, when moving away from the border with Poland, also ceases to be an imminent danger to NATO.
For many, the certainty that Putin was wrong to start the war does not prevent the almost unrestricted support of the West for the Ukrainian government from being questioned. With the erosion of time and Zelensky himself, civilians become further victims of Kiev’s rhetorical exaggerations.
If war ceases to be an international threat, Ukraine — and especially its civilian population — will need journalists committed more than ever to the task of telling the world what is really happening.
Over the past eight years, the conflict in the Donbass region has barely made the headlines. Now, the Ukrainian government’s communication strategy of relying on social media and the president’s popularity may not be enough for the public to continue to care about the plight of the local people.
Investigators at the International Criminal Court — who are truly responsible for bringing charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity — are barred from working on the front lines by UN security protocols. In this case, much of the evidence they use is the result of the work of the press and independent observers.
Victims of the war in Ukraine need access to justice, even if the crimes committed so far are not the worst since World War II.
So that the Ukrainian people do not suffer even more, abandoned under the wreckage of a war that is beginning to be forgotten, and if the government really hopes that those responsible for the crimes committed around Kiev are punished, it is essential that independent journalists and investigators have access to the front lines.
