Today, Thursday the 7th April 2022, it is exactly 6 weeks since Russian and Vladimir Putin invaded their brother country Ukraine starting a mass murder on innocent people to such an extent that we have to go back decades in history to find the equivalents of it. During these six weeks we in the Western World have tolerated that Putin and his soldiers kill, murder, rape, torture, massacre, pursue, humiliate and impoverish the people in Ukraine, who have never asked for anything but a tolerable life, a job to go to every day, to be able to send their children to schools and to have food enough to survive.

At the same time Russian bombs and missiles have demolished cities and villages, burnt and ravished peoples´ homes and properties. After having done this they have left behind themselves black and charred reminiscences of what earlier was safe home for thousands of families. The devastation is not possible to describe in words, only in pictures. The worst thing is that all this has been performed by human beings in the shape of Russian soldiers.

Day after day I have been looking at these horrible pictures were I have seen dead human corps lying on the streets in distorted postures after having been shot from behind by Russian soldiers. The cadavers are said to have been lying and addling on the streets during several weeks until somebody took care of them and buried them in the earth. When the massacre in Bucha was revealed – as well as other massacres – the eyes of the world were eventually opened and people might realize that it was not only a war that was going on. It dealt with mass murder and genocide of civilians going far away from what is acceptable according to the laws of war.

In the western world we are sitting in our comfortable TV sofas being upset by what we see on the sceens and we express heavy sighs. But we don´t do anything! Western politicians are standing and talking in their pulpets in their pressed dark blue and expensive suits in virgin wool expressing their disgust. To and fro some little tear may appear from their eyes. Other politicians and diplomats are flying like shot coils between the different countries in order to negotiate and plan, still without doing anything important. You may call it sham manoevres. Empty words. Crocodile tears. Games for the galleries.

What are the big leaders talking about when they are seeing each other? Well, how the next version of sanctions towards Russia could be designed and performed. The sanctions? Today I laugh at this word of falsehood. By introducing a few economically austerely measures against Russia, measures which will only be tangible at very long sight, the western countries believe that they have done what they have to do. ”The sanctions will bite”, the experts say without any doubt. ”Just wait until the Russian oligarcs discover that they no longer can get out their money from the bank! Then you will look at other buns!”

Poppycock! The western sanctions against Russia are nothing but a nullity. They look like a powerfull blow in the air, an act of solidarity with no obligations. The economic sanctions are only a way to falsely appease their guilty conscience at the same time as the people in Ukraine are bleeding to death. The worst thing is that Ukraine is bleeding to death before our eyes at the same time as our own politicians trim away a grain of dust from their expensive Hugo Boss suits.

In the beginning of the war in Ukraine my country Sweden sent away some 5 000 armor shots and the same number of helmets and food packages to Ukraine.  How proud were not the Swedish politicians after having made these efforts to contribute to stop the war in Ukraine? The armor shots are now either stolen by the Russian soldiers or used up by the Ukrainian solidiers. The food packages are most probably eaten up long time ago – if the food was eatable at all. The helmets are perhaps already destroyed or have been buried together with killed Ukrainian soldiers.  Photo: shutterstock.com/bought picture

This doesn´t work any more. It´s no longer enough. For how long time will the western world leave Ukraine to die, to bleed to death, to bleed to death under the boot heels of the Russian soldiers, at the same time as Vladimir Putin, the man who decides about everything, is sitting and smiling somewhere in a residence far away in Siberia, protected from his head to his toes by loyal security guards?

Day by day the president of Ukraine, Volodomyr Zelensky, has appealed to the western countries to help Ukraine to protect the Ukrainian air space. Nobody has listened. No, no, we dare not, the answers have been. It we do so, president Putin will immediately attack us with his nuclear weapons. Good save us for what will happen then. We, the fine, brave, honest and peaceful people in the western world, we would be attacked by Russian bombs and nuclear missiles! The third world war would break out and then all of us would be lost. No, we don´t want this to happen!

This is exactly what´s about. The fear that the western world would be if not erased so in any case very seriously damaged has paralyzed us to such an extent that we don´t even dare to say ”Shit”.

Today I get exactly the same sensation as many Swedes felt during a long period of time after the second world war, i.e. the bad conscience because of all the compromises that the Swedish government made in favour of Hitler and Germany during the second world war. Adolf Hitler was allowed to continue to buy iron ore from Sweden, out of which the Germans could produce cannonballs and weapons, weapons which they thereafter could use to attack our Norwegian brothers and sisters.

German soldiers on permission transports from Norway to Germany were allowed to use the Swedish railway networks. I remember my mother telling me that she had seen those German permission trains parked at the Olskroken railway station in Gothenburg.  She said: ”I knew that those trains were permission trains with German soldiers onboard, because all the windows of the train wagons were nailed so that nobody could see that German soldiers were the passengers of the trains”. My mom hated Hitled and the hated the Swedish hypocricy.

I am now overwhelmed by exactly the same feeling when I today look around the world observing exactly the same cowardiness, exactly the same self-interest, exactly the same need to protect their own skin, exactly the same blindfolds, the same dark glasses which make the pictures from Bucha and Mariupol a little more unsharp. I become more and more frustrated by every day.

Why does anyone do anything? Why are we sitting here with our hands hidden under our arses looking a little bit embarassed on our press folds at the same time as we let the Ukrainian people bleed to death? Why is nobody prepared to enter the Ukrainian territory with military troops? Why isn´t Nato prepared to send airplanes to safeguard the Ukrainian air space? This morning I saw that the Chech Republic had decided to send five tanks to Ukraine. I laughed. I was sure that those tank would not be crewed.

Russia and their president Vladimir Putin are the utmost responsible for this war. But we who lives in the western part of the world are also responsible, at least co-responsible, because we let all these terrible things happen without moving more than one finger. That´s not true, the Western leaders say. We have sent armor shots and food to the Ukrainian soldiers. And Chech Repulbic has sent those five tanks. And don´t forget how many Ukrainian refugees we are receiving every day. We let them live in our homes or in other accommodations furnished by the Immmigration Authorities. It´s Russia and specially Vladimir Putin who are responsible for this war. We are really solidary with the Ukrainian people.

Of course we are. It doesn´t cost very much for a country like Sweden to open our doors for ten thousands of Ukrainian refugees. These people are supposed to start working immediately and their children are going to Swedish schools as soon as they arrive here. So they are not going to utilize the Swedish welfare system.

I am conscious of the fact that it doesn´t matter at all what I am writing on my blog. Still, I continue to write. At least I have to get rid of my frustration. If I was a young girl and not an old woman I would be prepared to go to Ukraine to help the people, not by wearing weapons but by taking part in the relief work. Now it is too late for me to do this. But it´s not too late to write, to create opinion. I wish that someone outside Sweden might be able to read at least a few of the lines I produce.

Wake up Europe! Wake up the United States! Wake up now!

You can always start by stopping your imports of oil and natural gas from Russia. It´s at least a start.

 

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Elisabet Höglund is an experienced senior reporter being worked at several influencial Swedish media, especially the public service channel Swedish Television, where she worked between 1983-2008. Höglund is retired but is still working intensely with journalism, for example with her respected blogg, which you can find under the web address ”elisabethoglund.se/blogg”.

She has been working with political, labour market and economic journalism as a reporter and a commentator. She has worked as foreign correspondent i Brussels, which includes the whole of the European Union. She have also worked as correspondent for the SVT in the Middle East and in Washington DC.

Översättning till engelska: Elisabet Höglund