Russia’s brutality with Ukraine is nothing new

OPINIONS

Russia’s brutality with Ukraine is nothing new

A woman holds a placard reading "Putin, hands off Ukraine" depicting a collage of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Soviet leader Josef Stalin. (Michal Cizek/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images)

By George F. Will,  Published: MARCH 17, 3:24 PM ET E-mail the writer

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“Boys from another school pulled out the severed head of a classmate while fishing in a pond. His whole family had died. Had they eaten him first? Or had he survived the deaths of his parents only to be killed by a cannibal? No one knew; but such questions were commonplace for the children of Ukraine in 1933. . . . Yet cannibalism was, sometimes, a victimless crime. Some mothers and fathers killed their children and ate them. ... But other parents asked their children to make use of their own bodies if they passed away. More than one Ukrainian child had to tell a brother or sister: ‘Mother says that we should eat her if she dies.’ ”