“Back in the 1990s, when Europe experienced another eruption of barbarous violence in the form of the Yugoslav conflict, there was a similar mood of pessimism that those responsible for committing genocidal horrors, such as the Srebrenica massacre, would ever face justice. Yet, just a decade later, the key perpetrators of such atrocities, including the former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic and his willing Bosnian Serb accomplice, Radovan Karadzic, found themselves arraigned on war crimes charges before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
Whether Putin and his cronies suffer a similar fate depends to a large extent on how the Ukrainian conflict ends, and if the Russian autocrat manages to survive in power after his litany of disastrous miscalculations.
To date, Putin has enjoyed impunity for the violence his forces have committed in war zones ranging from Chechnya to Syria, where a generation of Russian commanders honed their skills levelling the ancient city of Aleppo. These same Russian generals have spent the past nine months subjecting Ukraine’s civilian population in the Donbas to similar torment.
Putin no doubt calculates that he will never be held accountable because, as Russia holds one of the five permanent seats on the United Nations Security Council, it can veto any move by the West to establish a war crimes tribunal along the lines of the Yugoslavia court. China, too, would object, as it would resist the establishment of any body that could investigate its own genocidal treatment of the Uyghurs.”
This is how Vladimir Putin’s dismal rule ends (telegraph.co.uk)
Slobodan Milosevic was never convicted of anything. He died in custody the day before the judges were to render a verdict. The book ‘Travesty: The Trial of Slobodan Milosevic and the Corruption of International Justice’ by John Laughland describes Milosevic’s trial in detail, and according to him Milosevic (i) never had any command or control over the people who were committing war crimes, and (ii) never did anything that we don’t do every day.
There should be no doubt that Putin is in control and is in command, so that comparison is not all that valid. Russia may one day realize that they will pay and pay and pay, unless they turn over the people responsible for war crimes and that includes not just Putin.
I am sure there will be those who would prefer to just hand over a death certificate, but it is imperative that those culpable are held accountable for future concerns. In today’s world, we cannot allow such actions anymore, since they are no longer just localized. The damage can spread wide and far.
If Putin thinks he will get away with it, it will just be another miscalculation in a long line of them. At some point enough people in Russia will come to realize that they need to trade him, et al, for eventual future economic benefits. This may take some time and more damage will be done, including in Russia, but the arc of history is not with them.
Please tell me when anyone has been held accountable since the War on Terror started
This happened and nearly blew up the Bush WH.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisoner_abuse
It finally gave long frustrated Democrats something to use, post 2000 election loss, to rage about. Their rage emboldened the jihadists.
Ahhh, the “arc of history”. If you can pick it out you must be able to extends its line and tell where it’s headed. Where is that? Where is the “arc of history” arching to?
The arc of history has been moving towards more freedom for individuals and against the autocrats. Even if there are those, including in the US, who like to reverse it, they will not succeed and one major reason has to do with economics.
You are knocking Joe Biden’s Maga Republicans? How about the Marxist side of his administration?
Marxism has never found much purchase on US soil, not even a century ago when it was spreading far and wide. That has not changed.
It is the central theme of Biden’s regime.
Have you had time to tell Mr. Xi?
Putin is a living legend, I’ll leave it up to you to figure out what will be written in history books comparing Putin with Biden. Sort of like Castro with Dubbya, two giants against two demented individuals that wasted the unexpected rent of the USSR disappearance.
How does wishful thinking serve the quality of debate on this website? NATO heroism in that ‘Wag the Dog’ war the Clintons needed to draw away attention from his emerging interest for real young women, with Hillary dipping in during her own shot at the presidency by claiming she had been shelled on her visit to the war torn region, which was a lie, actually isn’t a great way to sell this apotheosis we are witnessing today.
Especially as NATO did absolutely nothing to prevent the Srebrenica massacre, with NATO military in attendance, told to stand down, as the men were led away, while NATO actively used the services of their good friend bin Laden to fight the Serbs in Bosnia.
