WAR IN UKRAINE: 100 DAYS (June 3, 2022)
Mass graves had to be dug in some areas of Ukraine in order to accommodate the large number of civilian casualties.
One hundred days ago today, on February 24, 2022, Russian forces crossed the border into Ukraine and started a deadly, terrifying “special military operation” which has now killed thousands of innocent civilians, displaced about a quarter of the Ukrainian population, flattened cities and towns - and even triggered a global food crisis.
In this period, Russian President Vladimir Putin has weaponized energy, food and migration.
In Ukraine, it’s as bad as it gets: Putin’s forces have committed unspeakable war crimes reminiscent of the horrors seen in Chechnya - including mass rape (including of young children and of elderly grandmothers), shooting of civilians, cleansing of dissidents, summary executions, filtration camps and the forcible deportation of at least a million Ukrainians to Russia. As of June 2, there have been 269 verified attacks on healthcare installations in Ukraine - including that huge missile strike in March on a maternity hospital in Mariupol which killed a pregnant mother and her unborn baby (a CNN investigation produced a model showing the hospital was still in use by civilians - and not a legitimate target as the Russian Federation has claimed)
As I have said on air many times, as soon as we had thought we had witnessed the absolute basement of inhumanity, the Russian war machine manages to prove itself capable of going even further.
The war in Ukraine has been among the most deadly of any for the media community. As many as 30 have been killed during the conflict - including Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty producer Vera Gyrych.
To many Ukrainians that live in and outside of the country, actions such as stealing Ukrainian grain and deporting civilians to gulag-style conditions brings back chilling memories of the 1930 and 1940s, when millions of Ukrainians starved to death in a man-made famine orchestrated by Stalin. My own relatives were among those who were sent to the gulag, never to return.
Should the invasion of 100 days ago have come as a surprise? Absolutely not. Last summer, Putin, in a twisted and rambling 5,000-word essay, made it clear that he regards Ukraine as a failed state and that Russia has some sort of historic right to claim the country as an area of responsibility - especially areas in the east populated predominantly by Russian-speakers. His fabricated logic claims that Ukrainians and Russians are “one people.” At the time, many observers regarded the essay as a declaration of war and that should have been received as an unmistakably loud warning shot to NATO and to western allies.
Let us not forget that this war actually started more than eight years ago - in the spring of 2014 with the illegal annexation of Crimea and the occupation of large parts of the Donbas region by Russian-backed combatants. Several ceasefire agreements over the years have failed to hold - even for a few days. In that eight year period, at least 14,000 people have died - including the 298 people aboard Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17, shot down over eastern Ukraine by a Russian BUK missile in July 2014.
Aside from the enormous human toll from the war, the damage to the Ukrainian economy and infrastructure is reaching a price tag where it is almost incomprehensible. One reliable estimate put the reconstruction bill well north of US$680-billion. The Economist said that Ukraine will not achieve pre-war GDP levels for another decade.
But then there are the costs that are simply impossible to calculate: the broken families torn apart by displacement, the loss of a mother or father to a child far too young to understand the meaning of war. The destroyed communities - like the one I saw near Chernihiv where shredded teddy bears and busted up toys could be seen in craters caused by 500-lb bombs smack dab in the middle of populated centres. The accumulated emotional distress caused by frequent air raid siren alerts or deafening explosions. Weeks spent in cold and dark bomb shelters. One driver told me that after several weeks of sirens and mad dashes to the bomb shelter his wife begged him to send her and the kids overseas. He said it was one of the most painful decisions he has ever had to make (with few exceptions, men between the ages of 18 and 60 are forbidden from leaving Ukraine).
One of the most extraordinary stories of family dislocation was published in the April 27 edition of Ekspress newspaper, where a 24-year-old woman recounts the story of trying to repatriate her 80-year-old grandmother from the Russians, after she was forcibly deported from Mariupol to a remote region of Russia. Fortunately, the granny remembered the mobile number of her daughter, who lives in Moscow, and was evacuated to the Russian capital, and after a brief hospital stay back to Ukraine. Said the daughter, Natalia: “My family is part of the Greek diaspora in Mariupol. Russia deported Ukrainian Greeks in 1937. My granny never thought she would end up being deported to Russia.”
