Tangle - War crimes in Ukraine.

Episode Date: April 7, 2022

Over the last two weeks, a series of news reports broke about the town of Bucha, which sits in the suburbs of Kyiv (Ukraine's capital). Russian forces had occupied the suburb for weeks, but withdrew last week. Then Ukrainian officials announced they had discovered evidence of war crimes. Plus, a preview of a special Friday edition.You can read today's podcast here.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here.Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and produced by Trevor Eichhorn. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, the place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking without all that hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we're going to be talking about a tough one, the alleged war crimes in

Ukraine, in Bucha, Ukraine. And yeah, we're going to get into it. It's not going to be an easy thing to discuss, but it's an important story. We also have a Goodreader question. And as always, we'll start off with some quick hits. First up, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is expected to be confirmed this afternoon as the next justice to join the Supreme Court. Jackson will replace Stephen Breyer and has the support of three Senate Republicans, Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski, and Susan Collins, and all 50 Democrats. Number two, the Senate is considering a bipartisan deal to strip Russia and Belarus of their favored nation trading status. Number three, the House

approved a criminal contempt referral to the Justice Department against two former top Trump aides, Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino. Number four, China warned on Thursday that it would take strong measures if U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, which she says she plans to do next week. Number five, on Friday, a federal judge agreed with a January 6th defendant that the police let him into the Capitol building, the first acquittal connected to charges and the rioting from that day. Before we jump into our main story, I want to give a quick heads up that after a full two days

of some back and forth and some more dialogue with readers about Tuesday's edition on Disney, I've decided to publish one of our classic reader response issues in tomorrow's Friday edition. The last time I did this was when I responded to a slew of reader feedback about my take on Joe Rogan. And in that issue, I was mostly aligning myself with the right. And a lot of the folks who were upset with me were on the left. Tomorrow, it'll be the opposite. So this Disney issue drew a similar level of negative feedback that the Rogan piece did, along with some folks letting me know they were unsubscribing, all that good stuff. So I'm eager to address those criticisms, and I'll be doing that tomorrow. As always, tomorrow's Friday edition is for

subscribers only, although I am thinking about maybe releasing it to everyone. But either way, you should go subscribe tomorrow and perhaps we'll try and get something up on the pod too as well. We'll see how it goes. But just keep your eyes out for it. Readtangle.com slash membership is the way to make sure you get all our good content. All right, on to today's topic, the war crimes in Bucha. The horror coming out of Ukraine tonight as Russian troops withdraw from areas around the capital of Kiev, what's now been left behind. The brutality now on full display for the entire world. In the town of Bucha, Ukrainian authorities say they have found hundreds of men, women, and children killed,

some with their hands tied behind their backs, a man with what appeared to be a bag of groceries. This morning, the White House set to announce new sanctions as evidence of war crimes mounts. Even darker, more detailed picture is emerging of the atrocities committed by Russian forces as more images surface and more witnesses come forward to tell their story. surface and more witnesses come forward to tell their story. Is there any way to actually charge Vladimir Putin or anyone else in the Russian chain of command with war crimes? Over the last two weeks, a series of news reports broke about the town of Buja, which sits in the suburbs of Kyiv, Ukraine's capital. Russian forces had occupied the suburb and the region around it for weeks, but they withdrew last week. Then Ukrainian officials announced they had discovered evidence of war crimes inside the

suburbs and around the region. An advisor to President Volodymyr Zelensky said some 280 people were buried in mass graves and the streets were strewn with dead civilians. The Associated Press said its reporters saw dozens of bodies in various spots around Bucha, and the New York Times, using a combination of on-the-ground reporting and satellite images, documented dozens of civilians dead left in the streets. Some, according to a coroner the Times interviewed, who presented them with images of the dead, had their hands tied and had been shot at close range. On Sunday, more bodies were still being discovered across Bucha, found, quote, dead in yards and on the roads amid mounting evidence

that civilians had been killed purposely and indiscriminately, end quote, according to a New York Times report. President Joe Biden responded to the reports and the claims from Ukrainian officials by calling for Vladimir Putin to be tried for war crimes and pledging more sanctions. He then announced new sanctions on Russia's largest financial institutions and several people tied to the Kremlin, including Russian President Vladimir Putin's two adult daughters. Meanwhile, Russia has denied the allegations, saying the videos and photos were fraudulent and claiming the images were staged by actors after Russian forces vacated the town. Those claims, however, were undercut by the satellite images showing the civilian bodies had been in the streets for weeks and left there, even while Russian forces still occupied the area.