Interestingly though, this war was designed to break up Yugoslavia in manageable mini-states to be exploited by the collective west through divide and conquer, which is the general strategy of NATO in this war too, breaking up Russia before confronting China, or so it seems to me. With a reemerging Russia odd things might happen as the fragments of that endeavor draw the conclusion that they were not served by that war, in retrospect, which actively exploited nationalistic and religious groups for nefarious purposes. Do you have a different take on what this was about, Colonel?
I post interesting material.
This is a blatant hypocritical piece of propaganda by an apologist for the empire. The names of the US, Britain, Bush and Blair could easily be substituted for Russia and Putin. Clinton should never gotten the US involved in the Balkans and Bush and Blair illegally invaded Iraq and destroyed the country creating millions of refugees and destroying the country. Obama then helped destroy Libya then supported Jihadists to try to overthrow Assad in Syria and to this day the US is illegally occupying one third of Syria. The conflicts that Russia has been involved in are on their border not 8,000 miles away and they were asked to come into Syria to help fight the Jihadists and yes they did level Aleppo to get rid of ISIS but the US did the same thing in Raqqa and Mosul.
Happy Thanksgiving
I agree. You forgot Egypt. Obama and Clinton hoped to destroy it as well.
Lots of triggering this Thanksgiving. Hope you have a wonderful day Col.
Someone needs to face the hangman for the many torture chambers. Putin may or may not have specifically ordered those horrors. But he could have stopped them.
Leith,
I doubt that will ever happen. I doubt there will ever be any official Russian inquiries in the pattern of torture, murder, rape and kidnapping. Like most governments, including ours, there’s little hunger for introspection. And what I’ve seen of Russian news personalities and “man on the street” interviews, these patterns of depravity are accepted as normal and even necessary by many Russians.
While you are doing a ‘bleeding heart’ routine about those awful Russians, one does not have to do much digging to find articles on Azov battalion depravity – if that is not too genteel a term. When using mercenaries, – and Ukraine has a boatload ) – it is often found restraint is not a dominant characteristic.
If the Azov Battalion d/n exist Putin would have created it. How many men are there in one battalion? How many “were in” the Azov Battalion. Hasn’t Vlady killed ’em all already? Or does the Azov regenerate? Maybe the Azov is in every unit of the UKM? I read Russia has killed around 100M Ukrainian soldiers/civilians. There can’t be a Nazi left can there? Unless vestigial Nazis are lurking elsewhere in eastern Europe? You don’t have to look too hard to find vestiges of anti-Russian/Communist “Battalions” in Finland, The Balts, Slovakia, and Armenia. Are they the next Nazi’s worthy of Russian destruction? But why argue about this when the real issue is the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Go home Vlady! Vlady, go home! That would end all the killing.
TTG,
That is in my opinion not entirely true though you in fact are immune from refutation due to your careful observation of accuracy of expression. Though there is indeed evidence of the dark side of human behavior and motivation having been awakened in a discouraging number of individuals (on all sides) it is not at all universal in Russia . This several page thread of responses to information posted on a Russian internet forum Yaplachat (I cried) proves, to me at least, that a large number of people find the activity described – presenting a council of Eu officials with a sledgehammer in honor of a dreadfully cruel execution that was reported to have happened (the truth concerning which I remain ignorant) – deserving of censoring with strong opprobrium and castigation. There is also the Russian channel 1420 on YouTube which interviews numerous “chelovek on the ulitsa” from diverse areas of the huge country, which uncovers in my opinion a very perceptive demographic who understand well what is happening and are not happy about it.
https://www.yaplakal.com/forum1/topic2535170.html
1420 – What do Russians think now? 9 months after ..
https://youtu.be/pLhqbrCa2zA
F&L,
Thanks for those examples of the better Russia. I bet those attitudes are even more prevalent as one gets away from the cities and the effects of Russian mass media. I can’t imagine the lacquer box artists of Fedoskino, Palekh, Kholui, and Mstera cheering on the likes of Prigozhin, Solovyov and the rest of the big talkers. That many Russians don’t buy their crap doesn’t bode well for Putin. Although it’s a real longshot, he could eventually end up with the al-Gaddafi treatment with a knife in his arse, a bullet in his head and his carcass put on display in the freezer section of a Moscow grocery. But he certainly will never up in the Hague.
