VINNYTSIA, Ukraine — Russian cruise missiles hit a shopping center, a dance studio, and a wedding hall in west-central Ukraine on Thursday, July 14th.
I can not see what military justification there is for Russia shooting 3 cruise missiles into a shopping center or a wedding hall filled with civilians. In response to the assault, the Dutch foreign minister said that the Netherlands was considering setting up an ad hoc international Ukraine war crimes tribunal.
The world appears to be outraged by another apparent disregard to the safety of innocent civilians. The Governor of the region said, “These are quite high-precision missiles. ... They knew where they were hitting.” But, Russia claims that the missiles were not aimed at civilians but were targeting an officers’ quarters. “Margarita Simonyan, head of the state-controlled Russian television said that military officials told her a building in Vinnytsia was targeted because it housed Ukrainian ‘Nazis.’’ (AP news)
Sadly, this is not the first time that Vinnytsia has suffered at the hands of invading dictators. In 1941, the Nazis invaded the town, rounded up its Jewish population and massacred all 28,000 men, women, and children. A macabre photo put little Vinnytsia on the map - it is a 1941 photo of a Einsatzgruppe soldier about to execute a Jewish man kneeling before a mass grave. The photo was taken by one of the German soldiers watching the massacre who wrote on the back The Last Jew of Vinnytsia. This photo, one of the most iconic photos of the Holocaust, was first made available at the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann. (I’ve put the photo below in the photo gallery. It is quite disturbing, reminding me of the Vietnam War photo by Eddie Adams of the instant of the execution of a Viet Cong prisoner by a South Vietnamese Colonel.)
