Television images of Russia’s turning point toward evil should shake us to our moral core.

Bodies strewn across the muddy street. A dead man, hands tied behind his back, shot in the head, bullet casing there. Three bodies, partially covered, on the roadside, two of them women, naked, the third a man, and all three bodies ineffectively burned. Under the steely skies, the camera pans, capturing these scenes.

There is a warning first. On CNN, Jim Acosta said: “We want to warn you that these images that we show are painful and incredibly graphic.” Ever? Acosta finished by saying that he and his team had recently tried to end their show with “a measure of hope, maybe a child singing or a band playing in a public square in the Ukraine. But not tonight.”

The weekend saw a major change in television coverage of the war in Ukraine, when cameras moved to the town of Bucha, north of kyiv, after Russian troops withdrew from the area, leaving behind a tangled chaos of destroyed equipment. And, along with the murdered and raped who remain dead in the streets, there are the mass graves, one with a dead hand sticking out of the mud. “Let those images sink in,” Acosta said.

Russia knows it too. The tipping point towards pure evil has been reached, it’s there on TV. On Russian state television on Sunday night, presenter Vladimir Solovyov said (if I understand the translation correctly): “The war against Russia entered a new phase today. Very soon we will be accused of genocide. To all appearances, this entire provocation was planned by the British.”

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The question is, referring to Jim Acosta, do the images sink? We are, as a witness audience, conditioned to turn away from the horror of war when the narrative turns disgustingly ugly and repetitive. For a month, the narrative has been this: courageous Ukraine, against all odds, pushing back Russian advances. Millions of women, children and elderly people fled. The world stood in solidarity, countries opened their hearts and offered a home.

Now, the problem for Ukraine, and anyone watching who really has a heart, is weariness with this war. As the atrocities increase, so does our discomfort. All of us who are adults and have memories of other conflicts can anticipate the next step: a prolonged war in a distant place that loses its urgency as news because it goes on and on. The raped and mutilated dead become ghoulish figures appearing on the nightly news somewhere in the middle of the newscast, or near the end.

We instinctively turn away from someone else’s precise hell and then the impact of the waves of war weakens, the farther and longer they try to resonate. This is not the fault of television, it is our fault.

Warnings about graphic images precede grim coverage for a reason. Because some people will walk away. On a Sunday night, do you want to see gaiety, dancing, and absurd fashion crimes at the Grammy Awards, or do you want to see a pale, dead hand sticking out of a mass grave in a faraway town where despair engulfs everything?

In this circumstance, what President Volodymyr Zelensky does is vital. A skilled artist, his appearances and publications have energized Ukraine itself and validated his very existence. He has shaped history, his presence and his words have run through all the analysis, debate and concerns about what the world should do. He has forged a story about survival. He has won what they call the “information war.”

And yet, their enemy now is not simply Russia and its murderous, marauding troops, or its imprecise bombs that turn buildings and small houses into rubble. It is the challenge of finding a new story with a new arc that leans towards a victory for all of us, not just for the indomitable spirit of Ukraine. It is impossible to be indomitable on your knees with a gun to your head.

What was revealed as barbaric in the Russian occupation of a single city should shake us all to the core. We do not even know precisely what has happened in the besieged city of Mariupol and its horrors. What we do know is what passed for normal in Bucha, and that this will probably be a long war with that normalized barbarism.

How we, the audience, assess the conflict is of vital importance to Zelensky, Ukraine and us. We can notice the warning about graphic images and walk away. Or we can have the courage to watch, to make sure the coverage doesn’t fade in the middle or end of the news. Fatigue is not an option, and neither is it in Ukraine. We cannot walk away when the tipping point lurches towards evil.

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