I have had the fortune - or misfortune, depending on how you look at it - to have witnessed some of the most bombed out areas of the world. Or disaster sites caused by Mother Nature. What I saw near Chernihiv was a shock to the senses, even for me. I described the site on CNN as a combination of a wild fire, hurricane and a war on top of it all. It defied comprehension. And in the areas now occupied by Russian forces, the Kremlin is turning to its well-worn playbook by forcing the Russian language, currency, passports and curriculum on the Ukrainian civilian population. Ukrainian TV and radio channels have bee replaced with the state-controlled, propagandistic Russian media and any sign of Ukrainian culture, such as museums and libraries, are being liquidated.
Said the ICRC’s director-general Robert Mardini: “It would be hard to exaggerate the toll that the international armed conflict in Ukraine has had on civilians over the last 100 days. The scale of destruction in cities defies comprehension. Homes, schools and hospitals have been destroyed and civilians have suffered the horrors of conflict, with lives lost and families torn apart. Thousands of them are living with the anguish of not knowing what happened to their loved ones, including relatives of prisoners of war.”
Damage to civilian infrastructure has been on a massive scale: some estimates place the cost of reconstruction well over US$680-billion.
Wars play odd tricks on the mind. Dreams become militarized. The urge to cry can come at anytime, unannounced (and yes, even on live television). Time becomes compressed in ways unimaginable. But friendships formed during wartime, I have found, are among the deepest and most enduring one can ever imagine.
What the world has discovered in the past 100 days is that the Ukrainian people are among the most resilient and fiercely proud and patriotic in the world. Those countries which have opened their doors to Ukrainian migrants have found them to be hard-working and in need of very little support. Many wish to stay only temporarily.
“As I have said on air many times, as soon as we had thought we had witnessed the absolute basement of inhumanity, the Russian war machine manages to prove itself capable of going even further.”
Of course, Western leaders could have acted more quickly and boldly to the desperate calls from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to help Ukraine defend itself from an aggressor such as Russia. Leaders such as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau operated on the false premise that Russia would be deterred by crippling sanctions. What we have found in this conflict (as well as others for that matter) is that western sanctions are more of a tool for elected leaders to pat themselves on the back, to claim that they have done something. I had said for many months leading up to the invasion that Russia has been busy inoculated itself from western sanctions, including moving into a closer union with China. Had the West moved more quickly to supply Ukraine with lethal weaponry, we might be in a different scenario from now where Russia occupies about one-fifth of Ukrainian territory (Zelensky says Russian forces have entered 3,620 Ukrainian settlements since Feb. 24. Some 1,017 settlements have been liberated, and 2,603 remain occupied). Had Ukraine been granted the ability to close its skies to Russian missiles, countless lives could have been saved. The 200,000 or so children which Zelensky says have been forcibly deported to Russia might be safely at home with their parents. Had western leaders shown more spine, the thousands of Ukrainian soldiers who have perished, defending their country, might still be alive (I’ve lost count of how many Ukrainian military funerals I’ve personally witnessed in Lviv - at times, two or three service members are buried at a time).
Images such as this one depicting people on the move were a common feature in the first few weeks of the war.
What the free world needs to understand is that the only thing Mr. Putin understands is strength. He is well-known for probing for soft tissue (i.e. disunity in the European Union) and once he finds it, he probes deeper and deeper and deeper. The countries surrounding Ukraine understand his mentality, they know well that they could easily find themselves in his crosshairs. That is why we are seeing micro-alliances being formed between Ukraine and nieghbouring states. To many people in Ukraine, NATO has not been the strong and united force it claims to be.
On a final note. To be sure, there have been some positive outcomes from Mr. Putin’s decision to attack Ukraine: it has triggered a renewed sense of patriotism. It has galvanized countries to come together to slap Russia with sanctions, reduce their reliance on Russian fossil fuels (and thereby a crucial source of income for the Kremlin) and generated the political will to finally supply Ukraine with modern, lethal weaponry. Around the world, support for Ukraine among ordinary folk is at unprecedented levels. Random acts of kindness towards Ukrainians can be seen everywhere. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been raised to support Ukraine and those fleeing.
As part of the long-term rebuilding and reconstruction of Ukraine we may finally be able to bid farewell to the oligarch-controlled economy which has robbed Ukraine of billions and deterred foreign investment. For decades these men of privilege and self-interest have pillaged the economy and closed off profitable sectors to domestic and foreign entrants. Hopefully, we have seen the end to media empires controlled by the oligarchs.
On this day, expect plenty of predictable rhetoric, statements of anguish and declarations of further support for Ukraine from western leaders. But until they can provide Ukraine with a full proof method to protect its cities and towns from long range Russian cruise missiles, no inch of the country can be regarded as safe. And that’s a fact.