No looking away from Putin’s war crimes in Ukraine

By now, the entire world should be crystal-clear on this fact: Russians have committed war crimes in Ukraine.

The satellite images proving that civilians were slaughtered in Bucha, the shocking video of charred corpses, mass graves and similar bloody carnage that was played Tuesday for the United Nations Security Council — all of it is undeniable evidence of Vladimir Putin’s atrocities in this brutal and unprovoked invasion.

The only question now is how to stop it, and hold Putin and his henchmen accountable.

“Now the world can see what Russia did in Bucha,” Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy said in his impassioned speech to Security Council members, in which he pleaded for the UN to take strong action against Russia.

“The massacre in our city of Bucha is only one, unfortunately, only one of many examples of what the occupiers have been doing on our land for the past 41 days,” Zelenskyy said.

We wonder whether Putin’s American defenders — Tucker Carlson of Fox News comes to mind, though he’s not the only one — feel any shame yet for their Russian cheerleading in the early days of this war. No matter. There’s a permanent black mark against them now. Whatever tenuous credibility they had before is now destroyed.

Beyond the atrocities documented in Bucha and elsewhere, the world now also has heard the chilling news that thousands of Ukrainians have reportedly been kidnapped and taken to “filtration camps” in Russia. Their passports and cellphones were confiscated. Families were separated.

“I do not need to spell out what these so-called filtration camps are reminiscent of,” Linda Thomas-Greenfield. the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told the Security Council. “It’s chilling, and we cannot look away.”

Greenfield pointedly, and significantly, used the words “war crimes” to describe Russia’s actions. She called on the UN to expel Russia from its Human Rights Council, which should happen as quickly as possible.

Tougher economic sanctions, which polls show have broad support among Americans, are also in the works. Europe is preparing to ban Russian coal. European nations are expelling dozens of Russian diplomats.

The U.S. and its NATO allies are stepping up the pressure, and must continue to do so.

The whole world has seen the atrocities in Ukraine. There can be no looking away now.

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