The kitchen, a bright yellow color, was left almost intact. Open to the view of the whole world due to the explosion and the partial collapse of the building, the room offered itself shamelessly to the eyes of others. Except for a few small damages, everything was as its owners had left it: a pot on the stove, dishes to wash, a tray with apples on the table, the chairs aligned with the now non-existent wall…
Life stopped here, in a residential neighborhood in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, in the early afternoon of Saturday, January 14, the New Year’s holiday of the Orthodox calendar. That day, shortly after 3:30 p.m., a Russian Kh-22 missile – originally designed to attack ships – hit an apartment block. It has been, up to now, the deadliest bombardment against civilians of the war: the official balance was 46 dead and 80 wounded.
Among the dead was Mykhaylo Korenovsky, a popular boxing trainer. And owner of the yellow kitchen… his wife and his two daughters were saved because they had gone out for a walk. Hundreds of people came to say their last goodbye at his funeral, while the family broadcast a home video through social networks with the recent celebration – in the same kitchen – of the birthday of one of the daughters. Stage of life turned into stage of death.
It is not clear if the Russian army – which has otherwise denied responsibility for the attack – had the Korenovsky apartment block as a military target. Some point out that the missile was probably aimed at a nearby power plant. In fact, Russia is carrying out a sustained bombing campaign against power plants and infrastructure in Ukraine. But the fact that the apartment building was not his goal does not mask his contempt for the lives of civilians.
World War II was the height of massive and indiscriminate bombing of cities. Nazi Germany, which had already experienced it during the Spanish Civil War, systematically resorted to this practice on all fronts –particularly in the Battle of Britain– and was responded in kind by the Allies. Its defenders argued that by breaking the morale of resistance of the civilian population in the rear through terror, the development of the war could be decanted. British Marshal Arthur Harris, head of the RAF Bomber Command, even arrogantly claimed that his bombing of German cities could alone precipitate the defeat of the enemy. It was not so, naturally.
What eighty years ago was commonly accepted today is considered a crime, without any war argument justifying it. Russia denies this practice, but in any case has shown that it has no regard for civilians. After almost a year of war, the Ukrainian authorities have estimated the number of civilian deaths at 9,000 (the UN estimates at least 6,000) and 54,000 residential buildings destroyed (in addition to equipment, infrastructure and others).
Indiscriminate shelling and artillery fire on civilian areas are not isolated acts, but a common practice of the Russian military. This is supported by an official UN report, presented last October, where a whole series of “war crimes, violations of human rights and international humanitarian laws” are verified by the troops sent by Vladimir Putin. (compared to some isolated cases by the Ukrainian army)
The report is very limited, focusing only on the two-month period from February 24 to March 31, 2022. But it is overwhelming. It is not just about the bombing of civilians, but about systematic acts of violence in the occupied areas: “summary executions, torture, ill-treatment, sexual and gender-based violence, imprisonment and illegal detention in inhumane conditions and forced deportations”…
The cases of rape and sexual crimes – fundamentally, although not exclusively, against women – show the dark face of an army of savages. The report relates, among others, the case of the repeated rape of a 22-year-old girl in the Kyiv region by two Russian soldiers, who also committed acts of sexual violence against her husband, forced the couple to have sex in their presence and then forced oral sex on their four-year-old daughter. “The victims (of sexual violence) were between the ages of four and over 80,” the report states, which, however, does not dare to conclude if there is a pattern of behavior behind it.
If you look at history, there is no doubt. It seems to be in the very DNA of the Russian army. One only has to remember the atrocities that Soviet soldiers – with the connivance of their superiors – committed against German women in 1945. The exact number of victims is not known, but it is estimated that there were hundreds of thousands. In his book dedicated to World War II, the British historian Antony Beevor points out that in Berlin alone, the Russians raped between 95,000 and 130,000 women, and in East Prussia it was even worse. Red Army soldiers raped every woman within their reach, even those recently released from Nazi labor and death camps. Beevor reproduces in his book the unappealable testimony of the Soviet war correspondent Natalya Gesse: “Russian soldiers raped all German women between 8 and 80 years old. It was an army of rapists.” Today like yesterday.
