AMAC Exclusive – By Ben Solis
One of the most tragic consequences of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been the suffering wrought on the Ukrainian people by the Russian army. While westerners are understandably startled by the graphic details of these horrific crimes and human rights violations, it should perhaps be unsurprising given that the Soviet roots of Vladimir Putin’s regime are steeped in similar atrocities.
The accounts of Russian brutality emerging from the conflict in Ukraine shock the conscience and are seemingly drawn from another far more barbaric epoch in human history. In Bucha, bodies of Ukrainian women were found naked and branded with swastikas in a mass grave. During the Russian invasion of Mariupol, one Ukrainian woman reported being raped by a Russian tank commander. In the village of Kalyta, a mother of four was gang raped by Russian soldiers. Mutilated and tortured bodies of men, women, and children have been found in forests, cellars, and streets after Russian soldiers moved through villages.
It is important to note that it is likely a small minority of Russian soldiers who are committing these crimes. Yet the overall pattern of heinous acts against civilians cannot be ignored.
To understand Russian cruelty in the war – and how the West should respond to it – one must understand the history of Soviet war crimes and how the West treated them in the last century.
The Soviet era was rife with human rights violations, from the gulags and political prisons to Moscow’s brutal repression of millions under its domain. One of the worst episodes of Soviet barbarity came in its invasion of Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989.
Accounts from United Nations reports published in 1986 and 1987 began to reveal the horrible truth about the Soviet Union’s treatment of the Afghan people. One witness said Soviet soldiers tied dynamite to the backs of old and blind Afghans in a village of Mata in the Panjsher Valley and blew them up. Another talked about helpless targets for Soviet bombers and helicopter gunships. According to the preeminent Afghan diplomat and historian Mohammad Kakar, the Soviets killed at least one million of his compatriots.
By the time the Berlin Wall collapsed, evidence of the Soviet army’s crimes—including gang raping women, bombarding towns and villages with combat gas, using booby traps, scorched earth tactics preventing civilian return, torturing, and indiscriminately killing prisoners of war—were increasingly undeniable.
Soviet dissidents, led by Nobel-prize winner Andrei Sakharov, called upon Communist Party leader Mikhail Gorbachev for trials for Soviet army personnel who had committed the atrocities. Sakharov, who himself was exiled for his opposition to Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, reiterated that the war was an act of aggression and horrendous criminality.
But in November 1989, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, led by Gorbachev, announced an amnesty for Soviet troops who violated laws and basic humanity. Allegedly motivated “by the principles of humanism,” the Supreme Soviet released troops from liability for crimes, reversed convictions, and freed the imprisoned.
Human rights activist Vladimir Bukovsky called the act a “mockery of justice.” The Russian church, under the thumb of the Politburo in Moscow, shamefully opposed making a moral judgement on the decision to absolve Russian troops of their war crimes.
Dissident Russian priests Alexander Men and Gleb Yakunin likened this social theology of the Russian church to the holy version of the “cog in the machine” theory that diminishes the value of individual human life.
Dissidents understood that to protect the fragile liberty of the fledgling Russian state would have required a voluntary confession of guilt at the moment of the new country’s founding. But such a challenge exceeded the Soviet government’s moral capacity, as many senior leaders shared responsibility for the war crimes. Gorbachev, meanwhile, did not want to harm the myth of an invincible and infallible Red Army, nor shake the pillar of his political power.
Western diplomats chose to ignore the Soviet crimes for political reasons, sacrificing their moral high ground in the process. They handed Gorbachev a “respectable” exit from Afghanistan and helped the Soviets avoid paying war indemnities. Washington and London salivated over the prospect of expanded markets in the Soviet sphere of influence, while Paris and Berlin eyed the future expansion of the European Union from Lisbon to Vladivostok.
Both propositions turned out to be utopian, and the moral failing to address the crimes of the Red Army before has now manifested itself in the form of Russian crimes in Ukraine.
In light of this history, Western leaders would be wise to heed the lessons of the last century and hold Russia accountable for its crimes. Peace can never exist long unless it is built on a solid moral foundation, rather than cold political calculations.
Ben Solis is the pen name of an international affairs journalist, historian, and researcher.
Both the 19th century French army and the 20th century German army wanted to push all the way to Moscow but neither could compete with the vastness of the Russian territory or the bitter Russian winters. Those Russian campaigns led to crushing losses by both invading armies and were the turning points in both wars.
