A Dark Turn in Ukraine

As I’ve shared with you, I’ve spent a lot of the last month closely reading on-the-ground reports from Ukraine as well as accounts from a spectrum of military analysts, reporters, soldiers of fortune, people on the ground in Ukraine and more. In recent days I had seen a number of claims that Russian troops had carried out mass executions before evacuating or being driven out of towns in Ukraine. Most of these were claims of mass killings of men of military age but others of men and women of all ages. I haven’t known what to make of these accounts because claims of civilian atrocities are the most established kind of wartime propaganda. There is the deceit of war and the fog of war that demands caution in evaluating all new information. Most of these were either anecdotal, second hand or from sources I wasn’t familiar with. But over the last two days reporters have followed in the wake of Ukrainian troops or evacuating Russian troops. Now some of these claims are being validated. They may be widespread, not limited to a few incidents.