After watching Ali's news account on the horrendous shooting of civilians in a town near

[Frustratedlady]

Kyiv, it almost sounds like mercenaries, rather than the scared kids Putin sent into the conflict. Putin declared he was sending mercenaries into Ukraine, last week. I thought he was surely trying to scare Ukraine.

Tying their hands behind their backs, shooting people on bicycles, mass graves, etc., sounds like a horrid message Putin would send (and, enjoy hearing about the massacre) would send.

Have other small towns suffered the same devastating treatment and we've yet to hear about it?

Is this the first step into WWIII?

Totally disgusted and horrified.

[BlueJac]

1. Their entire country is being leveled...

It is heart breaking to watch, something has to happen but what I don't know.

[yardwork]

2. I was wondering about mercenaries, too.

This is probably how the Russian military has been acting in Syria.

[2naSalit]

3. Seems to be their...

Standard MO.

[AllyCat]

15. Hmm...Erik Prince?

[NCjack]

21. Do we know where he is?

[AllyCat]

27. Usually on the Sunday morning shows.

Or slithering into his hole somewhere.

[LiberalFighter]

31. Erik Prince needs to be tied in and evicted.

[JohnQFunk]

33. Smells like Wagner Group

They're Putin's preferred neo-fascist Russian-based murderers.

[uponit7771]

4. MAGA will do to minority groups in US what Russians did to citizens in Bucha.

[HUAJIAO]

12. You are absolutely right.

[sop]

18. It's been their wet dream for years.

[llashram]

23. without any doubt

especially those who by birth cannot hide their...trump would have live feeds streaming into his bunker and/or WH...WWIII and Civil War 2?

[onecaliberal]

32. This. It's what they want to do here.

[OneBlueDotS-Carolina]

5. This is what has been reported

Jack Watling
@Jack_Watling
On Bucha: after my last meeting in Ukraine I was walking to the car when a senior Ukrainian security official, flanked by two General Officers grabbed my arm and said "by the way; the Russians have moved a unit onto the Belarusian axis who will lead the killings." 1/4.

Anyone saying that Bucha is the result of brutalisation or rogue behaviour is wrong. This was the plan. It was pre-meditated. It is consistent with Russian methods in Chechnya. And if the Russian military had been more successful there would have been many more towns like it. 2/4

This context - in which the Ukrainians knew that there were troops preparing to perpetrate acts like this, with the Kremlin describing Ukrainian identity as an accident of history - also explains why Ukrainian resistence has been so fierce. They see the stakes as existential. 3/4

People calling for a specific response to Bucha are taking an atrocity out of its context. The response should be to ensure that Ukrainians can defeat the invasion through steady and systemic assistance. The volume and speed of kit delivered matters. 4/4

Link to tweet

[Frustratedlady]

6. How many more atrocities must be committed before NATO says enough is enough?

How many small towns/suburbs have had to same treatment as Bucha (sp?) yet have been isolated because of blown bridges, damaged airports, etc.? I realize that nuclear war, aka WWIII, is the main concern, but surely there is a remedy.

The world is angry...not just us.

[OneBlueDotS-Carolina]

10. That's the $64K question.

NATO has quite the balancing act at this time. Much may depend on the outcome of today's elections in Hungary. On one hand, Orban doesn't want to share his golden goose with Putin, thus hanging on by threads to the EU & NATO. Even the sniff of a fixed election may force Orban back into the arms of Russia, as just happened in Belarus. Putin needs to actually see that Putin's give me an inch, I'll take miles MO, is no longer operational.

Blunk force, the total destruction of the invading Russian army from Ukraine, including Russian occupied areas, including Crimea & Transnistria in Moldova. This is a horrid view of how to end this, then again at this time, I see no other possible outcome.

[Hugin]

13. Isn't preventing atrocities such as this exactly why the UN was formed?

Where are they?

[Mariana]

20. Russia can veto any resolution that comes before the UN Security Council

and did so on February 26 regarding this invasion.

https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/02/1112802

Now what?

[Hugin]

22. There was some question as to why Russia was grandfathered into...

The collapsed Soviet Union’s seat on the security council.

Considering the UN’s stated goal of upholding international law and the rogue status of Russia in this conflict their vote should be nullified.

Also, this is a humanitarian crisis now which doesn’t fall under the purview of the security council and is a matter for the general assembly.

Where’s the humanitarian aid, which the UN is better equipped to provide than NATO? (an autonomous defensive alliance and not an aid organization)

[Mariana]

37. "Ukraine: Second UN convoy reaches Sumy, Mariupol access thwarted"

31 March 2022

https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/03/1115252

[OneBlueDotS-Carolina]

35. Hiding.

The UN has been pushed several times by the Ukrainian representative as to is Russia actually a member. He asked the UN general assembly as to, who voted for Russia, after the fall of the USSR, to be a member. Crickets. Sitting on the security council, after they invaded another country without provocation.... it's a great question!

[bronxiteforever]

8. +100 Absolutely. Totally planned by the Kremlin.

Terror and ethnic cleansing. Mass graves, rapes and bodies violated.
Clearing the ground for Russian ownership. And Putin even said Ukraine has no right to exist.

