<img src="https://www.repstatic.it/content/nazionale/img/2022/05/13/184028302-1f35f86f-75ad-466d-8962-7bc72bf077c6.jpg" alt="Court of Kiev, Ukraine. May 13, 2022. Photo by Viacheslav Ratynskyi – REUTERS“/>
They say of Vadim that he allegedly killed an unarmed civilian on a bicycle, in the village of Chupakhivka, in the northeastern region of Sumy. Vadim is a twenty-one-year-old Russian sergeant. He is the first to be tried in Ukraine for war crimes. I read nothing in his eyes – and not because his eyes can’t hide fear, or remorse. But because there is something too easy in calling this young hunted down an executioner. He is. But he is also a victim, of the violence he breathed and committed, of the violence that feeds himself, in war, to the point of paroxysm and abjection. He is not an alibi. It is an observation.
What have you done, Vadim?
they will ask him.
What did we make you do, Vadim?
we should ask ourselves.