Planet Bucha
Bucha, Vorzel, Irpin … For me, as for many Kyivites, these are childhood memories, forest, lake, mushrooms in the forest, strawberries, summer rain, rainbow, fresh milk, young parents … How many happy associations!
Now, for me and for the whole world, these names will be associated with death. Murders, torture, bullying, mass graves, corpses on the streets. That’s what Bucha, Vorzel, Irpin are now. Previously, only we knew these names. Now everyone will know them. And they will be remembered even when even the word “Putin” is forgotten unnecessarily. And even when the word “Russia” is forgotten. Why not?
Who remembers today the names of the countries that exterminated Jews in ancient times? The Bible preserves for humanity only the memory of the extermination itself and of those who stopped it.
I can’t say that I am surprised by this news. Stunned, shocked, upset – but not surprised, no. In the 1930s, my colleagues convinced the world that Stalin was talking about the extermination of the Ukrainian people – the world did not believe, many believed that the Holodomor was just “excesses” of the negligent economic policy of the Bolsheviks. The scale of the atrocities became clear only in a decade. Within a few years, there were many who argued that Hitler’s goal was the complete extermination of Jews, but the world did not believe, it believed that the Reich only wanted to isolate “infidels”, watched a Nazi documentary from the Warsaw Ghetto with theaters and hospitals.
The scale of the atrocities became apparent only when the Allies entered the concentration camps – but it took years to understand the situation.
From the first days of this war, I warn that its main goal is not just the occupation of Ukrainian lands, but also the mass extermination and expulsion of the Ukrainian people. The President of Ukraine was not believed when he compared this war to the Holocaust, but in vain. This is the Holocaust and the Holodomor in one pill, because Putin is destroying the people and the infrastructure at the same time! He does his best to kill and expel people – and to prevent them from surviving. Putin does not need Ukrainians even as a conquered nation, because he fears and hates them. He needs hundreds of miles of devastated land to launch missiles – and that’s it. Why? And why did Stalin need a devastated Ukrainian village in the conditions of eternal shortage of bread? And why did Hitler need millions of Jewish corpses? What if? Why does Putin need this devastated land, when provincial Russia itself still looks like a dump and fire in the 21st century? Need to find an answer to this question? If necessary, I will find. This is my job, I can give a long lecture on this madness. And the international court will find, there are qualified specialists.
Why try to unravel the logic of paranoia? Why spend hours searching for an understanding of the goals of an entire state that has embarked on the path of crimes against humanity and turned into a terrorist organization? It is important to realize the purpose, the purpose. The goal is the destruction and expulsion of the Ukrainian people. The target is genocide. And this became apparent not in a few decades, not in a few years, but in a few weeks. We did not lie to you when we warned you about this. Not exaggerated. It was a statement of facts. And so it does not matter what they lie there and even what weapon they choose. Only one thing matters: what they aspire to. Here’s to it. And salvation, unfortunately, is not some kind of neutrality of Ukraine or our “renunciation of nuclear weapons” – as if we had it. No, the salvation is the demilitarization, denuclearization and denazification of the terrorist community under the loud banner “Russian Federation”. Because we are just first on the list of goals. But believe me, not the last. Yes, the existence of the Putin regime is a direct threat to humanity and humanity. An absolute threat. Mankind either understands this or disappears faster than we can imagine. And then the future guests of this mutilated planet may even decide that its real name was the planet Bucha. And not some Earth there.
Vitaliy Portnikov, Ukrainian Journalist