The images and verified reports of atrocities committed in Ukraine should mark the point of no return for relations with a Vladimir Putin-led Russia. As long as the bloody-handed dictator controls that nation, the United States must keep its back turned on Moscow.
President Joe Biden is right. Putin is a war criminal who must be prosecuted for the crimes committed against the Ukrainian people.
Over the weekend, Russian troops pulled back from the suburbs of Kyiv, leaving behind streets strewn with the bodies of civilians.
Many appeared to have been gunned down as they walked or bicycled through Bucha, the town believed to have suffered the most victims.
Some of the dead were found with their hands tied behind their backs, shot in execution style.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy toured the region and reported finding “bodies in barrels, basements, strangled, tortured.”
Other accounts say girls and women were raped and killed, their bodies burned.
At least 410 civilians were murdered, with independent journalists covering the war confirming many of the killings.
Intentionally killing unarmed civilians is a violation of international law. Biden is asking that Putin face war crime charges before the International Criminal Court. The indictment should also extend to his sycophantic sidekick Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarussian president who is supplying troops and material to Russia’s war effort.
The officers and soldiers carrying out the atrocities should be fully aware that they, too, will be held to account for their actions.
Russia has been waging a merciless air attack against Ukraine’s cities, leading to the deaths of thousands of civilians. It has also prevented the evacuation of the bomb-ravaged port of Mariupol, and has blocked international aid from reaching trapped citizens.
Putin perhaps thought he could roll over Ukraine, as he did Georgia and Crimea, and return to sit at the table of civilized nations as if nothing happened.
That can’t be permitted. Russia and Belarus must be fully shunned until Putin and Lukashenko are no longer in charge.
The United States intends to ask the United Nations to expel Russia from the body’s Human Rights Council. That vote should be automatic, given the slaughter in Bucha.
The U.S. and its European allies should also be thinking longer term about a return to what basically must be a Cold War relationship with Russia.
That means learning to live without the oil, grain and other resources Russia exports. The free world has become far too dependent on Russia and other oppressive regimes. The United States must never be in a position in which its economic interests discourage it from standing up to brutality.
Europe appears split on how to respond to the war crimes. France advocates a ratcheting down of energy imports from Russia while increasing sanctions. Poland wants an immediate cut-off of fossil fuels.
“Would you negotiate with Hitler, with Stalin, with Pol Pot?” asked Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.
In entering Ukraine and ruthlessly killing its people, Putin and Lukashenko joined the ranks of tyrants who have committed offenses against humanity.
They should be ostracized from trade organizations, scientific collaborations and all other interactions with nations that observe and respect human rights.
No matter what the outcome in Ukraine, there should be no return to normal for Russia and Belarus until their mad men are gone.
By the The Detroit News. Visit at detroitnews.com