Life would be boring without UK tabloids.
All is said and well said.
The journalistic rule is: “Chaps, you don’t know? so make it up”.
One day I hope the Britt tabloids will have to account for the load of crap they tried to pull on us.
I’m going to subscribe to a paper MSN. Every day I’ll cut the pages into 5*5 rectangles, cut a hole in one corner, thread each sheet through the string hanging at the comfortable height to the right of the toilet bowl. This will save on toilet paper. Because, wonder, it is the only use of these rags of disinformation.
“Someone needs to face the hangman for the many torture chambers. “. Yes Leith and lets start with the American architects of Al Ghraib and the CIA black sites along with their Eastern European hosts.
Agreed
I still think he is gravely ill. Why else would he be so eager to sort out his issues with Ukraine? There was no imminent threat to Russia. He is suffering from some kind of serious illness and knows he will die within the next couple of years. This was to cap off his legacy and instead he destroyed his legacy.
In my view, Russia will retain territories they hold now, but once a new leadership comes in they will look to negotiate a deal that will give Ukraine most of land back in favor restoring more normal relations with the world again. Both countries would be foolish to spill more blood over land no one in their right mind would wish to live on. Only Crimea and some land access to it is all Russia might get out of this, if even that in the end.
As far as Ukraine’s security goes, they should not join NATO, but US and others should make bilateral agreements to guarantee defense and open up trade.
Now that is wishful thinking. The next Russian leadership will be much tougher minded.
“I still think he is gravely ill. ”
He is sick of course, but above all he has rabies.
The story is worth telling.
One day Putin was bitten by a rabid dog. But Putin, as everyone knows, is poisoned. So the dog gave him rabies and died. Poor thing.
It’s from such details that we can see Russians are heartless.
@ Fakebot
“Both countries would be foolish to spill more blood over land no one in their right mind would wish to live on”
No Ukrainian government will be allowed to give up the Donbas:
https://romaninukraine.com/rt-chillysalsa2-gerashchenko_en-kazakhstan-has-most-of-the-uranium-ukraine-has-massive-gas-reserves-imperialist-motives-every-time-htt/
There are also deep-seated historical issues regarding this part of Ukrainian lands, ranging from even before Ukraine’s Kozac (Cossack) past, to the Holodomor, which Romania and Germany have both recently recognized as a genocide against the Ukrainian people, resulting from deliberate Soviet policy. And no, the “Soviet” label does not exculpate Russia; all of the free world’s leaders, in their private letters and conversations, continued to call the Moscow power Russia; they knew who they were dealing with.
“To date, Putin has enjoyed impunity for the violence his forces have committed in war zones ranging from Chechnya to Syria,”
A BRITISH publication wrote that, did it?
Well, I never….
Remind me again when Tony Blair was hauled before a war crimes tribunal because, honestly, I totally missed that event.
https://new.wordsmith.org/anagram/anagram.cgi?anagram=Tony+Blair&t=500&a=n
I tried Tony Blair. As an entry into the wordsmith anagram server.
Partial Verdict:
Tiny Labor
Try Albino
Albion Try
. .
Some are unprintable.
What about the dismal ruling of “The West”, or according to EC FA Borrell, “The Garden”?
https://twitter.com/i/status/1595398964744015873
At least V.V Putin keeps the safeguard of some reamining human values the Western civilization, currently in the process of destruction and erasing for being substitutted by something else by the Davos troupe, was once based upon….
There are millions of Ukranians without water, heating and electricity as a consequence of deliberate targeting of the energy infrastructure. Millions more have been made refugees.
Is this what you mean by Putin’s safeguarding of human values ?
I heard T Carlson say last night that the US support of the Ukraine was “designed” to raise energy prices. Do you all believe that?
I have long been a fan of TC. I don’t know what to make of him.
Your view. I disagree with him on US support for Ukraine but little else.
For a possibly sensationalized view of anti-Ukraine activism in Russia, see:
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/25/putins-supporters-call-for-the-extermination-of-ukraine.html