Ukraine. All the horror of war that is hidden from us

Translation of an editorial published in the Italian Catholic newspaper Il FarodiRoma https://www.farodiroma.it/ucraina-tutto-lorrore-della-guerra-che-ci-viene-nascosto-fulvio-beltrami/

It has been 11 months since the start of the conflict in Ukraine. In reality, it has been 8 years and 11 months since this Dirty War began in 2014 after the Maidan coup d’état when the Nazi militias attacked 6 million Ukrainians of Russian origin in the Donbass, carrying out massacres of civilians in Mariopol and Odessa, forcing their fellow citizens to arm themselves to defend themselves helped only by Russia while the so-called international community modestly turned its gaze away.

«Here we are, here we go again with the usual pro-Russian propaganda», someone will cynically say forgetting that is not the first time we have turned our eyes elsewhere. We have done it in Afghanistan, Congo, Libya, Iraq, Yemen, Mali, the Central African Republic, Oromia, Tigray.

Unlike other horrendous wars, where some truth has leaked out, that of Ukraine has been locked up in a blasphemous and cynical virtual world.

Selected images, pre-packaged stories, Nazi militias transformed into heroic nationalists, comic oligarchs into world stars, champions of democracy. As in all self-respecting B-Movie, they presented Russians as “bad guys”, depicted not as humans but as monsters, devoid of feelings, cruel, ruthless to make us hate not only Putin, the Wagner mercenaries, Russian soldiers, but also ordinary citizens, tennis players, dancers, singers, artists, writers, whether they have been alive or dead for centuries, it doesn’t matter. All guilty of being Russians, of being “evil”.

All this propaganda to hide the wrongs that we have done but that we spasmodically want to hide, denying that since Cain killed Abel there are no unilateral wrongs and faults. There are no holy or just wars. There is only violence, horror, the suffering of both: attacked and aggressor peoples.

“War cannot be humanized, it can only be abolished,” said Albert Einstein. We in Ukraine have chosen to abolish the peace.

There were two Minsk agreements approved by the European Union and the United States which safeguarded the territorial integrity of Ukraine and the autonomy of the secessionist republics, as well as the dignity and peace of the Ukrainian and Russian peoples and governments. The horror could have ended in 2015, instead we allowed the civil war in Donbass to continue for 8 long years. feeding it year after year, like a cancer that has devoured us from within. A hidden cancer as if the disease did not exist despite the verdict of history.

A month before the invasion, French President Emmanuel Macron promoted the last, extreme and desperate peace attempt cynically failed because we wanted WAR. We wanted to humiliate Russia by using the Ukrainians as cannon fodder.

In the babel of fake news, of propaganda passed off as information, of the television shows of a head of state who is destroying the nation and its people, of war correspondents who distort reality; an element is constant.

We talk about Ukraine on a daily basis but we avoid showing the horror of war.

We have imposed the insurmountable taboo: to show the suffering of the Ukrainian people forced to fight a cowardly war wanted by NATO where there is no hope of victory.

Faro di Roma, through these photos taken on the front, wants to show you the suffering of these men, of these brothers, of these young people, of these fathers of families, because in their faces, in their eyes, not only are all the suffering and all the horror of the insane conflict but also our faults that cannot receive absolution.

Look at these photos, selected from the least gory, and ask yourself how our politicians, our merchants of death, can sleep peacefully and, when they wake up, continue to talk about war and sell weapons to defeat those enemies who could have been our brothers if instead of hate and violence we had promoted respect and peace.