Mr. Putin, have you seen the scary silence of war cemeteries?

If you read the brief profiles and epithets written over the graves there, your eyes would turn moist. War cemeteries from London to Delhi and Bangkok and other places look identical. Thousands of soldiers are there on their eternal sleep. Your heart would break when you read the age of victims of war. They are not more than 25 in most of the cases

The cemeteries, both war and civilian, would face crunch time in Ukraine as merchant of death, Alexander Putin is in no mood to relent or repent even as the Russian troops are on fire. They are destroying buildings after buildings in Ukraine capital, Kyiv, and not sparing even civilian population. Naturally, now the cemeteries would receive coffins of innocents and soldiers dying due to senseless war. That could have been easily avoided with dialogue and deliberations. But, power intoxicated Putin had other ideas.

Also, it is not possible that the Russian President would not have seen the war cemetery in Moscow itself or any other war cemetery. The eerie silence in war cemeteries even during the day time is scary. And if you read the brief profiles and epithets written over the graves there, your eyes would turn moist. War cemeteries from London to Delhi and Bangkok and other places look identical. Thousands of soldiers are there on their eternal sleep. Your heart would break when you read the age of victims of war. They are not more than 25 in most of the cases. Imagine, so many youngsters die in the peak of their youth due to war. Is any relative or close family member, perhaps Putin's son or daughter, too fighting in the ongoing war in Ukraine? It is not easy to find any President or Prime Minister whose kids are fighting in war zone. The current Russia–Ukraine war is no different.

In the Delhi War Cemetery in the Delhi Cantonment area, one can see relatives standing by the graves of fallen soldiers from time to time. While some relatives place flowers there, others look sad. The Delhi War Cemetery is the site of the graves of 1,154 service personnel who served the British Empire during the First and Second World Wars. The cemetery was established in 1951 to ensure the permanent preservation of the remains of soldiers across various cemeteries in northern India. The graves contain the remains of citizens of the United Kingdom, India, Netherlands, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Poland. As many as 821 graves contain individuals from the army and 296 from the air force.

And in Chungkai War Cemetery, which is 129 kilometres north-west of Bangkok, thousands of Punjab regiment soldiers are buried. The buried are mostly Muslims. The names of Hindu and Sikh soldiers are inscribed in a white marble stone inside the cemetery. Of course, not many people visit here to pay homage to the martyrs of deadly World Wars. Spare a thought for the dead soldier of Punjab regiment born in Gurdaspur or Sahiwal (now Pakistan) was buried in far flung place in Bangkok. A caretaker of this cemetery told this writer a couple of years ago that hardly anyone from India or Pakistan visit here to pay homage to war heroes.

Putin's Russia that had lost thousands of soldiers and civilians in the previous wars is again on war path. Neither Putin nor the Parliament of his country have even an iota of shame left as they declare war against a small and weak neighbouring country. They are blind to the fact that the number of dead would swell thick and fast as war takes its toll. Will heartless Putin has made arrangements to bury the dead of his country? Does he know that in the war nobody is the winner? Even as there is still no hope of immediate end to the war, one must give full credit to the brave people of Russia who are holding demonstrations, at grave risks to them and their families as so many Russians came out in protest against the declaration of war by Putin.

Some years ago, the people in Britain protested against Blair government for the war in Iraq. The most difficult choice citizens in any country face in situations of war are to oppose their own governments. Those brave people of Russia, irrespective of their numbers, have made that difficult choice.

If you scan through the pages of history, you would see thousands of Americans came out against their own government in the Vietnam War. The demonstrations began in 1964 against the escalating role of the United States in the Vietnam War and grew into a broad social movement over the ensuing several years.

Well, we had seen when our own country involved itself in senseless battle in Sri Lanka. Remember when the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) landed on Sri Lankan soil in 1987, the very next day after the Indo-Sri Lanka Peace Accord was signed. We lost over 1,200 men in the line of duty. The original intention was the IPKF would not be involved in large scale military operations. However, after a few months, the IPKF engaged the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in a series of battles. During the two years in which it was deployed, the IPKF fought against the LTTE. The IPKF began withdrawing in 1989, and completed the withdrawal in 1990.

Well, Dr. Major Ashwini Kumar Kanva was among the soldiers we lost there. He completed his medical education from University College of Medical Sciences, Delhi, and joined the Indian Army in November 1982. He was part of IPKF and his unit reached Sri Lanka in October, 1987. He was one of the very few medical officers deployed in the battle field. On November 3, 1987, Major Kanva was busy providing medical help to injured soldiers in the army camp on the outskirts of Jaffna. As he was tending to a patient, he was shot by an LTTE sniper from a very close range. The assassin had gained entry into the camp pretending to be a patient and fired at him in a dastardly act. Major Kanva succumbed to his injuries and was martyred.

Remember, so many soldiers and other civilians lost their lives like Major Kanva in every war. In the battleground in Ukraine, innocent people are dying because of one person- Vladimir Putin. And what is so shocking that entire world is watching the war. Will any country intervene and stop the war?

(The author is a Delhi-based journalist who closely follows South Asia, business, Delhi and Indian Diaspora)