It’s been 17 months since Russia invaded Ukraine and since then, the sensibilities of people across the world have continually been assaulted by scenes of destruction, death and misery. This avoidable war has left big scars on the world, impeded supply chains, strained the global economy, and made a mess of our humanity.
The outrage generated following the recent release of footage showing elderly women and children, including a 95-year-old World War II female survivor, killed or injured by Russian missiles fired on apartment buildings once again accentuates the urgency for the international community to accelerate diplomatic efforts to stop the carnage.
Also, the brief rebellion of a Russian mercenary group popularly known as Wagner has managed to introduce another macabre dimension to the fruitless war and the possibility of instability within Russia. What this clearly shows is that neither of the feuding parties has been on a roller coaster since the hostilities began.
It has been a brutal war all along, and the level of destruction has been painfully staggering. The horrors of modern warfare and the inevitability of war crimes are clearly underscored by the levelling of Ukrainian cities and infrastructure, and deliberate Russian attacks on civilian homes, shelters and even hospitals. Recent reports of another 40 people injured in what the mayor of Lviv, Andriy Sadovyi, described as ‘one of the biggest attacks’ on the city’s civilian infrastructure also saw the destruction of 35 buildings during the overnight missile attacks. The attacks have continued to soar, and the world cannot continue to sling unintended aloofness.
A fortnight ago, the Russian defence ministry came out to claim that Ukrainian troops and depots, which were used to store foreign-made armoured vehicles, were hit using what he described as sea-based ‘long-range precision weapons. In response, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy came out to promise what he described as a ‘tangible’ response to the ‘terrorist attacks’. The truth is that the attacks and counter-attacks cannot bring the peace that the world earnestly seeks. Conversations have to start, and the needless war has to end.
When Vladimir Putin woke up one morning in February 2022 to dispatch some 200,000 Russian troops into Ukraine in a bid to overrun his smaller neighbour, depose its government and replace it with a puppet, no one imagined it would last for so long, cost so much misery and damage the global economy.
Although neither Ukraine nor Russia has provided casualty figures that can be trusted to be without bias or outright propaganda, everyone will easily agree that the toll has been heavy, and is rising. According to quite a number of reports, losses on both sides in recent weeks have been heavy, especially when one considers the ongoing Ukrainian counter-offensive, with several hundred deaths reported every day on the battlefields in East Ukraine.
According to US intelligence sources, as of April this year, no fewer than 354,000 soldiers had been killed or injured on both sides. The United Kingdom’s defence intelligence believes Russian casualties increased significantly after last year’s partial mobilisation, reaching 175,000 to 200,000 in total, of whom 40,000 to 60,000 were killed.
As of the end of June, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights had verified about 9,083 civilian deaths and, 15,779 others who had been brutally injured. It even revealed that the true numbers were likely to be substantially higher. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees reported in early July that there were 6.33 million Ukrainian refugees, with 5.96 million of them in Europe.
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There have been several viewpoints expressed with regard to the war, and many have tried to rationalise it. However, what anyone who is fair-minded will easily agree with is that Russia’s aggression against its weaker neighbour is not, in any way or context, justifiable. It will be recalled that in launching his ‘special military operation,’ Putin declared on the 24th of February last year that his goal of starting the needless aggression was to ‘demilitarise and de-Nazify’ Ukraine and not to occupy it by force. This followed his backing of independence for eastern Ukrainian territories that had been occupied by Russian proxy forces since 2014. He also vowed to protect people from at least a decade of ‘Ukrainian bullying and genocide,’ a claim that has no realistic foundation.
Without taking sides, anyone who has objectively tried to analyse the issues will come to the inevitable conclusion that those claims are ploys straight from the aggressor’s ancient playbook, where a stronger nation seeks to dominate, occupy, or annex smaller sovereign states by raising false claims to justify their war-mongering. Yes, Zelenskyy is unarguably Jewish; however, until Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea and other slices of its territory eight years ago, Ukraine posed no military threat to Russia, and this is not debatable.
The fears of Russia and Putin that Ukraine might join the NATO alliance, and consequently introduce Western troops and surveillance to its borders, while legitimate concerns, could have been addressed using diplomatic and other forms of pressure rather than what is presently going on. Whether Putin agrees or not, anyone with an objective mind will agree that the invasion was the wrong call and a grave miscalculation. Obviously, Putin wanted to topple Zelensky, return another pro-Russia puppet to power, and bring Ukraine back into Russia’s orbit. Since all that has abysmally failed, it is only fair that the world step in to end the madness.
It is time to make Putin understand that his aggression has backfired. Rather than limit NATO expansion, which was his initial aim, his misadventure has pushed Finland to rush for membership, and the Baltic States—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—that all joined in 2004, to move even closer into the NATO fold, raise their military spending and move further away from Russia. It will be recalled that on September 10th of September, 2022, Ukraine applied to join the treaty, and many of its 31 members favoured its accession.
The military alliance, which was hitherto weakened over the years by under-funding and the seeming fading of a Russian threat, has been reinvigorated. Europe appears to have become more united, and some of its members now reconsider Putin’s Russia as a major threat, militarily and economically.
The war has also exposed the weaknesses of the Russian military and its society. Putin was badly shaken by the 24-hour rebellion of the Wagner Group mercenary force that was marching towards Moscow, turning back only 200 miles away. The war appears to have shattered his image of invincibility within Russia and Putin’s inner circles, which he has nurtured in his 24 years of dominating the country.
In the modern world, no country should be subjugated by another. Efforts should therefore be redoubled to end a war that has disrupted global energy and food markets, and supply chains, and pushed up consumer prices to unprecedented levels.
It is true that so far, pleas from leaders from seven African countries—South Africa, Comoros, Egypt, the Republic of Congo, Senegal, Uganda, and Zambia—to stop the war have fallen on deaf ears. But the world cannot afford to choose silence either.
Currently, Ukraine is insisting that Russian troops must pull back beyond Ukraine’s internationally recognised borders, which is backed by two UN resolutions. Russia, on the other hand, has bluntly refused and has rather continued to lay claim to the ‘annexed’ Ukrainian territory.
It is high time both countries consider the lives of their citizens and give peace a chance by accepting a compromise. The UN, other world leaders, especially in the West, and Russia’s strong ally, China, should be pressured to step in and broker peace before this war degenerates further and ensnares other belligerents. The madness should and must be brought to a halt.
