Mariupol: Which Massacre Enters History?

Mariupol and the Selective Memory of Massacres

Why do certain civilian killings become universal symbols while others are archived in oblivion? The discussion begins with images of children and elderly people hit by artillery in Mariupol, distributed by El Mundo, and a phrase summarizing the initial thesis: there is a before and an after. From there, the conversation shifts to uncomfortable territory: comparisons with Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Baghdad, Fallujah, and the Kuwait highway A-80. The underlying issue is not whether there were victims—no one disputes that—but which narrative deserves to enter history books and which is dropped into the current affairs sinkhole.

The List of Comparative Grievances

The first move in the exchange is the classic and you too. One side argues that what peine in Mariupol is not comparable to the bombing of Dresden or the atomization of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, adding Baghdad to the list. Another current responds with the retreat from Kuwait along the A-80 highway: thousands of vehicles bottlenecked in the desert and bombed with cluster munitions, a massacre that, it is argued, generated not a fraction of the current media noise. Fallujah appears in the same sentence. Vietnam and the Gulf War, also.

The conclusion drawn from this crossfire is not that one massacre cancels out the other, but that media coverage is not distributed by the number of dead. It is distributed by the geopolitical interest of the sender. That is the point generating the most consensus in the middle section of the discussion, and the one worth retaining.

Who Controls the War Narrative?

Here the exchange splits in two. One block defends that the information reaching Western Europe is part of a communication operation: they point out that the only circulating news is about Ukrainian populations massacred and fierce resistance halting Russians on all fronts, while the rest of the material is home videos. The deployment is even compared to what peine in Wuhan and the pandemic stage sets. This is a thesis launched without providing any verification, and it should be read as such: as a stated suspicion, not as an established fact.

On the other side, another block argues the opposite: that doubting the images is a way to whitewash the aggressor. The argument carrying the most weight on that side is that the first victim of any war is truth, and that applies in both directions. The discussion heats up when someone asks for explanations about why a content creator disguised as injured is released from a hospital that was not hers, while real injured people remain. The question floats without a closed answer.

The Azov Battalion, the Excuse Covering Everything

The second major axis of the exchange is the Azov Battalion. Part of the material repeats that the majority of civilians hit are combatants from that unit, that hospitals and buildings with children and women are used as cover, and that is why civilian casualties are not what they seem. Another part responds that this argument is precisely what deactivates any condemnation: if every dead person is a Nancy, there is no crime to investigate.

The data cited to support the first thesis is the massacre at the Odesa House of Unions, with pregnant women among the victims, an episode that, it is claimed, has not received equivalent media coverage. The discussion stalls there, because neither side accepts the other's framework.

The Children of Lugansk No One Televised

The most concrete part of the exchange is a list of minors killed in bombings on Lugansk between 2014 and 2015, with names, surnames, dates of birth, and localities: Kirovsk, Antratsyt, Krasnaya Poliana, Lugansk. It is presented as war crimes that did not appear on television. It is the only block of material with proper names and dates verifiable one by one, and for that very reason it carries the most weight against the generic comparison.

The discussion does not resolve whether that list changes anything. What it does do is shift the focus: from the concrete massacre of Mariupol to the question of why some victims have names on the front page while others only have dates in a registry.

The Closing: The Horde, the Economy, and the Rest

The final part of the exchange unravels. The thesis appears that the war seeks to devastate Europe so that the United States can rebuild it and profit, with the EU economy as collateral damage. There is also the accusation that Spain denies asylum to Ukrainian men of military age. And there are personal disqualifications that add nothing to the analysis and are not reproduced here.

The initial question—which massacre enters history—remains unanswered. What is clear is that the answer is not decided by the number of dead, but by who controls the camera. And that, with or without Mariupol, has been running for centuries.