by Trudy Rubin
When a 2,000-pound Russian missile slammed into a crowded shopping mall in the central Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk last Monday — killing at least 18 people buying bathing suits or blenders — that was par for the course for Russia.
Only the day before, a barrage of Russian missiles pounded a quiet civilian neighborhood in the center of Kyiv, smashing a high-rise apartment building.
The latest Russian slaughter came as the leaders of the world’s seven richest democracies, known as the G-7, were meeting in Krün, Germany — just ahead of a NATO summit in Madrid. Ukrainian officials think Russian President Vladimir Putin was sending a grim message to both groups that he can win this war, despite Western sanctions. Never mind how many innocent civilians Russia kills.
Neither angry rhetoric — nor more sanctions — will stop Russia’s war crimes in time to save Ukraine. How many Russian atrocities will it take to convince European leaders — and the Biden team — that there is only one way to halt Putin: Provide Ukraine with (still-absent) long-range heavy weapons to counter Putin’s bombs and missiles and push Russian invaders off its land.
Judging by the G-7 meeting, Washington and its allies don’t have the will, or the sense of urgency, to help Ukraine save itself and the West from Putin’s imperial lust.
At the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy rightly called Putin’s Russia a “terrorist state,” listing scores of missiles unleashed on civilians in several Ukrainian cities, killing many women and children, just over the past four days. “In any other part of the world [these daily attacks] would be called terrorism,” Zelenskyy said.
He is correct. Yet words won’t stop Moscow’s terrorist assault.
Vladimir Putin is the unabashed lord of war crimes in the 21st century. Or as his foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, put it last week, “Russia is not squeaky clean. Russia is what it is. And we are not ashamed of showing what we are.”
As if the constant targeting of civilians is insufficiently criminal, Putin’s Russia has also blockaded Ukrainian ports, preventing the export of grain that is desperately needed to feed citizens of Africa and the Middle East.
This is not the “normal” carnage of war.
At the G-7 meeting, a frustrated Zelenskyy appealed to leaders for more military support to push Russia out of newly conquered territory in the east and south before winter, when the frozen ground will make it easier for Russian forces to move tanks, artillery, and supplies.
The West’s drip, drip, drip of heavy weapons is helping to kill Ukraine slowly. As NATO nations meet, they must decide whether they want to permit Putin’s terrorist attacks to continue — or whether they will finally accelerate the shipments of weapons that Ukraine needs to win.