[Crunchy Frog]

34. Here's another one saying roughly the same thing.

Link to tweet

?s=20&t=c8r8_8nxvvijvQqyELKWBQ

Link to tweet

?s=20&t=c8r8_8nxvvijvQqyELKWBQ

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1510168073831165956.html

[Bayard]

7. Agreed

With many of their generals and other leaders being knocked off, mercenaries may even be in charge in a lot of areas, and could easily intimidate impressionable and frightened young Russian conscripts into committing atrocities.

[Joinfortmill]

9. Twitter has accounts of rapes of very young girls. Putin will eventually be tried before the world

But until someone stops him, the horrors will continue.

[llashram]

24. he...

will never be tried. Who's going to go into Russia to arrest him. This animal will probably die peacefully in his bed. I hope not yet...the world is afraid of his finger hovering above...THE button.

[patphil]

11. Sounds like the Wagner Group...a mercenary group created by Putin.

They specialize in murder and mayhem, and have been operating in Ukraine for a while now.

[Beastly Boy]

14. You can't blame it on mercenaries. It's happening everywhere Russian army occupies Ukrainian land.

It's not an exception, it's the rule. A deliberate strategy of genocide perpetrated, without exception, by the occupying army. From every Russian soldier, to every Russian commander, to every member of the Russian government, they are all responsible. Can't blame it all on the mercenaries.

[greenjar_01]

16. The need to absolve the Russian army and the Russian people from blame here is really

remarkable.

The Russian people and the Russian army overwhelmingly support this war.

There's also the carry-over effect of absolving the US military of everything: "oh, it couldn't be the ordinary soldiers. Dear, no. It must be bad actors." That tendency in US thought now carries over to other militaries: oh, not the ordinary "scared kids." Couldn't be! It is precisely "scared kids" who commit wartime atrocities.

Incredible. I'm reminded of the passage in Michael Herr's Dispatches: "An old-timer who'd covered war since the Thirties heard us pissing and moaning about how terrible it was and snorted 'Ha, I love you guys. You guys are beautiful. What the fuck did you think it was?'"

[llashram]

25. true this

[Crunchy Frog]

36. I've never seen posters on Democratic Underground be so dismissive about rape.

I'm looking forward to seeing it in other contexts in the future.

"Well, it's just part of the culture of athletics and coaching. Happens all the time."

"Well, sorry it happened to you, but it's just a part of violent crime. No different than what's always happened."

[KS Toronado]

17. I keep thinking this will balloon into WWIII

For one reason, Putler (like rump) will never give up no matter what it costs in lives & property, it's all about their
wants & desires. And since he appears to be losing, he'll eventually resort to chemical weapons or heaven
forbid a nuclear bomb. That's when the world will finally say enough is enough.

[keithbvadu2]

19. Killing off local populations has been happening throughout history.

Killing off local populations has been happening throughout history. Putin has local lessons within living memory from Hitler in World War II.

[AntivaxHunters]

26. See First Nations people in this country

and our history as it relates to mass genocide.

[llashram]

28. it has always

been genocide as it shall always remain genocide. War strategy or not. Children being marched into Auswitch and other extermination camps and their looks will always haunt me. I can see trump trying to do something like that since he so wants to be like the fascist dictators he admired and admires.

[wnylib]

29. The brutality of invading forces gets even worse

when they are losing and when they are leaving an area. Angry over losses, they get even more brutal with any civilians that they encounter.

I'm not saying that Russia didn't plan and carry out atrocities from the beginning. I am saying that, after losing so many troops and materiel, and becoming the brunt of jokes about incompetence, they are escalating the brutality.

When Germany was losing WWII, the retreating soldiers fired in vengeance on civilians of occupied lands. The camps stepped up their murders of imprisoned people in defiance. "Better kill them now while we still can."

[Desert_Leslie]

30. Russian History Repeating Itself?

Google this -- Soviet War Crimes -- and read the article on Wikipedia.

It details in vast, shocking detail what Russian forces did all over Eastern Europe -- from the Baltic states to conquered Germany to Ukraine and beyond -- from mid-WWII to present. Rapes, gang-rapes, deportation to forced labor camps, torture ... AND ON AN INDUSTRIAL SCALE ... by the thousands, hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions.

People of the time said that the Russians were WORSE than the Nazis.

For utterly jaw-dropping, Ukraine-specific info, look at these, under bolded headers: Massacre of Grishchino and Massacre of Feodosia.

Note: I'd cite that text here, but it's so very brutal, people read it prepared and by choice, not just come upon it unsuspecting here in a reply.

At the end, there is a whole section on War Crimes Trials and Prosecutions for the Russian perpetrators, continuing to the present: On 27 March 2019, Lithuania convicted 67 former Soviet military and KGB officials.

The Russians whitewashed all of this and never came to a public reckoning about their crimes.

"Today, the Russian government engages in historical negationism. Russian media refers to the war crimes as a "Western myth," in Russian history textbooks, the atrocities are either altered to portray the Soviets positively or omitted entirely." - Wikipedia

[IronLionZion]

38. If it was Syrians, then it's terrorism

if it was white Russians, then they have mental illness and are the real victims that modern society has failed to help.

[uponit7771]

40. +1,

[Grasswire2]

39. See Zelensky's message directly to Russians tonight.

I just posted it here on DU.