Russia's indiscriminate, brutal bombing of a maternity and children's hospital in Mariupol on Wednesday has provided more hard evidence of Putin's strategy of terrorizing civilian populations with war crimes. His army has failed to capture the capital of Kyiv and is taking significant losses in equipment and personnel, so he's shifting to a scorched earth strategy of breaking the peoples' will to resist. Putin's use of banned cluster bombs and thermobaric weapons are also intended to both destroy and terrorize civilians. There are intelligence reports that Russia may be planning to launch chemical weapons attacks, likely starting as a "false flag" operation to justify their own use, as Russia did in Syria.
The U.S. and its allies have been collecting evidence of war crimes ever since the Russians started using their cluster bombs on civilian targets. The International Criminal Court has opened an investigation of Russia's war crimes after receiving referrals from 39 nations.
Putin, a fascist nationalist who has been projecting "de-Nazification" on Ukraine, has been following the example of Nazi Germany when it invaded Poland and decimated cities and populations. Historically speaking, one of the three criminal categories that the Nuremberg trials used in prosecuting the Nazis postwar was "crimes against peace / crimes of aggression", which Putin has already committed when the border with Ukraine was crossed. He is well underway to committing "crimes against humanity," a second category of Nuremberg crimes. The international case against him and his facilitators is growing daily.
(photo: Pregnant woman carried from ruins of Mariupol maternity hospital. Evgeniy Maloletka/AP)
