November 9, 2025: Russian leaders frequently boast that Russia is different from the West and operates differently. Some of the differences include barbaric treatment of Russian soldiers by their officers, and brutal conduct by Russian soldiers when dealing with enemy prisoners or civilians going about their business. So far there have been over a hundred cases of Russian officers killing their own troops for refusing to fight. Early in the Russian government explicitly condoned and encouraged these punishments. Russian leaders also ignore Ukrainian or NATO complaints about Russian mistreatment and murder of Ukrainian civilians. Russian leaders regard this atrocious behavior as an example of how Russia is different from the decadent West and will eventually triumph because Russia is superior to the decadent West.

Meanwhile Russian bad behavior continues. For example, earlier this year soldiers of the Russian 61st Naval Infantry Brigade committed atrocities by attacking civilians with drones to terrorize people in southern Ukraine. The victims were often going about their daily routine but, if they were out in the open, they were targets for these frequent drone attacks. The attacks also included ambulances, which were supposed to have some immunity from attack. The Russians ignored that and killed ambulance drivers, medics, and passengers. Before this terrorism ended over 200 civilians were killed and hundreds more wounded.

Since 2023, a year after the invasion, Russian soldiers were accused of numerous atrocities and war crimes in Ukraine. Reports via the Russian internet report numerous Russian war crimes against civilians in Ukraine. Many Russian commentators admit that the war in Ukraine is lost and want Putin held accountable for the heavy cost in men, money and prestige. Ukraine will be demanding prosecutions for war crimes and compensation from Russia for damages and numerous atrocities.

The first major war in Europe since 1945 ends with murmurs and recriminations over how it happened and if it could happen again. Last year Ukraine declared it was willing to end the war, if they got back all the Ukrainian territory, including Crimea, that Russia has occupied since 2014. Putin was unwilling to do this. Putin sees ending the war and returning stolen territories as proof that Putin’s War was all for nothing and cost Russia so much. Putin believes admitting defeat would end his quarter century in power. This would open Putin to prosecution. He cannot flee the country because foreign nations indicted him for war crimes many years ago.

Russia also sought to silence their own people. It was declared illegal to spread certain misinformation. There were a few arrests, but that was also unpopular, and the prison system could not handle many Russians convicted of thought crimes.

Continued Russian aggression in Ukraine, including the shooting down of an airliner in 2014, led to Russia threatening to sue in court, but the Russians hesitated because they realized they might find themselves in court for war crimes, which would have an impact on their lawsuit.

In late 2022 Ukraine estimated that the Russian attacks on the economy would require a reconstruction budget of over $350 billion. As the destruction continued in 2023, reconstruction costs increased as well. That has led to serious proposals to use $350 billion in Russian assets in the West that have been frozen, as in kept from Russian control for the duration of the war, for reconstruction of Ukraine. Russia is also accused of more conventional war crimes committed in Ukraine against civilians. Russia is unmoved by the Western threats and accusations and determined to make Ukraine and the West suffer for its role in defeating Russian efforts to conquer Ukraine. The Russian government describes their attack on Ukraine as an effort to defend Russia from NATO aggression. According to Russia their tactics are justified as part of its defensive measures.

Last year the Ukrainian government complained to the ICC/International Criminal Court about the mass Russian kidnappings of children and adults. That was one of many atrocities Russia was accused of. In Ukraine Russia reacted to unexpected setbacks by reverting to their traditional total war tactics. This included lots of attacks on civilian infrastructure and civilians in general. This behavior was particularly brutal in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory where civilians would not cooperate with Russian demands that they accept Russian rule peacefully. That led to violent reprisals against civilians, including kidnapping children and sending them to Russia. About 14,000 Ukrainian children have disappeared into Russia and many of the younger ones have been adopted by Russian couples to be raised as Russians. As evidence of the atrocities piled up, often in the form of discovering mass graves of civilians executed by the Russians when the Ukrainians regained Russian occupied territory, the ICC indicted Russian leader Vladimir Putin for war crimes and issued a warrant for his arrest. Putin is not likely to visit any country that honors ICC warrants. Putin may never be arrested, but the ICC warrant lasts forever since there is no statute of limitations on capital crimes. As a result of this sort of bad behavior, Ukrainian soldiers took to referring to their enemy as Orcs.

Putin generally ignores the ICC, even when it indicts him and publicizes what Putin is accused of. Putin knows the history of past ICC indictments and inability to prosecute most of those indicted. This sort of thing reached its peak in 2013 when the ICC faced a mutiny by the 32 African nations that signed the treaty recognizing the power of the ICC to indict and prosecute people in member states of war crimes. By 2013 122 nations had signed the treaty that allowed the ICC to prosecute its citizens. The ICC indicts and prosecutes if it determines that such crimes have been committed and the national government will not or cannot prosecute. The AU/African Union agreed to support continued membership of African nations in the ICC but only if heads of state are exempt from prosecution. Technically the AU was calling for such prosecutions to be suspended while the accused was in office. This would mean the accused could travel abroad without fear of arrest. At the time, only the heads-of-state of Sudan and Kenya

For centuries Ukraine has suffered periods of brutal occupation by invaders. The most frequent brutal occupier has been Russia, which has played the homicidal villain several times in the last century. The most infamous Russian occupation incident was in the use of famine during 1932 and 1933 to suppress Ukrainian opposition to Russian rule, especially the new Russian dogma of communism, which prohibited private farms and expected all farmers to work for state-owned collective farms. This was resisted by many farmers throughout Russia but the opposition was most stubborn in Ukraine, where about 20 percent of the Soviet Union population lived. Ukrainian farmers were the most productive in Russia and produced most of the exportable wheat. Ukrainian resistance produced a horrific response, the seizure of nearly all the wheat crops in the areas of most resistance. This lasted two years and killed nearly four million Ukrainian, about an eighth of the population in what Ukrainians called the Holodomor/Great Famin

Russia denied the Holodomor ever happened and many Western nations, and their mass media, went along with that. One exception was Britain, where one British reporter risked his life by going to Ukraine and obtaining proof of the Holodomor. The Russian government kept denying the famine ever happened until 1983, when a more open communist government admitted that many communist crimes were true. This made an impression on Russians because they realized more of the victims of prison camps/Gulags and communist terror in general were Russians. As a result, during the 0ccupations of Crimea and parts of Donbas in 2014 the Russians tried to win the support of locals.

That lowered the civilian death toll but did not turn most of the occupied population into loyal citizens of Russia. By 2020 most Ukrainians in the occupied territories wanted out. The most desperate moved to Russia, many others wanted to get to Ukraine and others sought to go anywhere but Ukraine and Russia.

The Holodomor and many other past incidents of Russian brutality led to Russian troops being ordered to not attack civilians during the 2022 invasion. That failed to cause civilians to be any more receptive to the Russian presence and, within a month troops were told they could loot and not tolerate any resistance from civilians. Russia denied that civilians were being killed or that widespread looting was taking place. Cell phone cameras carried by most Ukrainians made that disinformation difficult to sustain. Nor were the heavy casualties inflicted on the Russian forces who believed they would easily defeat the Ukrainians and occupy the capital, Kyiv, within two weeks. After a month of this Russian troops around Kyiv were ordered to withdraw to Russia and try to conceal evidence of mass murder before they left. This produced some mass graves but many bodies were left in plain view and many surviving civilians had video evidence of who did what. Russia again denied it, insisting these civilians were killed