How Russians Aesthetize Their War Crimes

Russian bloggers can be cringeworthy and ridiculous, but they have now reached a new low with a series of trips to occupied Mariupol to have photoshoots against the background of destroyed buildings that became graves for thousands of people.

With access to the occupied territories of Ukraine strictly supervised by occupation authorities, such a wave of bloggers’ attention seems not coincidental: the Kremlin is clearly trying to normalize the war crimes of the Russian army as part of the Russian genocidal war.