The Normalization Of Terror
By: Giorgio Provinciali
Live from Ukraine
Kherson – The images we captured in this oblast’ in our latest video report – available on this newspaper’s YouTube channel – are horrifying. Even on the rubble of Kherson’s already destroyed villages, Russian drones are raining down an impressive number of leaf mines. These explosives are indistinguishable from foliage and rocks, making them deadly and hard to detect.
While we were filming, Ukrainian air defenses were trying to shoot down dozens of these vectors of death. Unpunished by the international community, the Russian Federation continues to carry out a deadly campaign that spares no one: civilians of all ages – including many children – are daily torn apart by kamikaze FPV drones piloted from the opposite bank of the Dnipro and by the mines they drop.
Around 7 a.m. on Monday, March 16, one of these deadly drones targeted a car moving through the city center with a 67-year-old man inside. Moments after the attack, a second drone flew over the area, targeting the rescuers as they tried to extract the badly disfigured body of the man to save his life. Not far from the city center, a UAV with more explosive power hit a moving bus full of people in broad daylight. Nineteen people died, including a 17-year-old teenager. Just moments after we passed through the village of Muzykivka, another Russian drone struck a minibus, killing more civilians. The images are so disturbing that they clash with social media rules that allow vast amounts of Russian disinformation to spread but prevent sharing its devastating effects.
In nearby Mykolaiv, Russian drone pilots attacked an ambulance rushing through the streets of Kutsurubska, disfiguring the driver and a doctor on board. Other Russian munitions damaged a school and an apartment building, repeatedly targeting them day and night. Others hit the community of Ochakiv seven times. One was shot down by the Ukrainian ППО just as we were recording footage between the Kherson and Mykolaiv areas.
Meanwhile, in the Kharkiv region, remote Russian Federation killers attacked a bus near the village of Nova Oleksandrivka, killing one person and injuring four. In the same community of Velykoburlutskyj, in the Kupiansk district, the Russian army had earlier struck a medical car moving through the streets of Chervona Khvylia, killing a doctor and a nurse and seriously wounding another healthcare worker. Also in Kharkiv, the latest Russian attack on the city killed an elementary school teacher, her son, and another young girl, who was found next to her mother’s lifeless body.
In the past few hours, Russian air forces dropped a 500-kg bomb on the center of Kramatorsk, wounding at least six civilians, including three children born in 2010, 2016, and 2024, and damaging a dozen buildings and 22 cars. In nearby Sloviansk, the Russians dropped three glide bombs, killing four civilians and injuring about twenty, including a 14-year-old girl.
The horrifying perversion of this horror – hushed up by most foreign media and the international community – reached new extremes with the handing over of a Ukrainian soldier’s body to the Chernivtsi authorities, inside which the Russians had planted an explosive. Experts from the local forensic medicine bureau discovered this and, during the autopsy, were forced to order the evacuation of the building.
Russian terror even extended to Moldova after an attack on the Novodnistrivka dam – in that same region – caused a spill of petroleum products into the Dniester. So much so that Moldovan authorities handed the Russian ambassador a note of protest, along with a bottle of contaminated water from that river.
The silence of the international community not only indicates inattention but also suggests a conscious denial or, at the very least, a culpable omission in the face of an increasingly industrialized, widespread, and deliberate methodology of terror. The technology at their disposal allows the Russians to extend their manhunt across space and time, not only increasing their ability to strike but also lowering the moral and operational costs of assassination. Virtually all of the crimes described in this article – largely experienced firsthand by us – were carried out remotely against defenseless victims. Double taps, bombed corpses, and shots fired at buses, medical vehicles, and moving ambulances show, four years after the Bukha massacre, how impunity has led to further aberration. Witnessing a repeated yet silent horror reveals the existence of a perceptual asymmetry. The problem is not so much the lack of information as its normalization. The concealment or underestimation of facts like those described ultimately favors the continuation of impunity. If we don’t want to call it complicity, at least it remains acquiescence: a form of moral and political degradation with which the West ends up reflecting, in its silence, that of the Russian army.
The ongoing blackouts severely damaged our house’s heating system in Western Ukraine while we were in the Donbas.
Without electricity, the pump couldn’t circulate the liquid while the fire was lit. As a result, the system caught fire, and the whole house was at risk of burning. Fortunately, it did not, but the whole system needs to be changed, and the house needs to be restored. Tubes are all bent, walls are blackened by haze, and the heating system doesn’t work, requiring an entirely new system.
We are doing our best since Alla’s parents live there, but there’s still a lot to work on here, too, as the people around us are in no better situation.
We’re renewing our fundraising campaign and thanking everyone who joins us in helping us restore what Russia is destroying.
Even a small donation helps.
We’ll keep you updated on developments.
