The current conflict between Russia and the West provides an opportunity to create an International Day of Memory of the Victims of Russian Aggression in order to be “an eternal reminder to Russians both now and future generations that they must take responsibility before history for themselves and their leaders,” a Kyiv commentator says.
The conflict between Russia, on the one hand, and Ukraine and the rest of the world, on the other, is not simply a military one, but is one about symbols. Moscow has understood this with its “hybrid” war approach, and it is time to turn the tables on it, according to the Ukrainian commentator writing under the name Setovoy Orakul.
“The establishment of [such a day],” he writes in the April 14 issue of Delovaya Stolitsa, “would have enormous symbolic meaning both as a day for grieving and as opportunity to remind the world that [Vladimir] Putin has not ended the war against our country” (dsnews.ua/politics/kleymo-na-russkih-kogda-ustanovyat-den-pamyati-zhertv-rossiyskoy-14042018100 000).
Ukraine should establish this day as a national one immediately, the commentator continues, and then work to secure its recognition on the international level, much as it has done with the Holodomor. At present, “about 20 countries” recognize that the Famine of 1932-1933 was an act of genocide “by the totalitarian Stalinist regime,” and more will in the future, he notes.