The United States has joined more than 40 countries who intend to investigate the potential war crimes, and the United Nations Human Rights Council has launched an inquiry as well. For decades, the international community has looked to the Nuremberg trials and the Geneva Convention on how to define and prosecute war crimes. The Geneva Convention prohibits crimes against humanity, including intentionally killing civilians, torture, sexual violence, and wanton destruction of property. But prosecuting those crimes is difficult, and experts believe the prospect of any real punishment for Putin or his military leaders is slim. Opinions on this issue do not break down along partisan lines,

so today we are just going to share some opinions and perspectives on a few different elements of this story, including how the U.S. should respond, whether Putin is really weakened, and whether these alleged war crimes can actually be prosecuted. First up, we'll start with a piece from the New York Times editorial board, which said that we must document the war crimes now so the evidence can be used later. It may appear unduly legalistic to parse evidence or to question witnesses as countless civilians cower in their homes, hoping against hope that Russian shells do not hit their apartment buildings, the Times said. The very notion that warfare can have rules, suggesting that there

are correct ways to inflict death and destruction on an enemy, is difficult to grasp, and prosecuting commanders carries the risk of appearing as victors' justice. Yet the world has also identified crimes that are unacceptable even in the fog of battle as victor's justice. Yet the world has also identified crimes that are unacceptable even in the fog of battle, the board wrote. Objectively gathering and documenting evidence is a powerful way to cut through the muck and preserve the possibility that someone might someday be held accountable. It holds out the possibility, however slim, that someday a judge will declare the orders to fire on a village or hospital illegal, and that the legal judgment might one day serve as a deterrent in the next war. War crime investigations are a

powerful political tool that can be used to underscore the dignity of victims and the lawlessness of the invaders. The Wall Street Journal editorial board suggested that it may be better strategically to focus on prosecuting people other than Putin and to have Europe lead the way. Survivors say that Ukrainian officials who refused to cooperate with Russians occupying their towns were shot, the board wrote. Russians reportedly kidnapped the mayor of the village of Motzin on March 23rd, along with her husband and son. All three bodies were discovered in a well on Saturday. Graves in Bucha hold dozens of bodies of civilian noncombatants, and aerial photos show evidence from before the Russian departure from Bucha. These are all clear violations of the laws

of war as understood by longtime custom. A war crimes investigation needn't start with Mr. Putin, and it might be better if it didn't. The war is continuing, and the impact might be more significant on the Russian morale if Russian officers know they will be held accountable, it added. Start at the top with Sergei Shagy, the army general who has been minister of defense for a decade. Then move down through the ranks of officers who have served in Ukraine, starting with those who commanded troops in the regions where war crimes were committed. This may also be a prosecution better done by Europeans than by the United States. They are the people most acutely threatened by the war, and Mr. Putin would only be too happy to turn this into a Russo-U.S. fight.

Mark Lawrence Schrad argued that, far from a pending uprising, Russia, its oligarchs, and its people are responding to Western sanctions and Russian isolation by rallying around Putin, not turning on him. Rather than fracturing the Kremlin into squabbling factionalism or estranging the Russian state from society, Putin's war so far has had the opposite effect, consolidating and strengthening the regime, Schrod wrote. In this context, the Russian response to the accusations of genocide in Ukraine have been predictable. It is all a Western fake meant to further impugn the dignity of Russia and its leader. Pro-Russian social media accounts have claimed that the corpses are either fake or actors or were killed after the Russians left. The Russian defense ministry has claimed not a single local resident has suffered any violent action while Bucha was

under Russian control. These are all claims that have been easily debunked, he said. By parroting the official line of the foreign affairs ministry that it could not have been Russia that committed such atrocities, but rather the United States staging a provocation, Kremlin state-run media only reinforces and retrenches the us-against-the-world narrative already widely accepted among the Russian people. Unfortunately, revelations of massacres in Bucha and beyond, and purported stepped-up Western sanctions, are unlikely to lead to Putin's ouster. Like everything else we've seen so far in this war, Putin's brand of autocracy is more likely than not to be able to use these allegations of atrocity to further galvanize Russian public opinion against the West and further entrench Putin in power. In MSNBC, Jahan Jones said it

will be hard to prosecute these crimes. Biden once again called Putin a war criminal, but noted that more information will be needed to formally make the case, Jones said. Biden's hedge seemed to acknowledge the reality of the situation. Holding top officials accountable for war crimes, let alone Putin, will be difficult. Gregory Gordon, a former war crimes prosecutor and genocide expert, explained the immense burden of proving a war crime suspect guilt. It is extremely difficult to make these cases, Gordon said. You have to have corroborating evidence. You have to have solid witness testimony. You have to have good documentation. And those are the things that I hope the investigators who are being sent to Ukraine are now taking care of. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book,

Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. After Joy Reid noted that African leaders have been among those most frequently charged and convicted of war crimes, Gordon attributed the disparity to real politic, the word used to describe politics focused on practical options, not ethical or moral ones. In other words, international courts have managed to convict African officials and others for war crimes because they've had the means to apprehend these leaders and bring them to trial.

