Vladimir Putin is a war criminal if there ever was one. His devil-may-care invasion of Ukraine shocked the world. His indiscriminate targeting of civilians is nothing less than the “cleansing” of the country, the likes of which have not been seen since World War II. His fiendish murder of innocent babies and toddlers has surely earned him an honored seat at Satan’s table.
Reporting from the town of Mariupol, Ukraine, the Associated Press chronicles the carnage, focusing on the heinous slaughter of defenseless infants and children. Among them, according to the AP report, are babies like Kirill, an 18-month-old who succumbed to shrapnel wounds to the head. Armed soldiers die from shrapnel wounds, not infants.
AP correspondents Mstyslav Chernov, Evgeniy Maloletka, and Lori Hinnant go on to tell us about “16-year-old Iliya, whose legs were blown up in an explosion during a soccer game at a school field. There’s the girl no older than 6 who wore the pajamas with cartoon unicorns, among the first of Mariupol’s children to die from a Russian shell.” The reporters came upon a worker with body bags. He told them: “The only thing (I want) is for this to be finished. Damn them all, those people who started this!” That’s you, Vladimir.
Ukraine’s blameless youngsters continue to die like this each day, each week, each month. In the town of Lviv, they have created a shrine to the blameless victims of the invading Russian forces – 109 of them and counting. The memorial consists of empty strollers arrayed in front of the City Council building. NPR quotes Lviv’s Mayor Andriy Sadovyi in its report of the memorial: “This is a terrible price of war that Ukraine is paying today. We call on all adults around the world to stand as one shield to protect Ukrainian children and give them future.”
Evgeny Lebedev is the son of a Russian oligarch. He grew up in England, became a British citizen, and served in the House of Lords. Lebedev acquired the Evening Standard, one of Britain’s oldest newspapers, in 2009. In an illustrated editorial plea to the powers that be in Russia to stop the slaughter, he wrote: “On this page are the final minutes of a six-year-old child fatally injured by shells that struck her Mariupol apartment block on Sunday. She is still wearing her pink jacket as medics fight to save her. But it is too late. Other children, and other families, are suffering similar fates across Ukraine … As a Russian citizen I plead with you to stop Russians killing their Ukrainian brothers and sisters. As a British citizen I ask you to save Europe from war. As a Russian patriot I plead that you prevent any more young Russian soldiers from dying needlessly. As a citizen of the world I ask you to save the world from annihilation.”
The British Ministry of Defence has also chimed in with a plea posted on social media to stop the killing of innocent civilians. But, apparently, Putin has not gotten the message. Over the weekend, he doubled down on his murderous adventure by using hypersonic missiles to wreak even more havoc on the innocent citizens of Ukraine. Russian defense ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov confirmed the use of the superweapons, boasting that Putin’s army has thus far “destroyed 196 Ukrainian drones, 1,438 tanks and other armored combat vehicles, 145 multiple launch rocket systems, 556 field artillery and mortars, and 1,237 special military vehicles,” according to The Epoch Times.
He failed to mention that Ukraine forces – including civilian volunteers from all parts of the world armed with basic weapons, at best – have managed to destroy “at least 1,470 Russian armored personnel carriers, 914 vehicles, 466 tanks, 115 helicopters, 95 aircraft, and 17 drones.”
Oh yeah, Konashenkov also failed to tell us how many babies Mr. Putin has killed to date.