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The War in Ukraine Is a Colonial War

By Timothy Snyder

When Vladimir Putin denies the reality of the Ukrainian state, he is speaking the familiar language of empire. For five hundred years, European conquerors called the societies that they encountered “tribes,” treating them as incapable of governing themselves. As we see in the ruins of Ukrainian cities, and in the Russian practice of mass killing, rape, and deportation, the claim that a nation does not exist is the rhetorical preparation for destroying it.

Empire’s story divides subjects from objects. As the philosopher Frantz Fanon argued, colonizers see themselves as actors with purpose, and the colonized as instruments to realize the imperial vision. Putin took a pronounced colonial turn when returning to the Presidency a decade ago. In 2012, he described Russia as a “state-civilization,” which by its nature absorbed smaller cultures such as Ukraine’s. The next year, he claimed that Russians and Ukrainians were joined in “spiritual unity.” In a long essay on “historical unity,” published last July, he argued that Ukraine and Russia were a single country, bound by a shared origin. His vision is of a broken world that must be restored through violence. Russia becomes itself only by annihilating Ukraine.

As the objects of this rhetoric, and of the war of destruction that it sanctions, Ukrainians grasp all of this. Ukraine does have a history, of course, and Ukrainians do constitute a nation. But empire enforces objectification on the periphery and amnesia at the center. Thus modern Russian imperialism includes memory laws that forbid serious discussion of the Soviet past. It is illegal for Russians to apply the word “war” to the invasion of Ukraine. It is also illegal to say that Stalin began the Second World War as Hitler’s ally, and used much the same justification to attack Poland as Putin is using to attack Ukraine. When the invasion began, in February, Russian publishers were ordered to purge mentions of Ukraine from textbooks.

Faced with the Kremlin’s official mixture of fantasy and taboo, the temptation is to prove the opposite: that it is Ukraine rather than Russia that is eternal, that it is Ukrainians, not Russians, who are always right, and so on. Yet Ukrainian history gives us something more interesting than a mere counter-narrative to empire. We can find Ukrainian national feeling at a very early date. In contemporary Ukraine, though, the nation is not so much anti-colonial, a rejection of a particular imperial power, as post-colonial, the creation of something new.

Southern Ukraine, where Russian troops are now besieging cities and bombing hospitals , was well known to the ancients. In the founding myth of Athens, the goddess Athena gives the city the gift of the olive tree. In fact, the city could grow olives only because it imported grain from ports on the Black Sea coast. The Greeks knew the coast, but not the hinterland, where they imagined mythical creatures guarding fields of gold and ambrosia. Here already was a colonial view of Ukraine: a land of fantasy, where those who take have the right to dream.

The city of Kyiv did not exist in ancient times, but it is very old—about half a millennium older than Moscow. It was probably founded in the sixth or seventh century, north of any territory seen by Greeks or controlled by Romans. Islam was advancing, and Christianity was becoming European. The Western Roman Empire had fallen, leaving a form of Christianity subordinate to a pope. The Eastern (Byzantine) Empire remained, directing what we now call the Orthodox Church. As Rome and Constantinople competed for converts, peoples east of Kyiv converted to Islam. Kyivans spoke a Slavic language that had no writing system, and practiced a paganism without idols or temples.

Putin’s vision of “unity” relates to a baptism that took place in this setting. In the ninth century, a group of Vikings known as the Rus arrived in Kyiv. Seeking a southbound route for their slave trade, they found the Dnipro River, which runs through the city. Their chieftains then fought over a patchwork of territories in what is now Ukraine, Belarus, and the northeast of Russia—with Kyiv always as the prize. In the late tenth century, a Viking named Valdemar took the city, with the help of a Scandinavian army. He initially governed as a pagan. But, around 987, when the Byzantines faced an internal revolt, he sensed an opportunity. He came to the emperor’s aid, and received his sister’s hand in marriage. In the process, Valdemar converted to Christianity.

