(CNN) — The russia lies they might come to light sooner than you might have imagined.
The war in ukraine is defying Russian President Vladimir Putin’s expectations at every turn, not only because of Russia’s failure to take Kyiv, as planned, but by being exposed to the world of war crimes allegedly committed by his soldiers in Bucha, a town near the capital.
Wars have been won, throughout history, by factions that take advantage of new technologies to their advantage. King Henry V of England’s 1415 victory over the French at the Battle of Agincourt came courtesy of his archers and his newly developed long-range bows that fired arrows at a distance the French might not match.
Satellite image of a mass grave in Bucha, Ukraine.
The war in Ukraine might represent another historic first, with technology breaking through the fog of war to expose the aggressors’ lies and hasten efforts to defeat them.
Satellite images of slain civilians that match video, taken weeks later, of dead bodies on the tracks, provide hard evidence of Russia’s war crimes, convincing Western leaders to increase sanctions on Russia and accelerate supply of arms for Ukraine.
It is not clear how this will impact the final outcome of the war. But what is clear now that Ukraine is urgently seeking an advantage as the Russian military regroups for a new offensive is that Russia’s actions in Bucha are strengthening support for Ukraine.
While satellite imagery of conflict zones has been available to governments for decades, and was instrumental in pinpointing war crimes during Bosnia’s civil war in the 1990s, allowing the identification of a mass grave of many of the 7,000 Bosnians murdered in Srebrenica in 1995 have never been more publicly available than they are now.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky speaks before the UN Security Council on April 5, 2022.
Putin and his commanders on the battlefield seem unconcerned or unaware of the fact that orders and actions now leave an indelible record that is beyond their control and might haunt them in the future.
They are probably aware that, in many past conflicts, even as recent as the civil war in Syria, leaders like Bashar al-Assad escaped conviction and have even been rehabilitated, despite the vast amounts of incriminating documents pulled from the offices. government and police stations.
But this is not the only lesson that Putin should heed. Following the bloody breakup of Yugoslavia and the civil war in Bosnia, the war crimes tribunal in The Hague used the very words of political and military leaders to help convict them.
When the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) tried Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadžić, it had a video of him looking over Sarajevo, condemning civilians below to gunfire. artillery and mortar.
A woman walks past a destroyed Russian armored vehicle in Bucha on April 5.
His military partner in war crimes, General Ratko Mladić, also saw his own words used to condemn him, as the video showed him on the outskirts of Srebrenica leading the filtering of civilians, many of whom would be massacred soon following by his soldiers, following his orders.
That kind of link may be harder to impute to Putin, but his 20-page thesis published last summer on why Ukraine is not a country, and his television comments on why Russia should invade, will count, if previous war crimes are a precedent, once morest him as the author and director of the war.
If Putin were to stand trial, his downfall might be the result of his failure to understand his military’s weaknesses and Ukraine’s strengths. Failure to accomplish his first major objective, the taking of Kyiv, forced his troops to retreat, exposing the tide of terror to him.
The soldiers did what they have done so many times before, in Syria, in Chechnya, in Georgia: committed terrible abuses. And Putin and his officers did what they have done so many times before: lie to cover up their crimes.
Russian defense officials claimed photos and videos that surfaced on April 2, showing civilians killed, shot in the head, some with their hands and legs tied, were fake, saying their troops left before for the murders to take place. “The troops left the city on March 30,” the Defense Ministry said in a statement. “Where were the images for four days? Their absence only confirms that they are false.”
The date was very clear. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, one of Putin’s most adept masters of the spin, doubled down on the clumsy cover-up, insisting that “Russian forces left the Bucha city area as early as March 30.”
However, publicly available satellite images from the space technology company Maxar, taken on March 18 while Russian troops were in control, showed dead civilians on the side of the road in exactly the same places that Ukrainian forces discovered. when they re-entered the city in early April. And a drone video taken before March 10 showed a cyclist shot dead by Russian troops. Ukrainian forces found his body weeks later, exactly where he fell.
In the months before the Russian invasion and in the days since the Maxar footage emerged, tracking Russian forces and their destruction, the public’s understanding of the battlefield has been revolutionized. Coupled with the near-ubiquitous use of smartphone cameras, geolocation technology and sophisticated drones, Putin faces a potential reckoning that he escaped in previous conflicts.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky wants more cameras and wider access for the public to see for themselves: “This is what interests us, maximum access for journalists, maximum cooperation with international institutions , registration with the International Criminal Court, the full truth and full accountability,” he said in a video address on Monday.
Ukraine’s enigmatic leader has realized that it’s not just high-tech tank-busting weapons like Javelins and NLAWs, or surface-to-air missiles like Stingers and Starstreaks, that can turn the tide. from the war. It’s the truth, and the tools that transmit it: satellites, drones, and smartphones.
Today’s technology, unprecedented in any modern warfare, might give this amazing advantage to the losers, undermining the lies of a hulking aggressor. Zelensky struggled to get the United Nations to understand this when he addressed them on Tuesday: “This is 2022. We have conclusive evidence. There is satellite imagery. And we can conduct full and transparent investigations.”
Like Henry V in 1415, Zelensky knows an advantage when he sees one. While satellite imagery may not be as decisive as a six-foot yew branch and a piece of hemp rope, if you can use it wisely, it can force Putin into talks much sooner than Russia’s president would like.