CODEPINK Leaders Expose How Slaughter of Ukraine’s Youth Shows Moral Depravity of U.S., NATO

June 22, 2023, 2022 (EIRNS)—In a hard-hitting op-ed, “The Silent Slaughter of the Flower of Ukraine’s Youth,” on June 20, reprinted in Common Dreams, Scheerpost, and elsewhere, CODEPINK’s Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies denounce the moral depravity of U.S. and NATO leadership, blaming them for sending young Ukrainians into the battlefields of the Ukraine conflict with Russia, knowing full well that it is a war that Ukraine has already lost. And Kyiv and its Western allies are keeping quiet about it, not for reasons of secrecy or surprise, but to hide the “brutal cost Ukraine’s young people are paying to recover small scraps of territory from Russian forces.”

The multiple layers of Russian defense are impenetrable. Yet, the two authors charge, “on the advice of British military advisers in Kyiv,” Ukraine has sent Western tanks and armored vehicles manned by its NATO-trained troops “into these killing fields without air support or demining operations. The results have been predictably disastrous, and it is now clear that these are not just ‘probing’ operations as the propaganda claimed, but the long-awaited main offensive.”

Quoting Gen. Mark Miley, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs, who warned that the Ukraine/Russia conflict will be “very difficult ... very violent and will likely take a considerable amount of time and at high cost,” Benjamin and Davies point out that the front of Russia’s main defensive lines have become “lethal kill zones.” Rates of Ukrainian casualties are already very high, and the armored brigades that NATO has armed and trained “serve only to escalate the gory war of attrition.”

A senior European military officer in Kyiv labeled Ukraine’s June 8-9 operation as a “suicide mission,” that violated the basic rules of military tactics. “We tried to tell them to stop these piecemeal tactics, define a main thrust with infantry support and do what they can,” he said. But, “they were trained by the British and they’re playing Light Brigade,” referring to the infamous 1854 battle in which Britain’s Light Cavalry Brigade made a suicidal charge into massive Russian cannon and were wiped out during the Crimean War. The authors also predict that, if the “spring offensive” continues on, it could end up like the British and French Somme Offensive of 1916—four months of “pointless, wanton slaughter.”

Benjamin and Davies report that the current offensive was delayed for months, because Kyiv and its allies were contemplating the likelihood that “what we are now witnessing” was going to occur. “The fact that they went ahead regardless reflects the moral bankruptcy of U.S. and NATO political leaders, who are sacrificing the flower of Ukraine’s youth in a proxy war they will not send their own children or grandchildren to fight.”