We would have faced the same dilemmas and same results if we had followed Patton’s advise.
Sounds like a bunch of propaganda to get Americans to support this WWIII agenda by the MIC (military industrial complex)…I’m not buying it and neither is Trump. Trump 2024!
Yes, this author has an excellent point. I was at the conference on Soviet crimes in Afghanistan at the Heritage Foundation by the end of the second Reagan term. The testimonies of those who witnessed that war were mind-blowing. White House lawyer said that the UN blocked discussion on this topic. He added that U.S. delegations demanded the Soviets investigate these atrocities. Then Baker absolved the Soviets, and Bush was happy not to discuss Afghanistan anymore. Kohl, Mitterrand, and other European leaders saw it as an internal Soviet affair. It was, as the authors said, a colossal mistake. Anyone who understands how moral standards are shaped in politics and the public, in general, should demand it.
Cold political calculations. You mean like the Biden administration does daily?
STOP IT. Fighting a war, is not warcrimes. You sound like democrats. i thought AMAC was conservative. I want the US out of it. Let Russia and Ukraine fight. When someone wins they get to say ‘war crimes’. Not the buttinsky Biden/Harris watmongerers
Even three decades ago, we would have Conservatives discussing this essential moral issue. Today everything is about the next election. I lived in different centuries. I know this other approach is needed, if not necessary for America. I hope the new era of Conservatives will change it. I am encouraged by Pro-Life Movement. It is a new task for them to communicate it to youth.
Until the Biden administration becomes a moral government and takes care of its own obligation to this nation’s citizens, it has no business meddling in the affairs of others. Where’s the fair weather UN in all of this? Obviously our proxy war with Russia isn’t having any significant impact other than to bankrupt this nation, then there that idiot in North Korea and the China cabal. Biden can’t spend his way out of this mess, there isn’t enough money.
In the past, we had politicians who would not be ashamed to admit during the campaign that they needed grace and Providence to resolve specific issues.
Where I grew up in the West, we had a judge who would sentence to church attendance and work at the charity for those charged with minor or medium offenses.
In the past, to be Conservative meant attending the church where actual Bible study with our hard work on the text was required, working at the local dining hall for the poor, or other involvement in the church’s initiatives. All of that shaped our America.
We did not have pastors-actors or congregations behaving during rowdy concerts.
We had expected discipline of thoughts, speech, and behavior from our politicians.
For such people, it was obvious that a VISIBLE, thick line between good and evil actions must be drawn.
We expected that by the end of the Cold War, the Soviets’ crimes would be put on trial, similar to Nurnberg’s trials.
Although the author makes excellent points, in the long run, NOTHING will happen to the guilty by man’s standards. WHO has the power and authority to administer justice for these crimes? A nation will just thumb their noses to everyone else and continue to do as they please. In the end, God will have the final say at his judgement throne.
My understanding is that Ukraine was bombing its own people in Donbas. Donbas is in Ukraine and is mostly Russian people. They voted to leave Ukraine and become part of russia. Russia was trying to protect them against being bombed. They had UN provisional authority to do this…zelenski is also a brutal,
I attended Dr. Sakharov’s lecture in DC. It was probably the winter of 1988. He said that he asked Reagan for support for the trial of the Russian army’s crimes in Afghanistan. He talked much about how in Gorky, where Brezhnev exiled him, he thought about the necessity of the moral foundation that Russia lost with Lenin’s coup. He said that since then, everything that the Soviet Union did was illegal and criminal since the regime’s power was illegitimate. He was a morally courageous person, a natural candidate to be a leader of the new Russia. It was a tragedy that we lost him just a year after that. He, not Gorbachev, should get credit for much positivity during Perestroika. He influenced hundreds of thousands of Russians.
China is our enemy
Not Putin
But we are goading him per globalist
Evil intent/agenda
Wake up
Stop your propaganda or lose a client
Your audacity to call this piece “lame” and simultaneous demand to switch to a different topic may impress the “Bannon and co.” crowds.
Your confidence surprises, but only because it shows that you have so short memory. It may be expected in our age – after all, we suffer memory shortages. Few pills are available but fresh fruits and nuts are much more effective.
But first of all, you twisted what the author wrote by intention or omission. He did not call for the nation to be judged but for the crimes. He also wrote, “likely a small minority of Russian soldiers committing these crimes.”
Therefore, you imputed the claim that the author calls for “nation” to be put on trial. It is your claim, not his.
