Ukraine-Russia war: Vladimir Putin is showing liberal democracies that their values really matter – Scotsman comment

According to the Talmud, whoever kills one life kills the world entire, and whoever saves one life saves the world entire.

Ukrainian emergency employees and volunteers carry a fatally injured pregnant woman from a maternity hospital hit by shelling in Mariupol, Ukraine (Picture: Evgeniy Maloletka/AP)

This liberal sentiment stresses the importance of any single individual, any one of us. And, as difficult and distressing as it may be, this has to be a central part of how we think about war: personally.

So we should think about the wounded pregnant woman who was pictured being carried on a stretcher from a maternity hospital in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol after it was shelled by Russian forces.

Her pelvis had been crushed and her hip detached. Taken to another hospital for treatment, she cried out “kill me now!” as realised she was losing her baby. Despite the efforts of medical staff, both she and the child died.

What happened was documented by journalists from the Associated Press, a highly respected news agency, and yet, with the glib certainty of liars, Russia’s government swiftly dismissed the account. According to them, no patients or medical staff were present when the missiles hit home, and the photographs of the woman who died and other expectant mothers at the scene were fakes.

Murderers caught with blood-red hands, spouting nonsense as they angrily insist on their innocence.

But Vladimir Putin is not the only killer in the international community, there are others. The world's liberal democracies have to learn the lesson he is teaching us about despots whose main concern is their iron grip on power. Just as Russia is being belatedly shunned, the West should also be turning away from other oppressive regimes before they decide to copy the Kremlin.

The central pillars of liberal democracy have long been undermined by Putin, his agents and his political fellow-travellers in the West, but his invasion of Ukraine and suppression of dissent in Russia have demonstrated beyond dispute just how important they are to the preservation of fundamentals like the right to life. If there is one positive to this war, it is that it has re-energised our commitment to democratic values.

So, amid the desensitising effect of regular death tolls, think of the husband who last month was looking forward to the joy of a new child, but who instead found himself collecting the bodies of both his wife and baby, his world destroyed entire.

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