Bucha, Irpin and the ruination of Russia

Western leaders’ horror and fury at the atrocities inflicted on Ukrainian civilians by Russian soldiers is shifting the diplomatic response to Vladimir Putin’s war.

After Moscow agreed to scale back its offensive in parts of northern Ukraine, journalists moved into Kyiv’s suburbs this weekend. What followed were reports of Russian soldiers massacring hundreds of Ukrainian civilians in execution-style killings in the cities of Bucha and Irpin. Accounts of Ukrainian women being raped by Russian soldiers in front of their own children adds to the growing body of evidence describing barbaric war crimes.

The Western world was stunned by Putin’s decision to take the irreversible step of invading Ukraine. It now feels like another Rubicon has been crossed.

“This is not a battlefield, it’s a crime scene,” said Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas in response to photos of murdered civilians which, she said, “recall the mass killings by Soviet and Nazi regimes.”

Charles Michel, president of the European Council, said he was “shocked by the haunting images of atrocities committed by the Russian army” and announced that a fresh round of sanctions would be finalised in the coming days. 

Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, called the actions of Russian troops “genocide”.

This new order of depravity seems to be changing the diplomatic equation, and the already considerable pressure from Western allies on countries like Germany and Italy to stop buying Russian oil and gas has ramped up a notch.

Liz Truss has called on all G7 members to set a firm deadline for ending oil and gas imports. Boris Johnson is expected to press Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, to do so at a meeting in Downing Street on Friday.

Scholz called the acts “atrocities” and said “the perpetrators and those who commissioned them must be held consistently accountable.”

Yet Germany is still dragging its feet. Christian Lindner, German Finance Minister, said the EU must work towards cutting all economic ties with Russia over its “criminal” war in Ukraine but said an encompassing ban on all Russian energy imports would inflict more economic damage on EU member states than on Russia. It’s not clear what more it would take for the Germans to change tack.

Chillingly, the darkening tone of Russian media is mirroring the appalling events on the ground. In an op-ed for RIA Novosti, Timofei Sergeitsev, a pro-Kremlin pundit, says that most Ukrainian citizens are “passive Nazis” and deserve all that’s coming to them: “The Banderite elite must be liquidated, its re-education is impossible. The social ‘swamp’ which actively and passively supports it must undergo the hardships of war and digest the experience as a historical lesson and atonement.”

This menacing rhetoric is bleeding through to ordinary Russians and destroying what’s left of the country’s reputation. Russia is already a pariah state. The atrocities at Bucha and Irpin will push it even further into the cold.