Putin Bunny

I like to draw cartoons about Vladimir Putin I know I wouldn’t be able to publish in Russia. How tall of a building would a Russian cartoonist get thrown off of after drawing a Putin bunny?

As we all know, Vladimir Putin is a war criminal. His invasion alone can be considered a war crime as his reasons to attack his neighbors are just about as valid as Hitler’s when he attacked his. In case you’re slow, that means his reasons are not valid. This is not a border crisis. This isn’t because NATO goaded Russia. This isn’t because Ukraine belongs to Russia or doesn’t have sovereignty. This isn’t because President Joe Biden isn’t nice enough to Putin. And, it’s not about Nazis in Ukraine. This is about Vladimir Putin expanding his power and he’ll kill anyone and destroy anything to accomplish it.

Putin didn’t attack Ukraine by only targeting its military. He’s attacked cities, suburbs, villages, apartment buildings, government offices, businesses, schools, playgrounds, theaters, hospitals, and train stations where people are lined up to escape the country. He’s hit buildings clearly marked to contain civilians. I’m starting to think Putin doesn’t care who dies on either side.

When I see images of people crying over the dead bodies of their children, my heart breaks. How can it not? How can anyone with a heart not be moved by those images? Vladimir Putin doesn’t have a heart. If he did, he’d stop his stupid war that’s going to set both nations back decades. But war criminals don’t care about other people. And from the evidence, Putin intends to keep killing civilian Ukrainians long after the war is over.

After Russians retreated from an area outside Kyiv, a man was killed by a bomb in a car trunk, set as a booby trap to explode when the trunk was opened. This is not war. This is murder. That is a war crime.

Ukrainians aren’t just finding unexploded bombs from areas formerly occupied by their invaders. They’re also discovering thousands of land mines. A lot of times when a civilian finds a land mine, he finds it the hard way. It gets more devious. The Russian military has left explosive booby traps inside homes. Explosive booby traps have been left in garage doors, washing machines, car windows, and other ordinary everyday items. They’ve even left booby traps under hospital beds and corpses they left behind.

Think about that. They commit war crimes by killing civilians, then use the corpse of the person they murdered to murder more people.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine this week called his country “one of the most contaminated by mines in the world.” Ukraine is working to clear the country of these land mines and explosive booby traps, but they probably won’t find them all. Decades after they were set and the wars are over, landmines are still being found in Africa and Southeast Asia.

There is an international treaty banning the use of land mines in wars, which Ukraine has signed. Three nations that have not are Russia, China, and…wait for it…the United States. Presidents Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump (sic), and Biden have all refused to ban this nation’s use of land mines. Why?

The U.S. reasoning is that it needs land mines as a deterrent along the DMZ between North and South Korea.

Before the Ottawa Treaty banning land mines was enacted in 1993, over 25,000 civilians were killed annually by these heartless indiscriminate booby traps. Today after at least 181 nations have signed, it’s down to 4,000 civilians killed annually by abandoned land mines.

The U.S. has not signed the treaty, but it has followed the treaty’s key requirements, including its no-use, no-production, and no-trade provisions. Our nation hasn’t used them since Desert Storm in 1991. The U.S. has also provided more funds than any other nation in efforts to clear land minefields. But why can’t we sign the treaty? Why can’t we give up using land mines entirely?

President Clinton called it a “global tragedy” and said, “In all probability, land mines kill more children than soldiers, and they keep killing after wars are over.” But he refused to sign the treaty under pressure from the Pentagon. The pentagon may not be as afraid of giving up land mines as much as it’s afraid of what they’ll have to give up next. They may be afraid of an international treaty banning drones, which we often use to bomb Muslim weddings.

If the United States signs this treaty banning land mines, it may be powerful enough to persuade Russia to sign it. Maybe if we had signed it years ago, the Russian Army wouldn’t be leaving land mines for innocent Ukrainian civilians to find the hard way today. But then again with Putin, signing it probably wouldn’t change his strategy. I mean, do you need a treaty to stop bombing baby hospitals and leaving explosive booby traps under hospital beds?

There is no good reason to use land mines and other booby traps. Putin is a murderer and a war criminal. The man knows no compassion. Anyone leaving behind landmines to kill and maim children is a son of a bitch who deserves to burn in Hell…if Hell wasn’t too good for him.

My wish for the Putin Bunny would be for it to hop through the field where it left its surprises.

Music note: I listened to a mix today while drawing this cartoon that included Sugar Ray, Incubus, and 311. I guess my player wanted me to listen to bands with DJs, which is something I’m not super fond of.

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