The Children

 

The word 'children' was painted in large Russian script on the ground outside the Mariupol Drama Theatre, Maxar satellite images collected on March 14 showed. Ukraine accused Russia of bombing the theater on Wednesday. Russia denies the attack https://t.co/JtB56K8eCz pic.twitter.com/iV13h0dBXm

— Reuters (@Reuters) March 16, 2022

What can you say about the rules of engagement of a force where painting the word "children" next to a building in the hopes that a bombing would be passed over makes that building a target? Because I have no doubt in the world this is what happened. 

I compare this to the Russian lies about the maternity hospital they shelled and the woman that they tried to portray as a crisis actor. In my heart of hearts. I will never forget that knowing she was losing her child, with a shattered pelvis, she begged to be put out of her misery and the cosmos in its accidental mercy responded. On what moral plane do such things happen? 

There isn't any morality here. This is total war, Vernichtungskreig. This is scorched earth thinking. When Putin started to talk about his paranoid fear about Ukraine and his border, it seemed to me he was talking about Lebensraum. He wanted a place for Russian people, and Ukraine as a state was in his way. When there is talk of even logging the Ukraine forest to pay for his war, I am hearing echoes of Operation Barbarossa.

But I don't know that I'm on the right path with this thinking--I'm just a D-list blogger who drinks a fuck-ton and swears a lot. I'm not a historian. But this is war about the future of all of us--just hear me out. 

Flashback--I dunno, because I'm a-neurotypical like this, but in 2013 or thereabouts I tried to connect with other humans in a bar situation and whilst drinking and chatting and all that I started wondering why the heck was Russia banning US adoptions? My nephew by marriage in Italy had adopted a lovely Russian girl who was a kind, gregarious, absolutely brilliant child who actually kindly tried to shepherd my broken-Italian-speaking behind through social engagement (Cara, te amo) when I visited back in 2008, and my thought, half-formed, was that obviously, there is something a bit fucked-up with US adoptions, but I didn't think Putin was doing it without some ulterior motive because I have never thought he had any other kind of thinking. 

It struck me that although my nephew and his wife just wanted a baby to love, in my country, adoption was sometimes a political thing. Babies, especially white babies, were considered future soldiers. And know I wonder about right wing warriors who are going to parachute in and make a claim about saving Ukrainian babies. Those kids don't just exist as white babies for culture war--they've already been though one, thanks. 

I want the future of Ukraine secured for their children and their far-flung relations, in the way I want to always have a Calabria (as my husband is manifestly from even if born here in the US and which I have visited and love) or a wherever I find out my relations are actually from. Which is many places and at least I am sure some of them are Irish and some German and...

The thing of it is, it doesn't matter where anyone is from, we all deserve a place to call home. And Russia is destroying the home of Ukrainian people. Putin is directing this, but they do the deeds. And to what extent are they not considering the children? Or are actually considering them, but are thinking actual babies are a problem to be rid of, a type of human whose humanity is in question? 

What do we do with the understanding that some country is targeting babies? 

I can't rationalize the enormity of what I am seeing away.