Doing that can be harrowing in countries that haven't opposed their rulers. In Spectator, Gary Anderson said Putin has destroyed his own reputation. If Kiev and other major cities had fallen quickly and a Russian puppet regime had been installed, Putin would have appeared to be the genius Donald Trump thought he was, Anderson wrote. It soon became apparent that the Red Army is a hollow shell with unwilling privates being led by incompetent generals, underperforming equipment, and a supreme leader who had no plan B. Putin's reputation is now in tatters. He's isolated from the international community. His domestic enemies in the military, the intelligence services, and the oligarch elites are reportedly beginning to smell blood in the water.

Even if he isn't replaced, Putin has had the worst thing an authoritarian can experience happen to him, he wrote. His reputation is, to put it kindly, much diminished with the rife rumors that he doesn't know much about what is really going on beyond his inner circle. Many of the soldiers who were supposed to march in the victorious post-Ukraine parade are dead in the mud around Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Mariupol. In addition, no nation in its right mind will buy the junk that Russian military equipment has turned out to be. All right, that is it for some of the opinions on today's issue, which brings us to my take. This morning, I went back and read my piece on the day this invasion started. This is what I wrote then.

War is a terrible, tragic thing. For Russia, the brunt of this war will fall onto the shoulders of young soldiers, baby-faced men who are 17 or 18 or 19 or 20, who will go die for something they almost certainly don't understand. In Ukraine, it will be all hands on deck. Fathers, mothers, teenagers, and grandparents will stand side by side with their military. They will take up arms and fight, and many of them will die violent deaths. This will be the result of Putin's decision to invade, based on the absurd notion that a nation of 40 million free Ukrainians belongs to him. It's safe to say my worst fears

have come to fruition. This war has turned into everything I imagined it would, but worse. It hasn't been the worst case scenario, sure. Fighting has not spilled into neighboring countries, there have been no nuclear or chemical weapons attacks that we know of, and Ukraine did not fall in a matter of days. But the images from the ground are haunting, worse than I could have ever conjured up. Babies, children, pregnant women, civilians, and the elderly are being killed in their homes and hospitals and schools. The Russian military has bombed theaters and civilian centers, and journalists on the ground have documented the public executions I warned would happen if this army ever took over

Kiev. Instead of Zelensky, though, it's ordinary citizens being killed in the streets, including a mayor. It's important, of course, to acknowledge the fog of war. However unlikely it is that these crimes were staged, it is of course possible Ukrainian soldiers have committed their own atrocities against Russian soldiers. Some reports have suggested as much. It's even possible that angry civilians, many of whom have taken up arms, have too. The only way to know anything with any certainty will be a thorough investigation, one we must have. It is also true that the information we get in real time is hard to take at face value. However more kindly you may judge their intentions, Ukrainian and U.S. officials are disseminating what could only be described as wartime propaganda,

whether it's morale boosting updates or outright lies about chemical weapons as a means for deterrence. It's also okay to allow space for the idea that not all Russian soldiers are the same. Some are clearly shaken teenagers who were misled about their mission. In other cases, Ukrainians on the ground have painted a much different picture of the blood-lusting savages purportedly taking over their cities. One 60-year-old retired Ukrainian teacher told the New York Times that she had no negative experiences with the enlisted Russian soldiers who patrolled Bucha, so much so that she believed they were being ordered to be polite and share their meal rations. They helped us carry bags, she told the New York Times. That this reporting can coexist from the same news outlets covering war crimes should be a reminder that none of those complicating factors needs to disprove the horror.

