Must stop the genocide together (The Appeal of the NUJU to foreign journalists)

The lat­est hor­ri­fy­ing pho­to-facts from the lib­er­at­ed Ukrain­ian cities of Bucha and Irpin show that crimes against human­i­ty are hap­pen­ing right now. Russ­ian troops in Ukraine are not only fight­ing the Armed Forces of Ukraine but also prac­tic­ing tor­ture, exe­cu­tions and even burn­ing up civil­ians. This is a real geno­cide against the Ukrain­ian peo­ple, and it is hap­pen­ing right now, in the 21st cen­tu­ry! We must stop this togeth­er and nev­er let it hap­pen again wher­ev­er it can hap­pen.

The enemy’s offense is built upon huge-scale pro­pa­gan­da and dehu­man­iza­tion which are unac­cept­able for all free mankind. As you may know, on Feb­ru­ary 24th, the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion start­ed a war against Ukraine. The full-scale mil­i­tary offense on the Ukrain­ian ter­ri­to­ry goes on, cities and infra­struc­ture are con­stant­ly under attack from the air, sea, and land. Under the pre­text of ‘demil­i­ta­riza­tion’ and ‘denaz­i­fi­ca­tion’ of Ukraine, Rus­sia pur­sues com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent objec­tives, dev­as­tat­ing entire cities and killing inno­cent civil­ians, includ­ing women and chil­dren. This “abstract” approach takes a score in human lives.

As you are read­ing this let­ter, our peo­ple, schools, hos­pi­tals, kinder­gartens, and res­i­den­tial areas remain under con­stant attacks by the Russ­ian armed forces. There are numer­ous cas­es of mass killing of civil­ians, rape, rob­beries, kid­nap­pings, and exe­cu­tions of civil­ians that have been offi­cial­ly con­firmed by inter­na­tion­al insti­tu­tions like the UN. Rus­sia con­tin­ues to open­ly vio­late fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples of inter­na­tion­al human­i­tar­i­an law. This approach is unac­cept­able for the free world.

Thank you for sup­port­ing Ukraine while we stop the offense with­in our ter­ri­to­ry. War is always a hard chal­lenge for reporters. Dozens of col­leagues bring to the world the truth about the hor­rors of the war in Ukraine at the cost of their lives and health. Many of them turned out to be vic­tims of tar­get­ed attacks.

Here­by we would like to call for your con­cern since the bar­bar­ic atroc­i­ties of the Russ­ian Armed Forces must be shown to the pub­lic. We under­stand that your coun­tries live peace­ful­ly and there is no request for mil­i­tary rhetoric. But from inside war, we can assure you, that fight­ing the war is the gen­er­al inter­est of the whole free world. We should do our best to pre­vent new offens­es, wher­ev­er they come from. For now, the threat comes from Rus­sia and its allies.

We urge you to go on bring­ing the world’s atten­tion to what is actu­al­ly going on in our coun­try. Besieged and suf­fer­ing cities of Mar­i­upol and Kher­son, heinous shelling of res­i­den­tial areas in Kharkiv, and count­less oth­er war crimes that have already been com­mit­ted by the Russ­ian army. We must not let them turn into World War III. We are sure that your jour­nal­is­tic expe­ri­ence, pro­fes­sion­al con­tacts, and per­sua­sive skills are essen­tial for reveal­ing the truth about the war’s ugly face.

The world must see the real­i­ty. Please be the ones who help reveal it.

Sin­cere­ly yours,

Sergiy Tomilenko,

Pres­i­dent

The Nation­al Jour­nal­ists Union of Ukraine