Let me refresh your memory, although I may be older than you. Do you remember Yugoslavia’s Milosevic, Karadzic, Mladic, and other war criminals? They stood trial in the Hague.
Your comment only suggests your disbelief that Putin’s regime may be brought to Hague. Maybe Putin will end his life earlier, but many will be there. (Some are already in prison in Western Ukraine and will not be exchanged but transferred to Belgium.) Like Milosevic and other Serbian criminals. Was the Serbian nation on trial? No. Only a few Serbians committed crimes against humanity.
I regard this article as crucial in our discussion not only of Ukraine but Iran and China (thank God without war in the Pacific). But if the International Tribunal starts its proceedings, it must consider these crimes.
One news said that some senior Russian officers who encouraged these crimes during this war were Afghanistan war veterans.
Last month, a former Afghan resistance officer in exile identified one of them as a participant in crimes against villagers in Eastern Afghanistan. Therefore, it would be an opportunity to judge the crimes. Whether convicted felons can serve a sentence is entirely another matter.
What is needed is a moral judgment, as others here said too, and I agree with this author.
Ok my question is when are you gonna be held accountable for treason and your crimes against America ???????? look at the crap you pulled in Afghanistan the Billions in war equipment you left over there, and why did you move are troops over there what was the excuse , America couldn’t afford supporting that country yet you are supporting Ukraine and giveing them Billions that we can’t afford yet you leave are borders wide open. Why don’t you tell the truth why you pulled out of Afghanistan, because you made a deal with China with all the lithium in Afghanistan you let China have it so you can line your pockets. We also know that you were involved with this covid 19 crap just as much as Obama was you both should be rotting in prison don’t care if you were the president or not.
Our politicians should have never allowed Putin’s war against Ukraine to become a partisan issue. It is a tragedy that is harming our America.
During Cold War, our foreign policy was a non-partisan matter. Democrats and Republicans understood that the Kremlin turned about one-fourth of the world into a prison camp and aimed to destroy us. As Ed Meese once remarked, a camaraderie of Congress allowed for resolving complicated issues. Democrats supported Reagan’s democracy initiative for countries behind the Iron Curtain that he announced in the U.K. Parliament.
I am old enough, like some of you here, to remember the House Committee on Un-American Activities chairman Francis Walters, Democrat from Pennsylvania, saying the Soviets had to be taken into account for the crimes. He said it during the second hearing of Soviet defector Deryabin. In that distant past, before the 1990s, Democrats and Republicans had vigorous debates but also could find common ground on vital issues.
In our times, Boards of organizations like Young Americans or NED, or Human Events set the direction of our politics. Reporters or tv commentators would ponder these positions, but they did not dictate the opinions. The loud uneducated individuals would not have drawn any attention. The so-called social media inflicted damage on our side, disorienting and confusing.
Our youth needs to learn the esprit de corps, as noted in our discussion.
I imagine that Bill Buckley, Irving Kristol, Henry Hazlitt, Henry Regnery, Jeane Kirkpatrick, or Claire Boothe Luce would call for sound reason among current so-called Conservatives to stop this horrible dividing process. Putin’s war against Ukraine and God-forbid against other Western countries should be common ground for America. Republicans need to wake up and stop listening to part of the voters addicted to their machines but also look at those who still read books, newspapers, and magazines.
It may be a last moment for many of us to share this wisdom since we soon can be on board to the other world or, as believers are convinced, to God. But without this reverting to this wisdom, America may face an even more harsh crisis. It is the highest time to return to senses and logic and act accordingly.
I commend this author for this important article. I am glad that AMAC published it.
People are running away from such topics because they do not know what to say. They are ashamed inside but fearful to admit it. This article cannot be more timely now when we hear rumors of war in the Pacific more frequently.
On the other hand, our representatives suffer from strategic myopia. They can’t discern important issues anymore. Conservative movement does not point, as much as it used to, at the living examples of dignified individuals.
The level of moral consciousness engraved by our movement is partly visible in the lack of this topic in our discussions. But if we discussed our ethical tasks, it would be A.
I share the impression of most commentators here who said our youth is confused. Our people in Congress are not less disoriented.
Putin’s war should immediately become common ground. Unfortunately, some of what you watch on Fox or listen to on our talk shows steers in a completely different direction.