They can coexist. These facts shouldn't undercut the evidence we have in front of us. Journalists and civilians are risking their lives on the ground to document the targeting of civilians, and the least we can do is take that information seriously. If you can stomach the videos or photographs, you'll be left with little doubt. Bearing in mind that the situation is complicated, some claims from Russia have gone viral or are also easily disproved. One video purports to show a corpse on the ground moving its arm as the camera films the scene, but when the video is slowed down, you can see clearly that it's actually a raindrop hitting the lens. This kind of propaganda war is dominating the internet and it's important to navigate it carefully. It's also important to

continue to center what we know. We have witness interviews, satellite images, videos, audio, and reporting of seasoned war journalists that tell a consistent story. Russia's military is intentionally targeting civilians, shooting innocents in the streets, kidnapping officials, and indiscriminately killing non-combatants. The alleged atrocities that we have less evidence for, but witness testimony of, include torture and rape. Will Putin be prosecuted? I don't see any reason to believe he'll ever pay the price, at least not the price he should, but there's no option but to try. War crimes prosecutions could still target the commanders and generals and soldiers we can find and hold to account. Anything less would be a disservice to the survivors and to the people who have risked their lives to warn the world about what is happening. All right, that is it for my take. That brings us to your questions answered.

This one is from Richard in St. Louis, Missouri. Richard said, Last week, the media made a lot of headlines about Russia requiring payment for gas and rubles instead of euros, even though it might partially shut down the German economy, etc. The deadline for this was set by Putin at April 1st, and yet since the last couple of days of March, I've seen no coverage about whether the Germans or Russians caved. What gives? So, so far, neither side has really caved, I don't think. For those not keeping up with the story,

the idea is that Russia is trying to force European countries to pay for their gasoline in rubles, not euros, in order to boost the Russian currency. This is a response to some European Union sanctions against Russia. Europe has so far refused to do that. They said they won't abide by the demand because the contractual agreement for the gas calls for it to be paid in euros. But yesterday, Hungary's president Viktor Orban broke with the EU, saying that if asked, he'd pay for the fuel in rubles. We have no difficulty at all paying in rubles, Orban told reporters on Wednesday, so if the Russians ask for it, we'll pay in rubles. We have no difficulty at all paying in rubles, Orban told reporters on

Wednesday, so if the Russians ask for it, we'll pay in rubles. As for Russia, I did not see anything about an April 1st deadline. However, even in the immediate aftermath of the demand, Russia seemed to soften its stance. In the call with the German chancellor last week, Putin said explicitly that European companies could continue to pay for gas supplies in euros or dollars. This might have been a reaction to the market turmoil from the initial demand, but whatever the case, I don't think this is really a legitimate threat or one that the EU will cave on. I suspect all things considered, the European Union will continue to pay for its gas in euros or dollars. All right, that brings us to our story that matters for today. Student absenteeism is crushing schools around the nation, Axios reports.

Absenteeism has surged during the pandemic, often defined as students missing more than 10% of their classes in a given year. This introduces a new pandemic-era challenge for teachers to have to overcome. More than half of Los Angeles Unified students, over 200,000 children, have missed at least 9% of the year. In New York City, chronic absenteeism rose from 26% to 40%. In Ohio, it's up from 11% to 24%. The data has caused fear that the pandemic will not just leave students behind who spent more than a year in remote learning, but will continue to impact students who, even after a return to in-person class, are missing school at much higher rates. All right, next up is our numbers section. The number of arrests that stem

from anti-war protests in Russia when the war broke out is 15,000. Vladimir Putin's approval rating in January, according to the independent pollster Lovato, was 69%. His approval rating now is 83%. The percentage of Russians who support the special military operation in Ukraine is 81%. The number of civilians killed in Ukraine, according to an April 3rd count from the United Nations, is 1,417. That includes 293 men, 201 women, 22 girls, and 40 boys, as well as 59 children and 802 adults whose sex is yet unknown. All right, last but not least, much needed today is our have a nice day story. A European man who won the 200 million euro lottery says he's donating nearly the entire sum of the fortune

to a foundation he created to preserve the environment. The Frenchman said he's foregoing the luxury cars and fancy houses, instead settling for the protection and revitalization of forests and the preservation and regeneration of biodiversity and the support of family caregivers. In fact,

the winner, who's remaining anonymous, said he only played the jackpots for the singular purpose of donating the money to this cause if he won. We have a link to that story in today's newsletter if you want to check it out and need a little pick-me-up. All right, everybody, that is it for the podcast. Like I said at the top of the show, if you want to hear from us tomorrow, go to readtangle.com, become a paying member to ensure you get our Friday edition. We might end up just sending it to everybody and thinking about maybe getting on the mic tomorrow for the first time in a while for Friday, but we'll see. Just to play it safe.

Plus, you know, support our work, subscribe, all that good stuff. Either way, you'll hear from us on, subscribe, all that good stuff. Either way, you'll hear from us on Monday. Have a great weekend. Peace. Magdalena Bokova, who also helped create our logo. The podcast is edited by Trevor Eichhorn and music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. For more from Tangle, subscribe to our newsletter or check out our content archives at www.readtangle.com. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+.