By Kai Diekmann
The brutal war against Ukraine has been going on for two years now. 24 months with many thousands of deaths, rapes, torture, the destruction of lives, livelihoods and homes and the deportation of thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia. Two years in which families have been separated from their sons, husbands, brothers and friends because they are fighting on the front line without a break. Two years in which I worry about Ukrainian friends and colleagues covering the war.
To date, this genocide has cost the Ukrainian people more than 10,000 civilian victims, including nearly 600 children. Over 19,000 civilians have been injured, including over 1,000 children. I use the word genocide deliberately because that is what the Russian dictator wants to achieve: the extermination of the people of Ukraine. He will use any means to achieve this.
I can hear them again, the voices saying: “Then stop sending arms to Ukraine and offer Putin negotiations, then the war will be over and there will be peace”. I don’t know whether they are all Putin trolls or if it is really possible for people from enlightened, democratic, liberal countries like Germany, where people have access to all information, to believe such things. Then they should know that Putin himself makes no secret of what he is really up to. And this is by no means limited to the complete conquest and destruction of Ukraine as a nation, the eradication of Ukrainian identity, culture and sovereignty. If Putin succeeds in Ukraine, he will not be afraid to reach out to other countries that once belonged to the defunct Soviet Union. When he says that he is not interested in “Poland, Latvia or other countries”, it can be assumed that he is interested in precisely these countries. And he wants more. He wants a new world order with dictators like himself in power. He hates everything Western, he hates all democracies, and where that leads can be clearly seen in Russia, China and North Korea. Do people who support Putin’s propaganda really want to live in such conditions?
I’ve been to Ukraine many times in my life. The last time was in early April 2022, six weeks after Putin invaded his neighbouring country. We travelled from Kyiv to Butcha, the once young, modern suburb of the capital, where Russian soldiers carried out their massacre of the population. We walked through streets where not a stone was left standing, past burnt out tanks and vehicles, everything looked deserted. Next to a small Orthodox church, we came across a mass grave with the hands of the dead sticking out of the muddy ground. I have never seen anything so shocking and horrifying. I don’t want to imagine what the other places invaded by the Russians in their imperialist, senseless war mania look like today.
We in the West have been all too comfortable seated in our peaceful rocking chairs for many years. We cannot even imagine that the firestorm of war, the likes of which have never been seen before in the history of mankind, could break over us.
That is why I would like to see freedom-loving people in Germany and Europe, especially university students, demonstrating less against a genocide that is not taking place in the Gaza Strip (if it is, it is being carried out by Hamas terrorists against their own people) and instead turning their attention to Eastern Europe, where a real genocide of people is taking place. A mass murder of people who are just like us, who once lived in a country where equality and a young democracy prevailed, and which is now being bombed to rubble by a ruthless, power-hungry dictator.
“If Ukraine falls, you will fall too,” said Wladimir Klitschko recently at the M100 Media Award in Potsdam. And he was right. Don’t wait until it happens, because it may then be too late.
Kai Diekmann is the former editor-in-chief of the BILD newspaper, founder of the social media agency Storymachine and a member of the Advisory Board of the M100 Sanssouci Colloquium.
More articles:
Vitali and Wladimir Klitschko: Europe’s future will be decided in Ukraine
Prof. Dr Wolfgang Ischinger: A European future in peace is at stake
Anna Romandash: The West is at peace because the Ukrainians are fighting
Olga Konsevych: It seems that the world and Ukrainians are teetering on the brink of chaos
Olesia Tytarenko: Ukraine will never become part of Russia
Olga Rudenko: It’s getting harder to hope
Mike Schubert: It is our duty not only to mourn, but to act
Baroness Kennedy of the Shaws: This war had implications for us all
Anastasiia Ivantsova: Russian propaganda is a crucial human rights violation
Olena Kuk: War is one of the most horrible things that you can possibly adapt to