Edith Efron was a towering intellect among brains in our movement in the 1970s and 1980s. She once observed that some passionate people about liberty forget its civilizational context. Namely, that Marxists and their offshoots, whom she called neo-primitivists, wage war against reason, logic, and productivity; and, among other things, against moral accountability. Moral irresponsibility was the first cause of cultural reversal that we began to see at first in Western Europe. (Margaret Thatcher warned of this problem in her speech to YAF in the mid-1980s.)
Those who fully grasp the profound significance of this context will never perceive the problem of our cultural reversal as strictly political.
We noticed it when Clinton entered the White House. Suddenly we saw a moral leap down beneath our previous political standards.
Most importantly, we saw his generation’s disinterest in ethical issues that suddenly arose before them. We helped pull down the Berlin Wall but knew it was only the beginning. Some of us, Efron among them, feared that the next generation was unprepared for these challenges. They did not see it as a civilizational issue as we did. But most of us were already aside retired.
Today most are gone, but few, like here, are still around and can share this experience trying to stress imponderables.
Let me repeat my point: this moral judgment is a civilizational issue – it will decide whether Western civilization will survive.
Nobody should think differently other than it is at the core of our American interest.
Why is the author using a pen name? Why the assumption that we are all “conservatives”. I am not, but rather a Classical Liberal”, like the founders of our nation. Look up the term if you are uninformed.
Unless each of you is willing to put on boots and go to the Donbas, please don’t advocate for a war and the taxes they create. It is no more our business, than any of the other dozen similar “cabinet wars” going on around the world at any one time.
Remeber what George Washington advised, as well as Dwight Eisenhower.
Why are we concerning ourselves with someone else’s problems? We should be using the funds that are being sent to Ukraine to fix our ailing country, like say oh I don’t know, the rail and highway system and the border issues. Why are we helping protect Ukraine’s borders when we don’t protect ours ?
When I was young the Vietnam war was showed on TV at six and 7 o’clock at night every day with live shots of the war going on. Today in the Ukraine you see nothing. You hear the Cyrene when our fake President Biden is over there, but you see nothing.  and with the MS NBC reporting makes it to where I don’t believe a word of it. Msmbc and us government just tried to kill 5 billion people.  and they are still pushing the vaccine. 
The World will be safer and better off if it puts up support to established countries that are targets of Russian and/or Chinese ambitions to improve their Nation by taking over other Nations. Being Commie Nations, their frustration at their poor governance results makes them want to rule/steal wealth and savage other Nations for that purpose. Remember, Russia is a Commie Nation and it therefore relies on subjugation, lies, and brute force against protagonists to maintain power. Remember …. Communism RULES … Democracy GOVERNS.
A little off topic here but I have a serious question. I keep seeing and hearing about “accountability”. What exactly is this. Nothing ever happens to anyone. Just a political talking head BS remark.
The suffering by Ukrainian people has been brought on by their own government – just like our government has turned on us. That war is the two governments way of stealing our money for their own gain. None of it is going to help the people. Get a clue.
A good deal of this article is juvenile directed propaganda spewed by the ‘democratic socialists” in Ukraine in conjunction with American three letter agencies. A Russian would carve a swastika on anyones head? Really? Not an Azov Nazi weird we are paying out billions to for a conflict we started back in 2014 or 1999 if you want to count the year we promised Russia that NATO would not expand one inch further east……..that was 16 joined nations ago by the way.
We are being lied to all to keep the people in some support of the huge money flows going into the donor corps of Brandon and company.
And of course we musnt forget that Russia also bombed its own pipeline when it had a day off from shelling the nuclear plant it had its own people at.
Lies, lies, lies
Aren’t wars not always political?
Governments make war not the people. Do you think American soldiers are not raping women in a war? There are atrocities on both sides. Get real.
Who is going to hold the Russians accountable? The Democrats lie and cheat about the election and they just do whatever they want and nobody holds them accountable. Biden is destroying our country who is holding him accountable? That’s all a bunch of talk and nobody does anything and they all walk away.
Indeed Russia must be held accountable. Putin and cohorts are worse than Hitler was in WWII the way they have attacked the civilian population: raping women in the streets in front of people and laughing; the abuse of children and elderly; the destruction of homes and their power grid in freezing temperatures; mass graves, and on-and-on go the atrocities. The suffering Ukrainian people must be taken into our hearts and those in all of Europe. Imagine this happening in our own country by one of our enemies. I do applaud the bravery and determination of the Ukrainian people, and their will to remain free. With the president we have and our military needing rebuilt, and the easy life we have had (most of us) in this country for so long, I doubt that we could hold on as long as the courageous people have. We and all of Europe must stand by them!
