“A man on a destroyed Kharkiv street. July 1.” By Мstyslav Chernov
Background
On February 24th, 2022, a full-scale military invasion was launched by Russia into Ukraine, rapidly escalating the previous seven years of conflict that had been occurring in the Donbas region of Ukraine. This invasion was based on Putin’s notions of Ukraine belonging to Russia, a perspective that is based on incorrect interpretations of the past thousand years of history between the two nations. Although this conflict and its roots can be traced back to the 17th century, the most prevalent history to know regarding this conflict was the interaction between Ukraine and the early Soviet Union at the beginning of the 20th century.
Ukraine began to try to move away from the Russian Empire between 1917 and 1921 with the Ukrainian War for Independence, but the emerging state was rapidly consumed by expanding Soviet Russia. With this subsumption began nearly a century of highly oppressive Russian policy, later called Stalinization, where Ukrainian forms of life and culture were all but destroyed. This includes the famine of 1930-33: The Holodomor, which killed at least 5 million Ukrainians and is recognized as a genocide by the European Parliament.
Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia has often turned its eye back to Ukraine in pursuit of the resources located in Ukraine. The peering over the figurative fence culminated in the events of late 2013 and 2014, when Ukrainian President Yanukovych backed out of an agreement that could have led to Ukraine’s integration with the European Union, and instead chose stronger ties with Russia, a decision clearly influenced by the Kremlin. This sparked mass protests in Kyiv on the Maidan Nezalezhnosti from late November to early February called the Revolution of Dignity and forced the fleeing Yanukovych to Moscow.
Shortly after an interim government was established, Russia invaded and annexed Crimea and stoked pro-Russian separatist movements in the Donbas region of Ukraine. This fighting never ceased, and provided Putin’s military with the main entry point into Ukrainian territory, leading to the current war.
Russian Kh-22 type missile hit Ukrainian nine-story residential building in Dnipro on Jan 14, 2023.
Current Impact
Since February 2022, the impact of the war has been seen and felt all around the world in terms of energy prices and constant news coverage, but the local impact of the war has been deadlier and more devastating than most know.
At least 13,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed.
Almost 7,000 civilians killed, at least 440 of them children.
Approximately 14 million have been displaced by the war.
However, what is even more concerning is that these numbers have not been reliably updated since November 2022. Casualty reports have not been updated in recent months, and these numbers have likely gone up significantly since then.
