“Why Are The Russians Bombing Us?”

Thousands of Ukrainians (including 90 kids) were killed by Russian bombs. Who will pay for this crime against humanity?

On February 24, early in the morning, I called my 11-year-old nephew, who lives in the city of Odesa.

“Aunty Iryna!” he shouted. “I heard a bomb falling and woke up at 5 am! I immediately thought it was a war!”

Of course, I assured him in a cheerful voice that everything would be fine and hung up. That moment, my heart turned black.

SIEGED UKRAINIAN CITIES LIKE NAZIS

On the same day, many citizens of my homeland, my beloved Ukraine, instead of work and schools, descended into bomb shelters, basements, and the subway. Hundreds of families have been trapped for the second week, emaciated, exhausted, dehydrated, and being unable to leave. Just like during World War Two when Nazi Germany sieged the city of Leningrad which caused hundreds of thousands of locals to starve to death; now, in the 21st century, Russian troops surround several Ukrainian cities, shooting anyone who attempts to leave their shelter to get food or medication. What kind of human beings are they? Can anyone tell me why are they deliberately shooting children?

DROPPED BOMB ON MATERNITY HOSPITAL

Yesterday, Russian forces completely destroyed a maternity hospital in the besieged city of Mariupol! At least three people — including a six-year-old child — died; dozen of doctors and women in labor are injured. Look at these pictures. What kind of human beings target hospitals?

We are in shock. We don’t know how to negotiate with these barbarians. We have already buried more than 90 children and 2,000 adults. Thousands will remain crippled physically and millions emotionally.

“Why are the Russians bombing us?” my nephew asks me over and over again. What would you reply to your children?

Why did Hitler kill thousands in an attempt to eliminate Europe’s Jewish population? Persecuted, burned, exterminated? After all, Putin and Russian troops are doing the same with us, Ukrainians, on our land, purposely bombing residential buildings, orphanages, hospitals, schools, and kindergartens (over 200 schools destroyed!).

FIRST THEY OCCUPIED CRIMEA AND DONBAS

Right now we are witnessing an active, visible stage of the war that Russia has started. In fact, Putin has been raping Ukraine since 2014. First, Russia annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, then invaded Donbas (Donetsk and Luhansk regions on the East of Ukraine), composing a horrific lie that the Russian-speaking population of these regions was being oppressed and needed to be rescued (Never in my country, where people speak both Russian and Ukrainian, would people harass Russian speakers.) You know what Putin’s soldiers did in the Donbas region? When the Ukrainian troops started shooting the invaders defending our territory, they grabbed our children and used them as shields, later accusing the Ukrainian army of killing the children. What kind of a sick mind could even create such a provocation?

Can you imagine France parachuting into Canada just like that to “protect” the French-speaking population? Or that the Netherlands suddenly in the middle of the night, like the Nazis, would move an army to Belgium in order to “save” the Belgians from the Belgian authorities? No, you can’t, because your logic, I’d assume, is based on some moral principles. Putin, who has currently been living in a bunker somewhere in Siberia and has completely lost touch with reality, doesn’t have these.

EIGHT YEARS OF WAR

In such a vile way, the Russian invaders bit off the Donbas region from Ukraine, in addition to Crimea, and created a huge ulcer on the body of Ukraine — two pseudo-republics that have been fueled with Russian taxpayers' money for 8 fu…ng years. Thousands of Ukrainians were killed there. Hundreds of thousands of refugees flee to Kyiv and western Ukraine. My aunt, for example, worked as a chief accountant at two large enterprises in Luhansk city (Donbas region). She made decent money. She owned a nice apartment. She lost all of this in a flash when Russia started bombing Luhansk. She miraculously survived and, grabbing her daughter, managed to flee Kyiv. All that they had left were their passports. And now Russian troops are surrounding Kyiv.

PUTIN’S DREAM — BACK TO USSR

The most inconceivable thing is that this senseless war is the result of the egomania of only one person. Putin’s dream is to revive the USSR, and many experts warned about it way before the current war in Ukraine. He started with Ukraine and wants to gradually expand to the Baltic states (that is why Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia send everything they can to Ukraine — from weapons to humanitarian aid). He wants to expand to Moldova and Georgia (for those who forgot, in 2008, Russia already attacked Georgia and took 20% of its territory) as well. Putin expected to conduct a blitzkrieg and take Ukraine in three days, as evidenced by an article mistakenly published on the Russian resource RIA Novosti stating that “Russian peace” has finally come to Ukraine.

Putin didn’t expect (or was wrongly informed by his circle?) that we, Ukrainians, aren’t going to give away an inch of our country or freedom. Isn’t it the right thing to do? We are peaceful people. We respect other nations. We are on our own land. Ukraine didn’t invade Russia, Russia invaded Ukraine, and has been firing rockets into Ukrainian cities and killing our children. What would you do if you were us? Surrender? And die as slaves with no country or dignity? We, Ukrainians, not only respect European values — but we’re paying for the most basic one, freedom, with our own blood.

“OUT OF POLITICS”

Then the questions arise, “Is the war responsibility of one evil man? Shouldn’t the people be protesting?” Really. What do the Russian people do or say about the war? First of all, about 58% of Russians approve of the invasion of Ukraine, according to a poll conducted across Russia. That 23% who oppose it are either silent out of fear, or are fleeing the country, or are simply indifferent. So it turns out that they are just as useless as the war supporters.