WHAT ABOUT HOLDING china RESPONDSIBLE FOR KILLING MILLIONS ACROSS THE GLOBE WITH COVID. DROP THE BOMBS ????????????????
What does this have to do with the article on Ukraine, you carpetbagger?
Also hold Ukraine accountable! Hundreds of millions of dollars stolen from us and sent to that corrupt country!
gloria, I am interested in your offer. Please reply with your street address. I’m guessing that your front porch has a red light at the door.
I do not deny that historically Russia has had a long history of brutality and violence. But basic information seems to be omitted in this article. There is no discussion of Ukrainian violence against its own people. There is no discussion of foreign interference and control of their elections. There is no discussion of NAZI battalions controlling Ukraine and terrorizing its citizens. Zelensky is a global puppet and our very own government is complicit in promoting this war. We should not be supporting this violence, the 42 biolabs, the child trafficking, and the money laundering. It’s way past time that American citizens wake up. There is no excuse for being so uniformed, unless you are part of the propaganda machine. We are running out of time to right the wrongs!
{{{Russia Russia Russia}}}
Pffft. How about we do what’s really meaningful, and hold the corrupt and warmonger AMERICAN TRAITORS accountable! Start with anti-Republic expletives like the dementia riddled fraud puppet unindicted felon pResident (who ginned up/smack talked the war), and his handler, another unindicted felon, corrupt Commie Traitor Obamie (who’s running the Republic into the totalitarian tyranny hell for us they want so badly)…because corrupt Ukraine is where the elitists launder money, and corrupt piece of garbage Zelenskyy has the dirt to make (and get!!!) his demands met, due to corrupt, nefarious dealings of Kickback Joe et al.
Thankful to see most of the comments are from truly enlightened people who have not fell victim to the propaganda being spewed in this article. It is exactly the thinking expressed in this article that shows me AMAC is obviously run by the uni-party, RINO’S, and war mongers, not actual Constitutional, America first, conservatives. For that reason I am unsubscribing.
I’m not sure Russia is the only one who has committed crimes. The Donbas people need satisfaction too! Zelensky is guilty of that!
He’s also guilty of corruption and conspiracy to influence the American government!
How about holding the corrupt Zelensky and his equally corrupt gov’t officials accountable for allowing U.S. bio-weapon labs built in Ukraine by endangering his people and allowing money laundering by the Biden crime family and other corrupt globalists?
Take back your country Russia.
Not only the Russian but also the Ukrainian soldiers. This war is a war for donors and Political leaders to make money. No one cares about the US citizens and the safety of the nation. You have a Porn star from Ukraine running the country. Could you see Joe Playing the piano with his dong like the Zelensky on TV. I bet he would have no problem.
bioclandestine.substack.com/p/why-the-globalists-are-terrified..
Here is what you don’t know about Ukraine:
gellerreport.com/2022/04/heres-what-you-dont-know-about-ukraine.html/
This is not a battle the U.S. should be involved in. We need to clean up our own messes in the U.S. to protect U.S. citizens. We do not need to start a war with Russia.
Russia should by held accountable by UN or NATO or ?? Ukraine did not invite Russian forces & was enjoying the freedoms in their own country & then Russia invaded. Russia is totally wrong in targeting civilians & energy plants & just making life as miserable as possible on their neighbors. Russia is evil & should have never invaded Ukraine in my opinion.
FJB! Why don’t we re-elect President Trump, for the third time, and let him explain to Putin and Zelenskyy the importance of them to cease and desist their war activities because of the consequences to them personally and to their countries. Also explain to Zelenskyy how he is going to repay the USA every penny that was sent to him and that he would not keep one penny.
So are you an escort? I can’t do that anymore as I am now fat, ugly and old.
While no warfare is good or clean (the civilian populations always get the brunt of such things) perhaps Zelensky should have thought twice about HIS incessant shelling of Crimea, then threatening to join NATO bringing nukes to the Russian border, which precipitated all of this mayhem. Plenty of war crimes to go around, here.
Funding the Communist Chinese and Mexico that is Slaughtering Thousands of Americans with Fentanyl.. Biden should be Held Accountable for War Crimes against American Citizens.. Ukraine is not our War.
Hand-wringing like this will accomplish nothing. Brutes and buliies respect power and force, not talk.