Right until it actually happened, the Europeans did not believe it would. Then, the military aggression began on several fronts, from above and from below. But very soon, it became clear that this was no clash between soldiers. The bombs that fell on Kyiv, Mariupol and Kharkiv landed indiscriminately on civilians: airports, blocks of flats, hospitals. On 24 February 2022 alone, the UN reported 25 civilians killed and more than 100 injured.
Many Ukrainians – women, children and the elderly – chose to flee their homes. By 20 March, their number was already 10 million and rising. The UN calculates that seven million Ukrainians are displaced internally in the country and that an even greater number has left it, a minority (of Russian speakers) to Russia and the majority to Europe: eight million people listed to date. Some of them would return to their country after a few months, depending on the local situation, but most of them are still residing within the European Union, including 1.5 million in Poland alone, which has risen to the occasion with exemplary hospitality, and more than one million in Germany. The management of this unprecedented wave of immigration was led by the institutions and the member states, with notable efficiency and speed: our citizens were not short on solidarity.
Other Ukrainian civilians made the choice to stay at home, despite the enormous risks, going to ground whenever the sirens wailed, in their basements or taking shelter in the underground, often in cities, towns and villages that had been largely flattened. Getting food and sanitary aid to them was and remains a logistical nightmare for humanitarian workers, heroes amid hell.
Ukrainian civil society as a whole is patriotic, brave and resilient. Many ordinary citizens produced makeshift bombs, shelters, bullet-proof vests and helmets for their soldiers and carried out acts of sabotage, collected useful intelligence and even, in some cases, executed traitors.
But the war rumbled on. Two bombs that fell on Kramatorsk railway station left 57 civilians dead and over 100 injured. More than 700 healthcare institutions have been attacked, including the children’s hospital at Chernihiv and kindergartens in Kharkiv and Vilniansk. More than 2000 education establishments have been damaged, 300 of them irreparably. There were deliberate attacks on civilians fleeing in their cars. In the autumn, the Russian army turned its attention to the energy infrastructure, depriving millions of civilians of electricity, heating and even water. Civilians have also been used as human shields or held prisoner, as was tragically the case in Yahidne, in basements without any form of hygiene, forced to wallow in urine of Russian soldiers, for weeks on end. Not all of them got out alive.
Women, from the very young to the very old, have been the victim of individual or collective rape and have been forced to strip. Children have not been spared in the bombing campaigns. Thousands of them (more than 16,000, according to Kiyv) have been forcibly deported to Russia, to be “adopted” or “re-educated” there, without their parents being informed of their fate; a demonstration in protest at this scandal was incidentally held in Brussels yesterday. Some adults have also been taken to Putin’s country against their will.
Even worse, mass graves have been found: in Bucha (458 bodies), Mariopol, Manhush, Buzova, Vynohradne, Staryi Krym, Motyjyn, Izyum (436 body), Pravdyne (after Kherson was taken back in November). An examination of the bodies revealed evidence of torture – a practice also used on Ukrainian citizens and prominent local residents.
According to the most recent UN estimates, the number of Ukrainian civilian victims is believed to be at least 7031 dead and 11,327 injured, giving a total of 18,358. Kiyv reports that the death toll currently stands at 33,000, including at least 400 children. The battle of Mariupol alone cost 20,000 inhabitants their lives.
Among the 40 non-Ukrainian civilian victims (of some 20 different nationalities, in which Greece is overrepresented) are four students, three humanitarian workers and five journalists or broadcasters.
As regards military casualties, estimates are even harder, as both sides tend to under-estimate their losses and verification procedures are tricky. However, the military authority of the United States and Norway published broadly similar figures in January: 180,000 and 100,000 soldiers dead or injured for Russia and Ukraine respectively.
The common factor behind the statistics is that every one of these deaths means unbearable suffering for parents, children, husbands and wives – be they in Ukraine or elsewhere, whether or not they are aware of the fate of their loved ones. It is also quite impossible to put any figures to the physical and mental damage caused by these atrocities.
On 2 March 2022, the International Criminal Tribunal began an investigation into war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Ukraine. This triggered the start of a vast investigation and documentation of the acts committed, a burden that has increased every time fresh horrors perpetrated or discovered. The Russian soldiers who took those lives in Bucha have been identified. Currently, somewhere in the region of 65,000 cases of suspected war crimes have been reported, an enormous figure. On 18 February, the United States, in the person of Vice President Kamala Harris, accused Russia of crimes against humanity. As for the crime of aggression, the idea of a special tribunal is making its way through the European Union, but the Twenty-Seven have not yet agreed on the form that such a tribunal should take (see EUROPE 13124/12). The aim of the West is that all those responsible, at whatever level, will have to answer for their crimes and be judged on them.
The word is that the Russian soldiers did not necessarily commit their crimes by order of their superiors, but that the impunity for their actions against civilians is part of their “military culture”, as we saw during the wars in Chechnya and Syria. In other words, torture and murder are par for the course and in fact looked upon favourably by the regime, delighted to see that its little executioners are going about their duties of spreading death and suffering, particularly to the weakest members of society, so efficiently. This terrifying relationship with reality is, sadly, nothing new.
It is what powered the Nazi war machine.
Renaud Denuit