The atrocities in Bucha, which occurred between March 4th and 31st, 2022, just 30 kilometers northwest of the city center of Kyiv, have been etched into the collective memory of Ukraine. Russian troops committed serious crimes against the Ukrainian civilian population during this time.

International human rights organizations documented these crimes. An independent UN commission as well as international investigators from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) concluded that the rapes, arbitrary executions, torture, and looting committed by Russian military personnel in Bucha constituted serious war crimes against the civilian population. As international investigations revealed, the mass killings were part of an intentional system: Russian soldiers interrogated and executed unarmed men of fighting age, and ruthlessly and arbitrarily killed people who inadvertently crossed their march towards the Ukrainian capital.

Bucha was a breach of civilization. Unfortunately, these events seem to be fading from memory too quickly in Germany and other countries, just two years after the liberation of the Kyiv suburbs. Anyone today who accuses Ukraine of rejecting negotiations with Russia, or who advocates for a “freezing of the war,” is thereby urging the Ukrainian government to voluntarily surrender another part of its country to this fate. Would we endorse the same for a part of Germany?

Picture from Reuters and Alex Kent, published under CC-BY-2.0, part of the Photo Exhibition “Bucha. Faces of War. Ukraine War Photo Exhibition 2023″ Faces of War. Ukraine War Photo Exhibition 2023”