Putin and Prigozhin are both war criminals

As the world watches two Russian thugs fight it out, it’s important to remember that both of them have been, and still are, implicated in Russia’s ongoing genocide in Ukraine.

The Kremlin’s strongman, President Vladimir Putin, is the architect of Russia’s intentional mass murder of Ukrainian civilians. His challenger, Yevgeny Prigozhin, heads a criminal outfit that has implemented Putin’s blueprint on the ground. 

Both men deserve each other, and both men deserve prosecution at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. 

There are no reliable estimates for the number of Ukrainian civilians who have been killed in the war with Russia. The United Nations puts the number at about 9,000, the U.S. at about 42,000. The real number could easily be several times larger, and it is sure to grow as many of the maimed, wounded and displaced die.

In addition, Russian forces have raped women, tortured and executed civilians, and abducted children.

The killings have been on a mass scale, and they have been intentional. In the early days of the war, one might have argued that Russian missiles were missing their military targets and inadvertently striking Ukrainian civilians. That excuse has long since stopped being persuasive, as missiles continue to rain down on men, women and children going about their daily lives. 

No less important for understanding the ongoing genocide, Ukrainians are being intentionally killed because they are Ukrainian. Russian policymakers and propagandists have made their intentions amply clear, and there can be no question of their really targeting people who just happen to be Ukrainian. Official, and alas unofficial, Russian hatred of Ukrainians is visceral and completely undisguised. 

Nor has the genocide diminished in intensity. Quite the opposite — as Russia continues to lose on the battlefield, its determination to exterminate the civilian population has only grown. The destruction of the Kakhovka dam is a case in point. The mining of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and the continuing stream of Russian statements condoning and even encouraging the use of tactical nuclear weapons also reveal the Kremlin’s genocidal intentions. 

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman recently wrote that if Putin “wins, the Russian people lose. But if he loses and his successor is disorder, the whole world loses.” 

But Putin’s genocidal war has already brought vast disorder to Ukraine, Russia and much of the world. Ukraine is being devastated, Russia is on the verge of collapse, and the world is suffering the consequences of Putin’s unhinged rule. Could things get worse? Yes, of course. But the choice is not between order today and disorder tomorrow. The real choice is between disorder today and disorder tomorrow. 

The important thing is that the disorder Friedman fears if Putin is deposed and Russia descends into chaos holds the promise of a potentially radical, and positive, transformation of Russia — from an imperialist, fascist and revanchist state to a more or less democratic, more or less pacific, and more or less “normal” state. 

In any case, it’s not really a choice. Putin is propelling Russia toward oblivion and there is nothing the West can do to stop it. What we can do is accept this reality, adjust our expectations accordingly, and support Ukraine and the other states that border Russia. It’ll then be up to the Russians to fix their broken country and abandon the habits that have made them complicit in mass murder.

Alexander J. Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark and author of 10 books of nonfiction, including “Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires” and “Why Empires Reemerge: Imperial Collapse and Imperial Revival in Comparative Perspective.”