News from the warfront in eastern Ukraine, supplied by Gulagu, a Russian (!) human rights watchdog, has rendered me speechless. There are no words to capture the horror still being inflicted upon Ukrainian soldiers, children and families who had the misfortune to be in the sights of Vladimir Putin’s hired military goons, employed by the notorious Wagner Group as killers-for-hire. Because Ukrainian President Zelensky, despite desperate pleas for air cover, has been unable for many months to bring serious aerial hardware to bear against the Russian assault begun last year, entire communities have now been wiped out. The skies were not clear enough to save them. Gone, under the rubble of destroyed buildings and homes, in a Vladimir Putin’s scorched-earth policy. Without European or American jets to sweep their skies, many Ukrainians were entrapped like animals with no hope of escape. Ukrainian and volunteer soldiers could shoot back, and did so superbly. The very young, or old, could not. It was open hunting season in the Donbass, Mariupol and all along the borders, as sheer terror descended upon Ukraine.
Hunters in Mississippi pray for success with our shooting parties, but for sport – they tell me there are few thrills like the sight of a flock’s fly-out, hearing a tom turkey gobble nearby, or sighting a ten point buck at close range. There is such a thing as the atavistic thrill of a clean kill, but I’ll take my avid-hunter relatives’ word for it, and opt out.
I enjoy shooting, but cannot stand to kill anything alive, that has breath, a face, and feelings: a certified woosie, a Mississippi grandmother, I am allowed scruples – as a young man signing up for war in Kyiv to defend his nation, I would not be. One wonders how the hundreds of victims hidden in basements across Ukraine for all these months of war, could cope, knowing they were helpless targets of a supremely evil man’s attempt at conquest. We know how the killers felt. They have now told us, graphically: Alamat Uldarov and Alexei Savichev have talked freely about what they and their men were commanded to do, and did.
It was assumed that, since they had been criminals before being recruited into Wagner, that they would have little hesitation about murder. This appears to be so, for these men and those they led. Vladimir Osechkin, a human rights activist, has recorded sick-making stories of Udarov and Savichev’s tales of horror. This is also on YouTube.
“We were told to go house to house, killing anyone, civilian and military alike. Everyone! No prisoners. Prigozhin (owner of Wagner mercenaries group) told us this……in a basement, about 40 children were there. I was instructed not to release ANY; I gave the command “Kill everyone!” It was a big house, nine floors….. packed. I decided to “zero” everyone.” He did. “I shot a little girl who was screaming, about five years old. In the head…..” Everything alive, in so many houses, theatres and churches, wiped out. …….then the silence, except for a forlorn dog bark. Nothing else survives. Compared to other orders Prighozin issued, many deaths were quick and “merciful” as the Russians hunted people like animals; atrocities were routine, with killers insensitive and indifferent to victims. Maiming took place. Genitals, hands, ears were cut off.
Noses were split, bleeding. Heads were smashed with sledgehammers like slabs of meat. And the bombing…..relentless missile attacks……became as routine as sunset, with Ukrainian men, women and children realizing every day that they might not see another.
Putin knows exactly what has gone on, ordered it, and still does. Prighozin denies all. But his ragged men tell the truth…Is a murderer more worthy because he is honest about his crimes? Is a head of state forgiven because he “was not there?” “Just following orders” was a defense familiar at The Hague, where war crimes are tried, but it does not exempt from justice. Crematorium guards swore innocence.
The survivors of Dachau and Auschwitz spoke otherwise. So it will be as this war winds down to ashes, hopefully very soon. There will be a reckoning, as Putin, Prigozhin and those who obeyed them and destroyed a whole generation face their fate.
Linda Berry is a Northsider.
