Professor Margelletti, what do you think of the BBC video shock that proves the unprecedented massacre of civilians on the road to Kiev?
“Sure, I’ve seen it. And these are massacres that make no military sense. These operations have only one goal: to eradicate people from their places. We are not talking about an episodic activity. There are reports of rapes and massacres from all over the Ukrainian front in which the Chechen and Syrian phalanxes, the famous butchers of Aleppo sent to Ukraine by the Kremlin, are specialists. We must have the courage to say that the indiscriminate killings of civilians are part of Russian planning to overthrow Ukraine ”.
For some time now, and you are certainly not the only one, you have defined Putin as a war criminal. But this dictator’s humanitarian crimes are being repeated on a daily basis, indeed, every day, raising the bar of horror.
«Defining Putin as a war criminal is now totally reductive. The definition should be extended to the main Russian military exponents and generals acting on the ground. The Russians are not only killing Ukrainian civilians, but our own humanity ”.
At this point, could Europe not or should it intervene for humanitarian reasons without having to appeal to the famous Article 5?
“We have done this in the past, and many times: in Kosovo, in Bosnia, in Rwanda. But it has always been a political choice. And we have to say that now we are not doing it because on the other side there is a gentleman who has the atomic bomb ».
Yet there are still many people, reading the polls and hearing certain debates, who are still on Putin’s side …
“Yes and all this despite the war in Ukraine being the most viewed in history thanks to the media and social networks. The attitude of the pro-Otinians takes us back 50 years to the times of Holocaust denial. History, however you look at it, cannot put Churchill and Hitler, De Gaulle and Mussolini on the same level. And the tragedy is that there are not a few people who continue to defend the executioner ».
What is the reason in your opinion?
“Because over the years, Russian propaganda and the connivance of the Kremlin’s power with some Western political parties have spread a particular image of Putin: that of the strong man with clear ideas who decided on his own, taking responsibility for the people and defending a Europe white and Christian from Islamic terrorism. And to think that even in those years he continued to kill journalists and dissidents undisturbed ».