We who are removed by geographical and ideological grace from the hell of eastern Ukraine, its Dantean outreaches, and its distant, battered neighbors in the north, south and west, often yet all-too humanly see it as an abstraction. It's in the headlines and much discussed, sometimes debated, on news programs. We sit and watch the arrows and semi-circles of offense and defense on the Donbas map; we monitor what if any supplies are making their way to the Ukrainians; we read of the billions of dollars their Western friends are allocating to the war; we ponder Vladimir Putin's latest rhetorical atrocity.
We do all this from afar. Our angst and sympathies for Ukraine and its people may be deep and sincere, but perforce we also attend to the customary activities of everyday life: engaging with family and friends, delving into work, indulging blissful relaxation. The Russia-Ukraine war, for most of us, is subtext.
On occasion, however, we encounter visuals that are penetratingly painful and far more searing than anything we read about or listen to. We see powerful, heartbreaking scenes of Ukraine on fire, bombed-out apartment buildings, and in some venues — with more to come — dead Ukrainian bodies lying on the streets, murdered by insanity-ruled Russian soldiers, if they can be called that, rather than Putin-cell terrorists.
Yesterday I came across one such visual, passed along by Mother Jones' David Corn. This mere 44-second clip is shocking in its immense, earth-scorched devastation, courtesy Russia:
Video taken near Kharkiv by an American volunteering with the Ukrainian military. This is the hellscape Putin continues to create. pic.twitter.com/1vCRRNRWG1
— David Corn (@DavidCornDC) April 23, 2022
Before you is what Russian forces have proceeded to do in the Donbas: air bombardments and artillery shellings in preparation for troop advances, reported the British Defense Ministry. Putin's killers and ravagers of towns and villages are spreading south of already occupied Izium, on the Donbas's western outskirts; their "progress" was made possible by vulnerabilities in Ukraine's less-manned, less- equipp
ed line around Kharkiv, northwest of Izyum, observed the Institute for the Study of War.
The ISW also surmised that two columns of Russian forces heading east to west in parallel motion intend to strike the strategic villages of Barvinkoe and Sloviansk, creating a corridor to the separatist Donetsk People’s Republic. Worse, Gen. Dvornikov's troops may use their southerly advance out of Izium to encircle Ukrainian troops in the east. But, as always, rather questionable is the readiness condition of Russia's physically and emotionally exhausted troops, noted the ISW.
Meanwhile, the hell of Mariupol gets hotter by the day. Russian forces continue to pound the city with "unguided free-falling bombs" — meaning they'll fall ... wherever — thus murdering even more Ukrainian citizens. In Russia's way of war, there is no honor, no decency, no traditionally respected rules of combat. Theirs isn't really combat, though. It's slaughter.
Beyond contributing to Ukraine's humanitarian relief and encouraging others to do the same — which we all can do here — what can a conscientious citizen of the free world do? That, gentle reader, is the most painful facet of this faraway hell — although any Ukrainian would gladly exchange places with us.