Voice of Ukraine

From Jamie Peipon: Another day of horrible images. In the picture above, you can see the process of exhuming the bodies in the makeshift graveyard in recently-liberated Izium. 440+ bodies were exhumed at this location alone. The pictures being released from the site will make you physically sick. I’m not one to be squeamish when it comes to pictures… but I was truly almost sick. A body in the fetal position covered in dirt… body bag after body bag after body bag… a decomposing arm with a blue and yellow rubber bracelet on the wrist. Oleh Syniehubov, the governor of the Kharkiv Oblast, has said that “99% showed signs of violent death.” This ought not to be considered an extreme exception. This is the Russian plan. This is what they call “liberation.”

The cruelty is off the charts. One Ukrainian soldier was taking a video of the liberated city when a dog ran up to him. You can hear him using the universal tone that people use when a happy pup approaches. But the “good booooy’s” quickly changed to shock and anger when he saw that the dog’s snout had a scar in the shape of a “z” that had been carved into him. The Kharkiv oblast police chief has said that they have discovered at least ten locations that were used as “torture chambers” by the Russian army. These areas were all occupied for less than six months. There are Ukrainian territories that have been occupied for eight years. I have no doubt that we have not seen the worst of the atrocities.

While there is still a long way to go, almost every analyst agrees that Russia has decidedly lost the war. Even the territories that they’ve held the longest are becoming impossible to hold due to partisan activity. The man Russia propped up as the Prosecutor General of the occupied Luhansk oblast (what Russia refers to as the Luhansk People’s Republic) was killed today by an explosion in his office. In Berdyansk, a city on the southeastern coast of Ukraine, a husband and wife team agreed to serve Russia’s purposes. The husband became the temporary mayor of the city and his wife became the chair of election committee that was tasked with setting up a referendum on the area joining Russia. Ukrainian and Russian sources are reporting that the husband and wife were both “liquidated.” Surely these types of events would cause anyone tempted with similar aspirations to have second thoughts.

The fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan has either cooled or just faded to the background. Armenia had sought to invoke the mutual defense clause of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). The CSTO is sort of a Eurasian version of NATO for post-soviet countries. Russia is, of course, the key leader. No one in the CTSO seems to be coming to Armenia’s aid. Interestingly, Azerbaijan actually used to be a member of the organization. Attention has been diverted from Armenia and Azerbaijan because the next neighborhood over (the eastern side of the Caspian Sea) is also on the brink of war. Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan have been fighting along their border. They are both members of the CTSO. With Russia too busy to call their neighbors to heel, the CTSO is beginning to fall apart. It seems that Russia’s perceived authority was the only thing holding it together and it is no longer able to do so.

“Hear my prayer, O LORD,
and give ear to my cry;
hold not your peace at my tears!”