For decades, people in Russia have been held as hostages by their megalomaniac dictator, who has already killed 12 000 soldiers by sending them to Ukraine (many were young conscripts). If the Ukrainians, on Putin’s orders, have been exterminated physically, then the Russians have been broken mentally for years which has made them a nation of pariahs. The reality is that now Russians are not welcome in any country in the world, and those with more or less a normal state of mind, won’t last long in Russia while it quickly turns into North Korea.

These are all the consequences of the comfortable Russian silence when Putin bombed Chechnya, Georgia, and Syria. During those attacks, they preferred not to acknowledge the brutality, because they were “out of politics.” This is one of the Kremlin strategies which zombified the whole nation. The same exact thing is happening now. After the sanctions were imposed, Russians, instead of parading towards the Kremlin that brought such a disaster upon its own people, are making mile-long lines in front of McDonald’s, IKEA, Victoria Secret, and Zara (the western brands that are withdrawing themselves) and are busy with registering new accounts in Russian social media (the government blocked Facebook and Instagram). They’re choosing hamburgers and panties instead of fighting for peace and rights.

Why?

If you regularly consume drugs you’ll inevitably turn into a zombie. For Russians who support the war (as mentioned above, it’s almost 2/3 of the population), “drugs” are the state media (actually, there’re no non-state media). For decades, they have been living in a parallel reality, which is being created by a whole army of media propagandists (I’m sure they’ll be placed in the hottest spot of hell). For Russians, the reality is what they are shown on TV. If it’s raining outside, and the news says it’s snowing, a Russian will go out and make a snowman. If a Russian lives in a city where there are no roads, street lamps, or nothing at all, but the news announces that it’s a paradise, Russians will continue breaking their ankles walking on their unpaved roads and crying out of happiness. Even now, plunging more and more into the Middle Ages, thanks to the efforts of Putin and Co, Russians, after watching the news, firmly believe that the sanctions are the punishment of the West. One more time. They think it’s “the evil West taking revenge on the Russians because they are Russians,” and not because their country is brutally bombing Ukraine and killing thousands of people.

Do you know what all Russian media says about the war? “The Liberation Army of the Russian Federation does not kill civilians in Ukraine. They are being killed by the Kyiv regime.” It has already reached the point of absurdity when the Russian Prime Minister Lavrov announced to the whole world that Russia did not attack Ukraine. And these are not psychiatric notes I’m quoting! This is the official position of Russia, which its citizens believe unquestioningly. I’m sure someday this level of collective denial will be studied in psychiatry.

This is how reality is distorted in Russia.

What’s happening:

- War. Russia has been bombing Ukraine. Thousands of Ukrainians have been killed and maimed. Entire cities were destroyed.

What the Russian media says:

- This is a “special military operation to kill the nationalists in Ukraine and liberate the Ukrainian people.” How cynical! Putin, the main Nazi of the 21st century, is dropping bombs on Ukrainians and, without a shadow of embarrassment, declares that this is the “denazification of Ukraine.” What’s going on in his head? First, he attacked Donbas to “protect” the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine, and now he started a war to “protect the Ukrainian people from the Kyiv regime.” I repeat, these aren’t notes taken by a psychiatrist, these are official messages of Russian authorities. By the way, since the beginning of the war, even the word “war” has been banned in Russia. You can be jailed for 15 years for using it in the media or on your Facebook page.

- Mom, hello! This is your son, I am in Ukraine, I’ve been captured!

- Sorry, but they said on TV that I have a daughter.

(A joke that Ukrainian soldiers who interrogated Russian captives came up with.)

PUTIN HAS TO BE BEHIND BARS

In my experience, communicating with Russian expats is up to impossible too. A lot of them get their news from Russian media sources, where Putin says: “The Russian army is a liberator. We don’t kill civilians.”

Nothing can bring Russians back to reality: not the statement that French President Macron addressed to Putin: “You are lying to yourself”; nor the words of the 101-year-old prosecutor of the Nuremberg Trials that Putin has to be “behind bars” for crimes against humanity; nor the numerous videos of captured Russian conscripts crying and calling their mothers; nor videos of destroyed cities; not even messages from heartbroken Ukrainian friends who lost their families due to bombing. Nothing. There’s no hope that Russian citizens would stand up and burn the Kremlin (yes, there’re some anti-war protests but the number of their participants is ridiculous, and that momentum is lost).

“It’s a lie! It’s Photoshop! All these videos are staged by NATO! The Russian soldiers don’t kill anyone! Ukrainian nazi government kills your own people! Vladimir Putin is helping you and saving you!” my Russian acquaintances and even relatives (!) repeat like zombies over and over while their president methodically continues the genocide of my people.

Well. Think about the fact that Putin will eventually die. Even KGB agents die, you know, from time to time. UN Court, which has been collecting evidence of war crimes committed in Ukraine, will recognize Putin as a war criminal, and Russia will be announced as the aggressor. What will be left for you, Russians? Guilt, shame, regret, and billions of dollars to restore Ukraine’s infrastructure — this is the price that your children and grandchildren will have to pay for your current comfortable silence.