Russia, the Moral Outcast

"Now, I do not see any possibility for diplomatic contacts. And the more the conflict goes on, the more difficult it will be to have a diplomatic solution."

"[The UN has become mired in] politicization [because of the war and that has] damaged the authority of the UN and its organizations."

"We do not have any contacts with the Western delegations. On the protocol side we do not see each other. Privately we do not have any contacts, unfortunately ... we simply do not talk to each other."

"And so they will fight until the last Ukrainian."

"[Western countries are using the war] as a matter of pressure on Russia, as a tool of isolation of Russia .. damaging our position, economically, politically."

"They do not care about the Ukrainian people, the Ukrainian soldiers."

Gennady Gatilov, Russian permanent representative to the UN, Geneva

Tank barriers are seen in front of a barricade in Zaporizhzhya, amid Russian invasion of Ukraine. Photo: AFP/Getty Images

 

Ukraine has always stated it is prepared to discuss an end to the conflict; it is the victim, Russia is the aggressir. Offers by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to meet personally with Russian President Vladimir Putin have gone unanswered. Russia's main complaint is that its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine is being condemned by Western democracies, leaving it in bad odour in Europe, and alarming its near neighbours that they might be next on Russia's agenda for a ;special military operation' aimed at them.

Ukraine's victimization, as far as the Kremlin is concerned is its own fault, for its pro-Nazi, fascist government. It proved itself to be just that when Ukrainians rejected Moscow's choice for President of Ukraine in favour of their own selected alternative, loyal to Ukraine, not to Russia. An event which led to an insurrection by ethnic Russians who mostly populated eastern Ukraine, declaring themselves leaders of a new Luhansk and Donetsk, one allied with Russia, and with Russian assistance fought a conflict to occupy part of the Donbas, enabling Putin to declare he had every right to seize the Crimean Peninsula.

A view of the Russian navy Frigate 'Pytlivyy' docked in the port of Sevastopol. Photograph: Filippo Monteforte /AFP /Getty

Russia's UN Ambassador Gatilov complains bitterly that the UN has failed to support Russia's claim that it has acted with honour intending to liberate Ukraine from the clutches of its neo-Nazi government. It is, in his estimation, the United Nations accepting the Western allies of Ukraine asserting that Ukraine is a sovereign nation with the right, internationally recognized, to make its own decisions how it will align itself and who its allies would be. 

It is the West, he avers, responsible for Ukrainian deaths, not Russia, for encouraging Ukraine in its unreasonable decision to defend itself against a larger, better equipped neighbour, and inciting it to fight the Russian military rather than accept the inevitable, as Moscow sees it; surrendering the eastern provinces to Russia and allowing itself to once more assume the position of satellite state to Russian hegemonic imperialism.

 

A firefighter works at the site of a Russian military strike, as the Russian invasion of Ukraine continues, in Mykolaiv, Ukraine. Photo: State Emergency Service of Ukraine/Handout via Reuters

 

Ukraine will admit to having lost an estimated nine thousand servicemen in the defence of their country, to date. Western intelligence puts Russian losses at an approximately similar number, with the added loss of a surprising number of elite commanders. Russia is apoplectic with outrage that Ukraine has managed to hit its military and destroy its materiel by explosives hitting behind Russian lines. With the use of drones and long-range missiles supplied by sympathetic countries, Ukraine is holding its own.

 

As brutal and as brazen as Russia is in ordering its military to shell civilian infrastructure, giving them free rein to bomb schools and hospitals, to mutilate and murder ordinary Ukrainian civilians, Moscow is still in a state of disbelief that Ukraine would dare aim over its border into Russian towns to blow up weapons and gas depots. Ukrainian towns and villages are disposable, Russian ones are inviolate.

 

A Ukrainian serviceman rides atop a tank near a front line in Mykolaiv region on August 10, as Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues. Photo: Reuters

 

The Kremlin and Vladimir Putin have embarked on a mission to re-write the rules and regulations of international conflict striving to ensure they are as humane as possible in protection of civilian lives along with non-combatants, while Russia seems intent on opening the floods of wartime derangement of human values to encompass all civilians as long as they're Ukrainian.

In the initial month of the occupation, the Russian military was tasked with entering Kyiv and either killing or taking prisoner the government of Ukraine. Likely to stand trial, if they survived, charged with being Nazis deserving of capital punishment. Ukrainian pride and resolve in protecting its own, pushed them back to eastern Ukraine. Now the shortage of regular troops sees Russia releasing criminals from long sentences, to fight in the front lines.

 

Ukrainian soldiers from the Azov Battalion who surrendered at besieged Mariupol: "Some had needles inserted into their wounds, some were tortured with water", said Vladyslav Zhaivoronok, who lost a leg. "They undressed us, forced to squat while we are naked. If any of the boys raised their heads, they began to beat them immediately", added Denys Chepurko.

 

Russia's intelligence agency claims a woman from the Azov regiment planned and carried out the assassination of 29-year-old media personality Darya Dugina, daughter of Vladimir Putin's principle adviser on the Ukraine conflict, Alexander Dugin, who shares all the potent hatred that Putin has been quoted with in his 'reasons' for despising the notion that Ukraine is a nation, claiming it has no culture and is a den of Nazi scorpions. 

Russia, proud of what it considers to be military 'victories', speaks with heated contempt of base Ukrainian motives in resisting the Russian occupation. A country, as far as Vladimir Putin is concerned, that has no right to exist outside of Russia's orbit, and one he is doing his damndest bit by bit to destroy. So far, close to 6,000 Ukrainian civilians dead, towns and cities in rubble, food and energy shortages beleaguering the poorest countries of the world as well as the most advanced.

Ukrainian military officers travel on a wheeled-BTR fighting vehicle in Kramatorsk in Ukraine’s Donetsk region on 22 August. Photograph: Ammar Awad/Reuters