The grotesque images of civilians being slaughtered in Ukraine echo the horrors I witnessed covering the war in Bosnia three decades ago, and President Joe Biden was right to use the word “genocide” to describe the mass murder Russia is committing in Ukraine.
Today’s atrocities are eerily reminiscent of the targeted killings in Sarajevo: civilians butchered waiting in line for bread, hospitals and schools demolished, and unarmed innocents with hands tied behind their backs executed with bullets to the head. The world experienced a new level of horror when it saw the aftermath of Russia’s missile attack in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, where at least 52 civilians were massacred in a train station while trying to evacuate.
What’s more chilling than the denials of Russia’s war criminals are the Kremlin’s brazen lies that Ukrainians are doing these things to themselves to make Russia look bad. Bosnian Serbs told the same sickening lies when they pounded the city of Sarajevo with mortars and 155 mm artillery shells from the hillsides in 1992, blaming Bosniaks for the terrifying scenes of carnage engulfing their blood-soaked city.
International tribunals and lawyers will ultimately determine whether the slaughter in Ukraine fits the legal definition of genocide, but as Biden said, “It sure looks that way.” The 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention defines it as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” Vladimir Putin has made it clear he doesn’t believe Ukraine has a right to exist as a separate nation.
The U.S. and NATO have sought to help Ukraine defend itself while wisely trying not to ignite World War III in which Americans and Russians start killing each other. But short of that, the West needs to send more weapons to help Ukraine beat back Russian troops as the Kremlin gathers its forces for what may be an even more brutal assault in Ukraine’s east and south.
The West needs to keep ratcheting up the economic sanctions and military assistance to Ukraine, but that’s not all. We need to wage the war of communication even more effectively to fight the barrage of disinformation coming from the Kremlin.
The best antidote for misinformation is the truth, and the West must keep telling it loudly and trying to get it to the Russian people — using virtual private networks, social media, the internet and other technology to bypass Russian state media’s truth blackout about the war.
It will not be easy. Putin’s regime has not only outlawed the media there from using the word “war,” but he also has called Russians who oppose his policies “scum and traitors.” In a return to Stalinist tactics, ordinary Russians are beginning to inform on others if they don’t toe the party line. Stalin wrote the book on punishing dissent, and Putin is well practiced at the art.
But independent Russian media have relocated outside Russia, as have many Western outlets, where they can report more freely and speak the truth. Biden’s rhetoric calling Putin a war criminal and labeling his war crimes genocide are a good step in that direction. Unlike Putin’s previous bloody assaults on Chechnya, Georgia and Syria, he can’t hide his brutal actions so easily this time in Ukraine.
Former President Barack Obama, speaking recently at a conference on “Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy” at the University of Chicago, observed that Putin may not have fully anticipated “the degree to which the nature of war has changed, where everybody is seeing exactly what is happening on a real-time basis.”
The chances of Putin ever facing trial as a war criminal are highly unlikely, but his atrocities are being carefully documented. Others before him thought they could get away with genocide. Former Bosnian Serb leaders Gen. Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, along with former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, all thought no one could touch them when they waged a merciless war on civilians in Bosnia. They were wrong. They ended up in The Hague.
At one point in the war in Bosnia, Mladic, commanding Bosnian Serb fighters besieging the capital city in 1992, ordered artillery officers to turn their guns on residential areas of Sarajevo and was heard saying, “Burn it all.” History recorded it.
In Ukraine, Russian soldiers have been recorded giving equally appalling orders. “If they are civilians, slay them all,” ordered one Russian soldier in a radio transmission intercepted and reported by Ukrainian forces. Witnesses arriving in Bucha after the Russians withdrew found bodies strewed in the streets and eyewitness accounts of murder, rape, kidnapping and looting. Evidence is being gathered of war crimes, but trials must wait for now.
Just as with Bosnia, the West has not provided all the help possible to prevent the massacres, nor moved quickly enough to turn the tide. Just as with Bosnia, Western powers that swore “never again” after World War II have not stopped the latest mass murder from happening again in Europe, this time in Ukraine.
But that may be changing, as each new assault on Ukraine’s people and cities builds a stronger case for more forceful support. The U.S., NATO and their allies continue to ramp up weapons shipments to Ukraine and tighten economic sanctions on Putin and his regime.
The Biden administration announced Wednesday it is authorizing an additional $800 million in military assistance, including Mi-17 helicopters, artillery systems, armored personnel carriers and defense drones. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said Ukraine urgently needs more weapons as soon as possible to keep fending off the Russian assault. Time is critical.
The cynicism of aggressors who think they can murder people and change borders by force is boundless. Putin probably doesn’t think he will ever face justice as he wages his relentless, murderous, unjustified war of choice against Ukraine, but he should worry. History is watching.
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ABOUT THE WRITER
Storer H. Rowley, a former national editor and foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, teaches journalism and communication at Northwestern University.
