Irish Examiner view: Mariupol will be Putin’s Guernica

WARNING: This article contains graphic content. The world is watching as Russia rains bombs down on civilians, on refugees, on schools, and on shelters where non-combatants seek refuge

In his epic painting 'Guernica'. Pablo Picasso bore witness to the April 1937 bombardment of the city of Gernika. Journalists and citizens are recording Russia's attack on Ukraine, 85 years on. File picture

The relentless shelling of civilian areas has been a feature of Russian military strategy since the final months of the Second World War. Then, the Russians were allies of the Western democracies as they advanced on Berlin, the citadel of the Nazi empire. Now, they are our enemies, and are likely to be viewed in that light for many generations to come.

With evidence emerging of indiscriminate shooting of non-combatants, attacks on refugees, vehicles bombarded even when marked with white flags and carrying signs saying ‘children’, the deployment of hypersonic missiles, and the attack on an art school where 400 women, youngsters,  and elderly people were sheltering, there is little doubt that peace talks are a sham, at least as far as the Kremlin is concerned.

Many Russians seem to be unaware of the unholy barbarism being unleashed in their name on non-combatant targets in Ukraine including this theatre in Mariupol where hundreds of civilians were sheltering. Picture: EyePress News/Shutterstock

Many Russians appear not to believe the barbaric nature of the attacks their forces are carrying out on their neighbours. But the capacity of people for self-delusion in wartime can never be underestimated. 

There were many Germans who denied the existence of Adolf Hitler’s death camps, and continued to do so until they were force-marched into them to see, and confront, the evidence for themselves.

The most eviscerating portrayal of the impact of modern mechanised warfare is Pablo Picasso’s ‘Guernica’, an epic scale painting of the destruction of the Basque city of Gernika by the German and Italian air forces at the request of the Spanish nationalists led by Francisco Franco. It depicts screaming women, a dead baby, a gored horse, dismembered soldiers, an all-seeing eye.

Even after the Red Army and its allies liberated Hitler's death camps, many Germans denied their existence until compelled to visit them and, in this instance at Belsen on April 15, 1945, to carry away the bodies of their victims. Many in Russia now are in denial about their country's attack on Ukraine. File picture: PA

Most of the images emerging from Ukraine of the depredations of the invading forces are on social media and via brave journalists and citizen journalists. 

But art will surely follow in all its forms and it will stand testimony to a cruelty and cynicism which will redound to the discredit of Russia down the centuries.

If Picasso was alive today, he would be painting Mariupol.