I sat down to watch the news Friday night for the first time in nearly two weeks. (Deadlines. Lotsa work.) The opening story was the attack on the Kramatorsk train station, starting with an interview of Nate Mook, CEO of World Central Kitchen, the not-for-profit non-governmental organization (NGO) established to provide meals in the wake of natural disasters founded in 2010 by chef José Andrés. Mook had been at the station and made a video with his phone, documenting the thousands of people waiting to board. Elderly. Women. Children.
World Central Kitchen was preparing to set up a meal tent. After filming (you can see it here or here, but be aware it will make you cry), Mook had gone to their warehouse, about two minutes’ walk away. That’s when they heard the bombs.
The BBC says, “Debris from one of the rockets could be seen lying on the grass near the station. The message in Russian “Za detei”, meaning for or on behalf of the children, had been daubed on the missile in white.”
Fifty-two people are dead. The message on the missile—it’s in all the reportage of this incident—is a “revenge message,” according to the Washington Post, which “appeared to refer to the Kremlin’s claims about the security of Russian speakers in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region after years of conflict. Russia has cited defense of the Donbas, and of Russia, as a reason for the invasion.”
What happened here is a war crime, y’all. For me it was the end of a long day, and this story, the visuals, just knocked me to my knees. I can’t speak coherently about war (see my comments on Vietnam, for example); I can’t write a moving tribute to these poor people who, a month ago, were simply going about their lives (as I am now). But I want to note in these pages that it happened, it was awful, and I went to bed, demoralized. You’d think we’d have figured out how to live with each other by now.
Wanderlustful 