Thank you all, dear friends
恐怖的常态化
作者：Giorgio Provinciali
翻译：旺财球球
乌克兰前线报道
赫尔松 — 我们在本报YouTube频道最新视频报道中于该州拍摄到的画面令人震惊。即便是在赫尔松那些已被摧毁的村庄废墟上，俄方无人机仍在投下数量惊人的“叶片地雷”。这些爆炸物与树叶和岩石几乎无异，难以辨认，致命且难以侦测。
在我们拍摄时，乌克兰防空部队正在努力击落数十架这样的死亡载体。未受到国际社会惩戒的俄罗斯联邦，继续实施一场无差别的致命行动：各个年龄段的平民——包括许多儿童——每天都被俄军从第聂伯河对岸操控的自杀式FPV无人机及其投放的地雷炸得支离破碎。
3月16日周一约早上7点，其中一架无人机袭击了一辆正在市中心行驶的汽车，车内有一名67岁男子。袭击发生后不久，第二架无人机飞到现场上空，专门袭击正在试图救援该名严重毁容男子的救援人员。离市中心不远处，一架装有更大爆炸物的无人机在大白天袭击了一辆载满乘客的公交车，造成19人死亡，其中包括一名17岁少年。就在我们经过穆济基夫卡村不久后，另一架俄军无人机击中一辆小巴，更多平民遇难。画面过于残忍，以至于与违反了社交媒体的规则，这些平台允许大量俄方虚假信息传播却阻止发布其毁灭性后果。
在附近的尼古拉耶夫，俄方无人机驾驶员袭击了一辆疾驰在库楚鲁布斯卡街道上的救护车，致车内司机和一名医生被严重毁容。其他俄方弹药还损毁了一所学校和一栋公寓，昼夜反复攻击。另有弹药七次袭击奥恰科夫社区。我们在赫尔松与尼古拉耶夫地区间拍摄时，乌克兰防空系统击落了其中一架。
与此同时，在哈尔科夫地区，俄方无人机远程操作手袭击了诺瓦·奥列克桑德里夫卡村附近的一辆公交车，致1人死亡、4人受伤。在同一地区的库皮扬斯克区的维利科布尔鲁茨基社区，俄军早前袭击过一辆在契尔沃纳·赫维利亚街道行驶的医疗车辆，杀死一名医生和一名护士，另一名医护人员重伤。同样在哈尔科夫，俄方对该市的最近的袭击造成一名小学教师、她的儿子以及另一名年轻女孩死亡，该女孩被发现在母亲尸体旁。
在过去数小时内，俄空军在克拉马托尔斯克市中心投下一枚500公斤炸弹，造成至少六名平民受伤，其中包括出生于2010年、2016年和2024年的三名儿童，并摧毁了数十幢建筑和22辆汽车。在附近的斯洛维扬斯克，俄方投下三枚滑翔炸弹，造成4名平民死亡，约20人受伤，其中包括一名14岁女孩。
（图：我与阿拉在乌克兰赫尔松州就“叶片地雷”进行报道 — 版权所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
而大多数外国媒体与国际社会对俄达到变态新极端的恐怖行为选择噤声：在向切尔尼夫齐当局移交一名乌克兰士兵遗体时，俄方在遗体内安装了爆炸装置。当地司法医学鉴定专家在尸检中发现了这一点，并在检验过程中被迫下令疏散整栋大楼。
俄方的恐怖甚至蔓延到摩尔多瓦：俄军对同一地区诺沃德尼斯特里夫卡水坝的袭击导致石油类污染物泄入第聂伯河。摩尔多瓦当局因此向俄方大使递交了抗议照会，并随附一瓶受污染的河水作为证据。
（图：这是我与Alla在乌克兰赫尔松灰色地带报道 — 版权所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
国际社会的沉默不仅显示出漠视，更暗示了一种有意识的否认，或至少是一种在面对日益工业化、规模化且蓄意化的恐怖手法时的罪责性不作为。俄军掌握的技术使他们能够跨越时空延伸其猎杀行动，不仅提高了打击能力，也降低了暗杀的道德和操作成本。本文所描述的几乎所有罪行，大多是我们亲眼目睹，都是远程遥控对手无寸铁的受害者实施的。二次袭击、尸体炸弹以及袭击公交车、医务车辆和行进中的救护车，显示出在布查大屠杀四年后，逍遥法外如何导致更严重的畸变。目睹反复发生且被沉默的恐怖，让我们看清一种感知上的不对称。问题并非信息匮乏，而是恐怖的被常态化。对如本文所述事实的隐瞒或淡化最终只会助长继续逍遥法外。如果我们不愿称之为“同谋”，至少也可称之为默许：一种道德与政治的沦丧，西方最终在沉默中反映出与俄军相似的堕落。
（图：我与Alla在乌克兰赫尔松“杀戮区”报道 — 版权所有，，Giorgio Provinciali）
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持续的停电严重损坏了我们在乌克兰西部的家中的供暖系统，而我们当时就在顿巴斯。
没有电，点着的炉火无法通过水泵循环热水。结果，系统起火，整个房子面临着烧毁的风险。幸而未被烧毁，但整个系统需要更换，房子也需要修复。管道都是歪的，墙壁被烟雾熏黑，供暖系统无法正常工作，需要彻底更换。
我们正在尽最大努力，因为Alla的父母住在那里，但这里还有许多工作要做，周围的人处境也好不到哪儿去。
我们正在重启筹款活动，感谢每一位支持我们修复被俄罗斯摧毁一切的朋友。即使是小额捐款也有帮助。我们会及时更新进展。
感谢大家，朋友们。
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