President Volodymyr Zelensky is  brutally shutting down the opposition offside of Ukraine’s battlefields. ‘A hunt is declared on collaborators and their life is not protected by law,’ said Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to the interior ministry. ‘Our intelligence services are eliminating them, shooting them like pigs.’ To Ukrainian civilians they call traitors, because they aligned with Russia in autonomous regions, Zelensky’s tactics look more fascist every day.

In the unethical actions, there is no evident pledge to a code of military warfare, or abiding the rules of the Geneva Convention, nor employing Rules of Engagement, that have been uncompromising standards for U.S. warfighters. U.S. military rules are enforced by imprisonment and death.

Wars are inevitable and horrific, made even more so with assist by the media. Daily Mail’s October 6 article, published larger than life pictures of accused Ukrainian “traitors,” that look more like a ‘Most Wanted’ poster. The online news venue raises serious concerns saying the Kiev government gave them a ‘revenge’ list of suspected collaborators and traitors to obviously distribute a serious warning to anyone with Russian ties or who dare oppose Zelensky’s “Ukraine government.”

According to the Daily Mail, activists spread fear and intimidation in one town, posting pictures online of a local graveyard with names of targeted collaborators pasted on headstones. Their birth dates are correct, but dates of deaths have been left blank. (Daily Mail)

 On top of all this, Zelensky signed into law on Tuesday, he won’t talk to Putin….ever.

War does not determine who is right, only who is left.

So far Biden and Congress have committed more than $17.5 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since January 2021. This list of weapons sent is fierce and can be found here. More is promised for Zelensky’s long war.

Now Ukrainian officials are pressing for the U.S. to send longer-range missiles in order to strike deeper into Russian territory. The plan is to also take back Crimea,  Zelensky saying in August that Ukraine “would take it by ourselves, without consultation with any other country in the world.” Once the weapons are delivered to Zelensky’s hands – he wants it all and  everyone can “stand aside” it appears.

The Russian Foreign Ministry warns if the U.S. sends Kiev long-range missiles they would cross a “red line” and become “a party to the conflict.” (Wall Street Journal)

Daily Mail heralds the pictured Ukrainian victims as “local stooges,” “Putin patsies,” and “Moscow sympathizers” comparing them all to the activity of civilians in Nazi Germany who “ratted” on their countrymen or collaborated to “assist the Holocaust.” The Ukraine government’s roundup of civilian opposition by force emulates a hallmark tactic of Hitler’s plan. This includes Ukraine citizens in Eastern and Southern regions where the fighting is. Some have suffered poisoning, some targeted by bombs, some imprisoned for years for treason by taking a jobs in local government. Some have been traded in prisoner swaps.

Revenge killings are on lists passed to western media.

“Others are being tracked down and slaughtered by resistance fighters.” A list allegedly passed to the Daily Mail by a Kyiv government source “identifies 29 such retribution killings, with 13 more assassination attempts that left some targets wounded.” (Daily Mail)

Darya Dugina, the daughter of a prominent Russian nationalist, was killed on Aug. 20 when a car bomb ripped through the Toyota Land Cruiser she was driving. U.S. intelligence now believe parts of the Ukrainian government authorized the killing. If so Kiev’s revenge attacks are able to strike at targets in Moscow. (Reuters)

“Other collaborators have been less fortunate. There have been at least 29 suspicious deaths, starting in March with the mayor of a town in Luhansk who suffered a ‘gunshot wound to the heart’ after being ‘abducted from his home’, according to his wife.” (Daily Mail)

Revenge killing was forbidden as our forces watched their buddies die and get limbs blown off in Afghanistan. Revenge, vengeance was considered “the sickness.” Uncontrolled emotions put the entire mission at risk, cloud the mind, and are not the mark of a professional warrior. Strength is tested, moral courage  to hold back is hard when your best friend is leaving in a silver coffin with a flag draped over it.

Locals fed the Taliban intelligence. Sometimes even kids as young as 3 years old were spies. Although not immune to the emotions of revenge, our U.S. warfighters held off “the sickness” of revenge to win their battles with honor, following a code of ethics. In war there must be some framework. Both sides are equipped with war chests of weapons that can destroy entire regions into rubble, filling graves with victims.

Our own forces are subject to a strict Uniform Military Code of Justice.

All branches of our armed forces have to follow Rules of Engagement. They are forced to think , ‘Can I shoot someone trying to kill me or others – or will I end up in a military court of law?’ Doubt can can lead to death or injury to oneself or brothers fighting beside them.

Sometimes there is a razor thin line of who you protect and decisions are heavily weighed.

