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So when they came in and occupied
Bucha, Irpin and other small cities
and raped, tortured, executed civilians
and stole everything possible
and shipped it to Belarus
or back home.
“Oh it’s those poor backward boys
from Bashkortostan and Buryatia
who don’t have toilets
or washing machines.”
When they shelled high-rises,
hospitals, schools, libraries
and sports facilities,
and then merely robbed
museums, with Moscow
curators telling them
which pieces of art to take.
“Oh, they’re so inaccurate,
they keep hitting civilian
buildings instead of
military sites.”
When they bombed power
and heating plants,
causing rolling blackouts
across the country
for three months
in the dead of winter,
“Oh, they can’t win
on the ground,
so they’re taking potshots
at civilian infrastructure.”
When they pulverized Mariupol,
a city of 400,000
where most residents
actually speak russian,
and bombed a theater
sheltering hundreds of locals,
including many kids,
“Oh, they want to
exterminate Ukrainians.
They’re afraid of
banderovtsi.”
When they blew up
the Kakhovka Dam
with dynamite that they had
laid back in October,
and went on to blow up
dams in Zaporizhzhia,
“Oh, they must be trying
to stop the counter
offensive now.”
Enough!
Agronomists say
the abundant Dnipro delta
will turn to mudflats,
and eventually a desert
with the reservoir gone,
Crimea will be without potable water,
this year’s harvest is
a literal wash.
Is this a random act?
People sit on rooftops
while the water rises around them,
supplies dwindling
and no way to escape.
Some pull frightened pets
out of the murky water
when they can.
But the boats that pass
between the roofs and treetops
don’t stop, don’t take them,
even though they are
waving a red rag.
The children, the elderly,
the disabled,
stuck on a roof for hours
drowned bodies
floating by,
The russians aren’t
evacuating people
in the occupied territory.
They’re actually
preventing people
from leaving.
In drier areas,
armed checkpoints
stop anyone without
a russian passport
and even fire
at Ukrainians
trying to escape
the flood.
They tell people
to wait at home
while they draw up
lists of evacuees.
They tell parents
that their children
will be bussed
to “happy summer camps.”
Face it.
All this awfulness
was planned,
not even Plan B
but Plan A
all along.
(The military bit is
almost
a sideshow.)
And it’s not going to stop
until we stop it.
June 08, 2023
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