© 2023 FdR / RESY CANONICA
The reconstruction by the New York Times of the massacre at the market in the Ukrainian town of Kostiantynivka, which claimed the lives of at least 15 civilians on 6 September, overturns the version of events that had been taken for granted from the start. It would not have been a Russian missile that hit, but one fired by the Kiev army, which may have gone off course. Does it change anything?
From one attribution of responsibility to another. First the Russians, immediately called 'terrorists' by Ukrainian President Zelensky. Today it would be the Ukrainians, hopefully 'by accident', who hit the market and all those poor people.
The New York Times has done an excellent job of contemporary journalism: a mixture of the work done by its reporters on the ground and those who, instead, remained behind the desk of the newsroom, flanked by analysts and specialists.
Too bad we stop there. Too bad we are content to know who did it. It is a subterfuge: it allows us to live with the war.
It would be another thing to conclude that it was the war that caused the poor Kostiantynivka dead, and all the others, on both sides.
That war that so many want and support and indeed, to this day, call a beautiful and heroic thing.
(gianluca grossi)