In 2018, Special Forces Soldier Major Mathew L. Golsteyn was charged with premeditated murder in a shooting of a Taliban bomb maker in Marjah, Afghanistan. He had admitted it to the CIA during a job interview in 2011. The military opened an investigation and later stripped Golsteyn of a Silver Star and an elite Special Forces tab when the case was closed in 2013 without charging him. (New York Times)

The Army opened up a second investigation. The bomb-maker shooting had happened after “a roadside bomb killed two Marines – Sgt. Jeremy R. McQueary and Lance Cpl. Larry M. Johnson – who had been working with Major Golsteyn’s Green Beret team.”

Golsteyn tracked the bomb-maker down.

“Under the rules of engagement, Golsteyn was ordered to release him, but he was worried that if he did so, the suspect would have targeted Afghans who were helping American soldiers.” (Fox News) 

“There’s limits on how long you can hold guys,” he told Fox News’ Bret Baier in 2016. “You realize quickly that you make things worse. It is an inevitable outcome that people who are cooperating with coalition forces, when identified, will suffer some terrible torture or be killed.”

Goldsteyn was eventually pardoned by President Trump as he could have faced a death penalty for admitting he killed a Taliban bomb maker.

Ukraine has no such military code of ethics by declaring civilians as open game.

“Such killings are presumed to be the work of the resistance movement. Orchestrated by Ukraine’s special forces, it has become increasingly well organised. Recent fatalities include Ivan Sushko, a wedding toastmaster appointed mayor of a town in the Zaporizhzhia region, who died in August after his car was blown up,” says Daily Mail.

Even those who conspired on 9/11 are protected by law, by trial, and representation. Some 9/11 terrorists are still awaiting trial after 21 years. Media invitations are sent out to attend the trials in Guantanamo Bay Detention Center. Most were freed, sent to other countries by Obama and Biden. Intelligence reports offer evidence that terrorists freed by the United States make their way back to the battlefield.

“These are loathed ‘losers’ – the term used by one Ukrainian government minister,” says Daily Mail, adding, “One former Ukrainian MP, previously accused of child abuse, died in a targeted missile strike.”

The partisans [of revenge] seek to spread fear through such killings while destroying arms dumps, devastating infrastructure for supply lines and threatening residents they target as working with the enemy.

Ukraine’s resistance has a familiar ISIS ring.

Public executions are a well-known tactic insurgencies use to spread terror across the Middle East.

A captured Azov Battalion fighter claimed  in an interview last July that “Oleksiy Arestovych, once a key advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, had, prior to the war, ordered his Neo-Nazi regiment (among other military units) to carry out and film “brutal murders” of captured Russian soldiers in service of an “information campaign.”

“The purpose of this effort, the Ukraine Azov fighter claimed, was to transmit the grisly footage to Russia in order to stoke anti-war sentiment among the population, and thus protests and upheaval.” (MPN News)

Human Rights Watch wrote to the Security Service [of Ukraine (SBU)] and Interior Ministry on March 10, 2022, to express concern about the state-run social media channels and website that were posting the images and videos and asked what steps the authorities will take to ensure that POWs are treated in compliance with the Geneva Conventions.

“SBU has a Telegram account with about 868,000 subscribers where it has posted videos of captured Russian soldiers who appear under duress or are revealing their names, identification numbers, and other personal information, including their parents’ names and home addresses.”

As of March 16, Human Rights Watch was still awaiting a reply to their concerns.

Human Rights abuses abound in clashes of wills.

In March 2022, videos appeared online to show Russian fighters with POW status being shot in the leg near the city of Kharkiv recently retaken. A day later three charred bodies in the same location were posted by a Ukrainian journalist. Who they are remains unclear.

https://twitter.com/zcjbrooker/status/1508114632673828867

“The obligation to protect POWs from being objects of public curiosity, as well as protecting them from intimidation or humiliation, is part of the broader requirement to ensure their humane treatment and protect their families from harm,” said Aisling Reidy, Senior Legal Advisor at Human Rights Watch. “The Ukrainian authorities should stop posting these videos online.”

Ukrainian Troops Seen Killing Russian POWs in Video (Newsweek)

Russian-affiliated forces are also accused of human rights abuses. Ukrainian authorities are held to task to produce evidence of these killings and others like them – including any indications of the specific forces and commanders who may have been responsible – to help ensure that those responsible are held to account and justice is ultimately delivered, says Human Rights Watch.

The children that survive this war will do so with trauma. Unlawful killings may one day fuel retribution, rebellion. As long as the claim to revenge remains, so does the war continue and is passed on to future generations.

Is war itself a crime when other options are available in political circles?

Ask the Infantry, and ask the dead. (Ernest Hemingway)