For nearly a week now, the world has been aghast, reeling in horror from the images they’ve seen out of cities like Mariupol and Bucha.
Russian troops fleeing these locales have been committing heinous, ungodly atrocities in their retreat, murdering, raping, and torturing hundreds of Ukrainians before dumping them in mass graves or cremating them on site.
Vladimir Putin, of course, denies it all. He is trying to suggest to the world that Ukraine is staging all of this to frame him.
The global community hasn’t been buying it, however, and the latest evidence in Germany’s possession will likely deflate any further excuses from the Kremlin.
Germany’s foreign intelligence service claims to have intercepted radio communications in which Russian soldiers discuss carrying out indiscriminate killings in Ukraine.
In two separate communications, Russian soldiers described questioning Ukrainian soldiers as well as civilians and then shooting them, according to an intelligence official familiar with the findings who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.
The findings, first reported by the German magazine Der Spiegel and confirmed by three people briefed on the information, further undermine Russia’s denials of involvement in the carnage. Russia has claimed variously that atrocities are being carried out only after its soldiers leave occupied areas or that scenes of massacres of civilians are “staged.”
Denials from Moscow will do little to deflect international attention now, and there is no doubt that the world at large will be finding it more difficult to abstain from involving themselves in the conflict now that this evidence has come to light.
