24 February: The war is one year old. Now what?
UKRAINE WAR TRUTH 359: The war is one year old. Now what?
Victory 5: One year ago, on 24 February 2022, Russian tanks, jets, missiles and infantry, crossed the borders of Ukraine, trying to quickly engineer regime change in Kyiv, so a new government could start to demilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraine, protect the Russian speaking minority in Donbas, and steer the country away from the EU back into the embrace of Mother Russia. To the surprise of Vladimir Putin, this didn't work. The Ukrainians, between 1922 and 1991 united with the Russians and other nationalities under the umbrella of the Soviet Union, rejected the Russian plans and vigorously defended their independence. Russia's blitzkrieg on Kyiv failed miserably. Putin's storm troopers succeeded in advancing somewhat in the East and South of the country, occupying Mariupol, Kharkiv and Kherson, before being pushed back by an Ukrainian counteroffensive. For some time there has been a stalemate, despite Putin throwing more conscripts into the meat grinder and Zelenskiy dragging more sophisticated western-made weaponry into the fight.
In the run-up to the one year anniversary, a lot has been written. A lot of it rubbish, not worth repeating or even refuting. Some commentators looked back, digging up interesting war stories. Others looked ahead, into a hazy crystal ball, trying to decipher what might be in store for the country. They could not do much more than speculate. Will the Russian or the Ukrainian offensive succeed, or will the war sink into a stalemate? Will western support for Ukraine crumble, or will Putin's regime in Moscow be overthrown? Even more importantly, will the war escalate into a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia? A few discussed whether peace proposals could lead to a ceasefire. Or,… “the longer the Ukraine war runs inconclusively, the more likely it is that something unexpected will occur – on either side,” Dan Sabbagh wrote on The Guardian's website.
Looking backwards and forwards can all be very interesting, but let's return to a few of the basics.
The war should never have happened. For decennia, Ukrainians and Russians were brothers and sisters. Even if NATO provoked Putin, should he have been so dumb as to fall into the trap? If Ukraine wanted to divorce from Russia, does this justify its assassination? Nothing whatsoever can justify this war.
The war should stop immediately. Following logically from the above point 1, the war should stop now, which is favorable to everybody and disadvantages nobody. If it gives Russia the chance to better prepare for the next offensive, the same goes for Ukraine. Stopping the war now does not mean that Russia can keep what it has illegally occupied. The fight will continue with less bloody means.
The human toll has been far too high. It should have been zero, not running into the hundreds of thousands. Except for a few warmongers and fascists (Russian and Ukrainian), nobody deserved to die, including the large majority of Russian soldiers who did not choose to go and fight in Ukraine.
Cost are running into the trillion dollars. The U.S. has provided USD46 billion of military support to Ukraine and Europe (EU+UK) €18.7 billion. Destruction in Ukraine runs into the trillion dollars or euros. Russia has wasted an unknown amount of roubles on an unnecessary war. Millions of people in third world countries are going hungry and have been thrown back into poverty as collateral damage from the war. If all this money wasted on destruction had been spent on construction, millions of people would live a better life today.
The danger of escalation is unacceptable. While “most analysts think it is unlikely that Putin would use tactical nuclear weapons,” do we really want to play Russian roulette with Vladimir Putin. Since it's called “Russian” roulette, he might be better at it than we are. The use of tactical nuclear weapons can quickly escalate to strategic weapons and the possible danger of a nuclear winter destroying 99% of life on earth. It could be less, but do we really want to take the chance to find out? To quote the wise words of Martin Luther King Jr., “I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction”.