Putin will not break the fighting spirit of Ukrainians.

Yesterday, US President Biden made public that Putin is a war criminal. 

As reported by Brittany Bernstein,

"President Biden said Wednesday that Russian President Vladimir Putin is a “war criminal” for his attacks on Ukraine.
... [  ]
The comment came in response to a question from a reporter who asked if Biden is “ready to call Putin a war criminal.”
...
The president first appeared to misunderstand the question and replied, “No.”

Biden then added: “Did you ask me whether I should call?”
“Oh, I think he is a war criminal,” the president clarified. (Yahoo News : 16 March 2022) (my emphasis)

 

MSNBC : YouTube : 16 March 2022

What is meant by a "war criminal"?

War Crimes are crimes that come under the collective name of core international crimes. Core international crimes are some of the gravest crimes in international law, examples of them can include: the crime of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and torture.
...
War Crimes:

Violations of the laws or customs of war, including:

• 
  atrocities or offences against persons or property, constituting violations of the laws or customs of war
• murder, ill treatment or deportation to slave labour or for any other purpose of the civilian population in occupied territory
• killing of hostages
• torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments
• breaches of the Geneva Conventions.
• plunder of public or private property
• wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages
• devastation not justified by military necessity
• destruction of property that is of particular cultural significance
  

Since the start of this second war of Putin against the Ukrainian people, the world has been watching in real-time as an avalanche of images and TV footage of his war with Ukraine lays bare the crimes being committed by Putin.

As reported by bne IntelliNews,

"The Ukrainian government claims that Russia dropped a powerful bomb on the Mariupol Drama Theatre where hundreds of mostly women and children were sheltering from the bombardment of the city on March 16. 
...
The theatre was a well-known refugee point used by locals to avoid the shelling of the city. A satellite image released by the private US company Maxar Technologies shows the words “Children” painted on the ground in front and back of the building that is clearly visible from the air as of March 14. " (bne IntelliNews : 17 Match 2022) (my emphasis) (cf also: Fox News (video below) : AlJazeera : BBC News)

 

And against this horrendous bombing backdrop, Putin is exhorting the Russian people to get rid of the "traitors" in their midst that are calling his "war" with Ukraine, a "war",  during which he also called upon the Russian people for the "self-purification" of Russia! (video : Tomasz Przechlewski : YouTube : 17 March 2022)

These exhortations of Putin came after that dyed-in-the-wool Soviet Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, announced that,

"As Russia has pursued its war with Ukraine, it has held parallel negotiations with Kyiv ostensibly seeking a peace deal from its own invasion of a neighbouring country.
...
Those talks, which appeared to be a sideshow to the continuing war, received an unexpected boost on Wednesday as both sides indicated that discussions had yielded some progress." (Andrew Roth : The Guardian : 16 March 2022) (my emphasis)
...
BUT SHORTLY THEREAFTER
...
"Putin gave [that] defiant speech to top officials on Wednesday in which he said Russia’s “special military operation” was going to plan and that Russia would achieve its goals in Ukraine and not bow to the west."
...
Using highly charged rhetoric, Putin likened the west to Nazi Germany by accusing it of launching an economic “blitzkrieg” against Russia in order to “demoralise our society, to bulldoze us”. (ibid Andrew Roth) (my emphasis) 

As Alexander Gabuev remarks,

“Some chances [for peace] are there but I’m pretty sceptical that a negotiated solution will be achieved in those talks,” said Alexander Gabuev, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center. “Russia will not only seek leverage for the talks on the battleground but will seek victory on the battleground. If the more gentle – if you can call it that – tactics are not working, then Russia will just unleash all of their firepower. On Kyiv in particular.” 

Putin's formidable war machine has encountered a Ukrainian force that will not be cowed into submission, no matter what he throws at them.

 

As reported by  ua-Football, (Google Translated)

"A military medic from Marganets, Olga Semidyanova , died in battles with Russian invaders. She left 12 children.

Olga died in battle on March 3 at the turn of the Donetsk and Zaporozhye regions. Now the children of the deceased cannot even bury her because of the ongoing heavy fighting.

The daughter of the deceased soldier, Yulia Volkova, said that during the battle, the forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine retreated, and the battalion commander gave the command to send all the women away from the front line, but Semidyanova wanted to stay with her brothers and the company and continued to save Ukrainian soldiers to the last.

In the battle with superior enemy forces, the medic was wearing a bulletproof vest and a helmet, but this did not save her from injury. Russian troops fired from tanks and small arms. Semidyanova was hit by a rifle, she died from a wound in the abdomen, having lost a lot of blood." (ua-Football : 16 March 2022) (my emphasis)

Putin will not break the fighting spirit of Ukrainians.

(to be continued)