Russia’s deliberate targeting of a children’s hospital in Kyiv is significant for several reasons.
This is proof, if any further proof was needed, that the Kremlin is committing genocide in Ukraine. It is a sign of the brutality and desperation of the Putin regime, and a testament to its strategic stupidity.
It is important to call things by name and not hide in whitewashing words. Since the beginning of the war, Putin’s regime has consistently targeted civilians, regardless of age or gender. Remember the horrific scenes when the maternity hospital in Mariupol was bombed? Remember the theater with the word “Children” written on it that the Russian military bombed? That was about two years ago.
Putin’s goal has been consistent and clear from the beginning: the total or partial annihilation of the Ukrainian people. It is genocide, Putin is a genocide, and those who defend him in the West are morally complicit in Moscow’s crimes.
Can you talk to barbarians? Can you negotiate with barbarians who violate all moral standards and continue to destroy? Ukrainian critics often accuse President Volodymyr Zelensky of being stubborn. But what exactly can Zelensky say to a terrifying tyrant who openly says he wants to “destroy” him? Eliminate Ukraine as a state?
Even if the calls for negotiations are motivated by a sincere desire to end the bloodshed, they amount to an invitation to mass suicide among the Ukrainian people.
But bombing a children’s hospital is also a sign of desperation. If you can’t kill adults on the battlefield, and Putin’s ragged military clearly can’t do that, even at the cost of more than 1,000 casualties a day, then target children. Children are easier to slaughter, and there’s no need to mobilize poorly trained soldiers who may still have a sense of right and wrong. Why not assert the superiority of civilization by targeting children in hospitals? They’re particularly easy targets, and slaughtering them has the added benefit of draining Ukraine’s future demographic potential.
But as is often the case with Putin’s decisions, targeting a hospital with sick children is strategically foolish. Naturally, Putin thinks he has scored a major victory by intimidating the West on the eve of the NATO summit in Washington, D.C. But whether he believes what he is saying or not, his bravado is delusional.
For he has once again infuriated the world at the very moment when voices are growing for some kind of deal with the Kremlin — try calling for negotiations with the baby killers, or insisting that Ukraine and its children should now be left defenseless against the genocidal plundering of Kremlin madmen.
Putin has once again achieved the exact opposite of what he intended. He thought it would be easy to invade Ukraine and that the West would give in. It didn’t happen and the West didn’t give in. He thought he could weaken NATO. But he strengthened and expanded it. He thought he could make Russia great again. But he made Russia a colony of China and an equal partner with North Korea.
Latvian President Edgars Rinkević recently Posts On social media, people are shouting, “Russia is gone!”, a famous line from the Roman senator Cato the Great. The mantra he chanted in the last few years of his life was: The Russian argument before the Third Punic War was that Carthage must be destroyed. The Putin regime, with its proud assertion of its barbarism, has in effect made Rinkevich’s proposal conceivable, even essential.
After all, how can a brutal regime be stopped? Russia’s defeat and shrinkage to its pre-imperial borders Moscow Region – Here’s one possibility: Western policymakers who fear destabilization would shudder at this prospect, but it would put a stop to Russian imperialism and hostilities that have already claimed millions of lives. The good news is that such an outcome is possible – not because the West wants it, but because Putin’s stupidity makes it likely.
Barring a weakening of Russia, ending the current regime would be enough. But there is a big problem: while autocracy may suit the political tastes of many Russians, it is unclear how realistic such an option is. But here too, Putin’s own policies are weakening the regime, and may bring about its end sooner than Western policymakers think.
Both options depend on Putin staying on. If he does, the regime and the state will continue to bleed while it continues to kill Ukrainians and Russians. If Putin leaves politics, or the world, the decline and decay will come much quicker, to everyone’s benefit.
“Is Putin a Derendus?”
Alexander J. MotylProfessor of Political Science at Rutgers University, Newark. Specialist in Ukraine, Russia, the Soviet Union, nationalism, revolution, empire, and theory. Author of ten non-fiction books.The end of the empire: The Decline, Collapse, and Rise of Empire” and “Why empires are re-emerging: The fall of empire and the rise of empire in comparative perspective.
