ZELENSKYY: “I DON’T CRY WHEN I SEE RUSSIAN SOLDIERS DYING”
“I don’t cry when I see Russian soldiers who are on our territory and killing our people dying,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. “It’s their choice. Putin’s choice.”
For someone only now being introduced to this war, those words may sound severe. But Ukraine did not invade Russia. Ukrainian soldiers did not cross the border in 2022 seeking Russian cities to occupy. Vladimir Putin sent an invasion army into another sovereign country, and Russian soldiers carried his orders forward with weapons in their hands.
The professional force that entered Ukraine at the beginning of the full-scale invasion has been devastated and reconstituted repeatedly. Many of its original formations have been replenished with mobilized men, contract recruits, prisoners and soldiers drawn by increasingly large payments.
Some Russian soldiers were coerced, deceived or placed under enormous pressure. Desertion can bring imprisonment, abuse and threats from commanders. That context matters—but it does not make the Ukrainian standing on the other end of that soldier’s weapon any less dead.
Every Russian soldier shown in our battlefield footage entered Ukraine as part of an armed force. The soldier featured in our Faces of the Week was carrying a weapon on Ukrainian land. Ukrainian troops confronting him could not pause to investigate his personal beliefs or determine whether he privately supported Putin. They had to survive.
Ukraine’s estimates now place Russian personnel losses above 2,000 for seven consecutive daily updates—more than 15,000 casualties in a single week. Those figures represent estimated killed and wounded combined, not confirmed deaths alone, but the scale remains staggering.
One might expect losses of that magnitude to produce widespread refu
sal. Instead, new soldiers continue moving forward while those who resist face pressure from commanders and the state behind them. Putin supplies the order, the Russian system supplies the replacements, and another group advances across Ukrainian soil.
Everyone may decide for themselves whether to feel sympathy for an individual Russian soldier. But sympathy must never erase responsibility or be placed ahead of the Ukrainians that soldier was sent to kill.
Ukraine did not bring this war to Russia. Ukraine did not order these men across the border. Ukraine is defending its homes, its families and its right to exist.
Putin chose the invasion. Russia continues supplying the army. Ukrainian soldiers are left with the burden of stopping it.