Something singularly unexpected happened in the war in Ukraine last weekend. After more than six weeks of artillery fire and missiles raining down on Kyiv, combined with slow ground encroachment by armour and infantry, Russian forces suddenly withdrew over 2-3 April. Their retreat was anything but orderly and left behind huge destruction, with ever more evidence emerging of troops torturing, raping and killing civilians.
The horror of it all was captured both on social media and by the Western mainstream media. Days later, on 5 April, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyi, was forthright in his address to the UN Security Council: demanding the unequivocal condemnation of Russia, that the country’s leadership be brought to justice and that Western states provide far more support.
Arguably Zelenskyi’s most compelling point was that the Russians’ actions in Ukraine are unparalleled in the post-Second World War era – and the rest of the world should act accordingly. Except, this is not actually true.
