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Had the world understood the moral consequence of leaving the biggest crime that occurred during World War II unpunished, the atrocious crimes against Ukrainians would not have happened, and the invasion would not have taken place.


COMMENTARY

The massacre that the world learned about last week connects at least three elements that characterising the worst war crime, Katyn massacre, committed by Russians during World War II: the type of victims, the method of killing, empty liquor bottles and the premeditation.



When nearly all the West was silent, in late 1940s, then radio show host Ronald Reagan reiterated the crime’s significance. Reagan said, Katyn is a name we should all remember. Polish officers had been captured by the Russians and murdered in 1940. 



Eighty two years later, on Sunday April 3, 2022, after the Russian troops retreated from Bucha, a small town near Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv, inhabitants together with the Ukrainian army started to uncover macabre memento left by the invaders.

All signs indicated that the planned executions aimed to destroy the Ukrainian intellectual and cultural fabric.



Who were the victims? Russians identified their victims by their service in Ukrainian army, ownership of national coat of arms and even tattoos conveying their dedication to the country. Checking names against their own list, they executed on the spot, Mr. Vladislav Kozlovsky, a Bucha resident, was an eyewitness of executions.



How did Russians kill them? Kozlovsky informed that three soldiers shot a victim at the back of their head. According to Ukraine’s prosecutor office, the corpses had wound shots and bore signs of mutilation, dismembering and torture. Some bodies were burned and headless. The footage shown empty liquor bottles near the graves, that would suggest the soldiers were drunk committing crimes.



All signs indicated that the planned executions aimed to destroy the Ukrainian intellectual and cultural fabric.

At the beginning of March, a European official told Fox News reporters that Russia’s FSB, that is the former KGB, planned to publicly execute certain Ukrainians after occupying their cities. And Chief of MI6, UK intelligence admitted, that the service knew Putin’s invasion plans included summary executions by his military and intelligence services.

Although the type of crime and number of victims in Bucha do not match the other elements, they echo the Katyn. 



The Russian army’s war strategy against Ukraine involving gruesome crimes and contempt for international law, reverberate an episode that lasted from January to April eighty-two years earlier. 



Although the type of crime and number of victims do not match the other elements, they echo the Katyn crime. 



Moscow like Nazi Germany who were allies, in the first days of World War II began implementing a parallel pre-planned strategy, of suppressing all resistance and destroying the Polish elite in their respective areas. Just two days after the invasion, a Soviet Directorate of Prisoners of War II took custody of Polish prisoners to concentration camps.


On 5 March 1940, Stalin signed their death warrant - an NKVD order condemning 21,857 prisoners to "the supreme penalty: shooting." They had been condemned as "hardened and uncompromising enemies of Soviet authority." 



The investigation into Katyn emphasised that on the top of Moscow’s pyramid of evil was the afflatus of that crime. 



According to the investigators, three executioners killed each captive. Two executioners held down the prisoner, whilst the third was shooting. The hands of the victims were bound back with wire. Some victims were forced to lie down on top of already those already executed, while NKVD walked along the rows shooting. 



Empty vodka bottles strewn among the corpses, indicated the executioners had drunk huge quantities of liquor before and after shooting.



In both places, in Katyn and Bucha, Kremlin reacted shouting: it is provocation.



But, in Katyn, a careful investigation conducted by the International Red Cross Committee in 1943 established the fact. Its member, Polish journalist Jozef Mackiewicz said that the investigators analysed the dates of children’s letters to fathers found in victim’s uniforms. This answered the question of when the crime was committed.



“January 8, 1940 - Dear Daddy !! dearest! .. Why don't you come back? Mummy says that with these crayons, he gave me something for my name day ... I don't go to school now, because it's cold. When you come back, you will be glad that we have a new dog. Mummy called him Filuś ... Hi. “


In April 1940, like thousands of others beloved Papa was shot in the back of the head on Stalin's orders, Mackiewicz concluded. 
All letters were dates not later than in April 1940.


More importantly the Katyn investigation emphasised that on the top of Moscow’s pyramid of evil was the afflatus of that crime. 



According to a Pole named Jerzy Lewszecki who testified under oath at the U.S. Embassy in Rome, Stalin’s son, Yacob Dzhugashvili, said: why, those were the intelligentsia, the most dangerous element to us. They had to be eliminated, Lewszecki quoted Stalin's son as saying.



Putin’s audacity of evil matches Stalin’s moral contentment with murdering of hundreds of millions, and testifies to moral enslavement of Russian society that never conscientiously examined its past. 



Published by the official information agency Izvestia after the discovery of Bucha massacre, Kremlin’s ideologue Timophey Sergeytsev’s call to eliminate Ukraine’s elite that he named as “Bandera” elite imitates Stalin's son’s statement.



In 1988, the then Soviet Union leaders including Secretary Gorbachev and his close aid Alexander Yakovlev understood that truth-telling, and judicial judgment of the crime, was needed to open a new chapter in relations with Poland and the world. And as Russian dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn said, if Russian are free, the freedom will prosper the world. 



However, in adequate comprehension among the Western elites that a full investigation and judicial verdict over this heinous crime, can restore the moral gravity wasted that opportunity. 



Putin’s audacity of evil matches Stalin’s moral contentment with murdering of hundreds of millions, and testifies to moral enslavement of Russian society that never conscientiously examined its past. 



The Bucha killings of at least 403 elite Ukrainians, offers another chance to punish the aggressors and their afflatuses thus avoiding a repeat of such massacres and laying the foundation for a future free Russia.


Benjamin T. Goldberg is a historian, philosopher and publicist.