Butchers of Bucha

 One thing that Russia's attack on the Ukraine has created ...

Hatred Is Fuelled By The Mass
Graves Of Murdered Civilians

 ... is hatred.

 The Ukrainian people have learnt to hate. The sort of visceral hate that only the death of children and loved ones can create. There are credible reports of rape, summary executions, torture and theft across every region that Russia's military has occupied.

What will happen in the 'liberated' Donbas region that Putin is aiming for (if he achieves it), is anyone's guess. Will his troops rape and murder the 'Russian speaking' population that they allege they are 'liberating' from non existent 'genocidal assaults ' by equally non existent 'Ukrainian Nazis' if they resist being 'liberated', or will they save that treatment just for anyone who resists and can't speak Russian?

Given the destruction of every city that Russia has attacked, with the complete obliteration of the civilian areas of most of them such as Mariupol, what is going to be the state of the 'liberated Donbas' when the fighting stops?

The latest attacks on the far western Ukrainian city of Lviv, which apart from an earlier rocket attack had been largely unscathed by the war, and was on whole only active as a hub through which tens of thousands of people have fled to neighbouring Poland, are a continued signal that Russia is deliberately targetting civilians and infrastructure, in defiance of the UN laws of war which state that intentionally striking such targets "amounts to a war crime". What possible military value could missile attacks on this city have, other than creating terror, and hate?

In the first attack on the city on Monday the 18th of April, which was apparently timed for the early morning in order to catch people commuting to work or in bed, at least seven people were killed and 11 injured. One family on finding that their only child, Yury Baran, a 26 year old I.T. worker had been killed in the attack, said of the Russians “Humans cannot do such things. They are not humans, they are barbaric invaders.”

Luhansk regional administrator, Serhiy Haidai, has said that "Kreminna is under the control of the 'Orcs' [Russians]. They have entered the city," .... in a reference to The Lord of The Rings films. Clearly identifying Russians as inhuman killers.

A Ukrainian officer Volodomyr, said that the Russians are using similar tactics across the Ukraine - "creating panic among the local population". He says "it's inhuman". While the fact that Russian soldiers are reportedly exhuming the bodies of civilians they themselves killed in the beleaguered city of Mariupol, points to the Russians trying to cover up their war crimes in the torture and murder of civilians.

Russia has continued to violate the rules of international humanitarian law, and by blocking initiatives to evacuate civilians from occupied settlements, with evacuation columns being frequently bombed or turned back. Alina Petrovna from the looted village of Andriivka said "Let the Russian people come and see what they did to us! Fear and horror."

Even Putin's award to the 64th Motor Rifle Brigade, who led by Lieutenant Colonel Azatbek Omurbekov, attacked and occupied the Ukrainian town of Bucha, of the honorary title of "Guards," for the "mass heroism and valour, tenacity and courage" of its members, is an insult to civilisation .... they are known elsewhere as the 'Butchers of Bucha', who left well over 300 civilian bodies on the streets, in the wake of their retreat.

All these horrors continue, and the Ukrainian advances of the last few weeks have simply uncovered more evidence of Soviet, Russian crimes in occupied areas. The retreats have led to more missile attacks such as those seen this last two weeks, in an emulation of the Soviet tactics in 1945, and Russian tactics in Syria under new Russian Ukraine commander Sergei Surovikin, a brutal commander who appears to have no limits, and who flattened the city of Aleppo in the Syrian civil war.

Hate is an intangible that won't show up in the ledger book of the billions of pounds in infrastructure and human damage that Russia is inflicting on the Ukraine, but it may well be the thing that lasts the longest, and is the legacy that Russia has now sown.