From Ambassador Olexander Scherba’s new “Thought Leader” op-ed in Mail & Guardian. 

“We live in a time of global darkness rising. Once again, like in earlier eras, imperialism kicks in the door to your home, invades your reality and says: what was yours before is mine now — your land, your freedom, your life …

On top of everything, it is also an era of mind-boggling cruelty. Sometimes, it is the cruelty of a person pressing a button and sending off another batch of deadly drones, distantly destroying hundreds of peaceful homes and thousands of peaceful lives. 

“Death of one person is a tragedy; death of thousands is just statistics” — these words of Josef Stalin, a bloody dictator from the past (who is enjoying a comeback as well) could be a fitting motto of today.

But there is also a different, especially terrifying feature to our era: deliberate, sadistic, eye-to-eye kind of cruelty. 

The proud one. Like the documented and internationally verified case of Russian occupiers invading a private home near Kyiv, killing the owner and gang-raping his wife for days — while their four-year-old child was weeping, locked in the next room.

Like the gruesome Russian video of a young Ukrainian prisoner being castrated that went viral in 2023.

Like proud social media postings of Russian soldiers executing Ukrainian prisoners on camera. 

Like Ukrainian prisoners being deliberately starved in Russian detention camps..

Where does it come from? Wasn’t the 21st century supposed to be better than this?..."