Putin claims that this messy sequence of events reveals the will of God to bind Russia and Ukraine forever. The will of God is easy to misunderstand; in any case, modern nations did not exist at the time, and the words “Russia” and “Ukraine” had no meaning. Valdemar was typical of the pagan Eastern European rulers of his day, considering multiple monotheistic options before choosing the one that made the most strategic sense. The word “Rus” no longer meant Viking slavers but a Christian polity. Its ruling family now intermarried with others, and the local people were treated as subjects to be taxed rather than as bodies to be sold.

Yet no rule defined who would take power after a Kyivan ruler’s death. Valdemar took a Byzantine princess as his wife, but he had a half a dozen others, not to mention a harem of hundreds of women. When he died in 1015, he had imprisoned one of his sons, Sviatopolk, and was making war upon another, Yaroslav. Sviatopolk was freed after his father’s death, and killed three of his brothers, but he was defeated on the battlefield by Yaroslav. Other sons entered the fray, and Yaroslav didn’t rule alone until 1036. The succession had taken twenty-one years. At least ten other sons of Valdemar had died in the meantime.

These events do not reveal a timeless empire, as Putin claims. But they do suggest the importance of a succession principle, a theme very important in Ukrainian-Russian relations today. The Ukrainian transliteration of “Valdemar” is “Volodymyr,” the name of Ukraine’s President. In Ukraine, power is transferred through democratic elections: when Volodymyr Zelensky won the 2019 Presidential election , the sitting President accepted defeat. The Russian transliteration of the same name is “Vladimir.” Russia is brittle: it has no succession principle , and it’s unclear what will happen when Vladimir Putin dies or is forced from power. The pressure of mortality confirms the imperial thinking. An aging tyrant, obsessed by his legacy, seizes upon a lofty illusion that seems to confer immortality: the “unity” of Russia and Ukraine.

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In the Icelandic sagas, Yaroslav is remembered as the Lame; in Eastern Europe, he is the Wise, the giver of laws. Yet he did not solve the problem of succession. Following his reign, the lands around Kyiv fragmented again and again. In 1240, the city fell to the Mongols; later, most of old Rus was claimed by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, then the largest state in Europe. Lithuania borrowed from Kyiv a grammar of politics, as well as a good deal of law. For a couple of centuries, its grand dukes also ruled Poland. But, in 1569, after the Lithuanian dynasty died out, a Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth was formalized, and the territories of Ukraine were placed under Polish jurisdiction.

This was a crucial change. After 1569, Kyiv was no longer a source of law but an object of it—the archetypal colonial situation. It was colonization that set off Ukraine from the former territories of Rus, and its manner generated qualities still visible today: suspicion of the central state, organization in crisis, and the notion of freedom as self-expression, despite a powerful neighbor.

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, all the forces of Europe’s globalization seemed to bear down on Ukraine. Polish colonization resembled and in some measure enabled the European colonization of the wider world. Polish nobles introduced land-management practices—along with land managers, most of whom were Jewish—that allowed the establishment of profitable plantations. Local Ukrainian warlords rushed to imitate the system, and adopted elements of Polish culture, including Western Christianity and the Polish language. In an age of discovery, enserfed peasants labored for a world market.

Ukraine’s colonization coincided with the Renaissance, and with a spectacular flowering of Polish culture. Like other Renaissance thinkers, Polish scholars in Ukraine resuscitated ancient knowledge, and sometimes overturned it. It was a Pole, Copernicus, who undid the legacy of Ptolemy’s “ Almagest ” and confirmed that the Earth orbits the sun. It was another Pole, Maciej of Miechów, who corrected Ptolemy’s “ Geography ,” clearing Ukrainian maps of gold and ambrosia. As in ancient times, however, the tilling of the black earth enabled tremendous wealth, raising the question of why those who labored and those who profited experienced such different fates.

The Renaissance considered questions of identity through language. Across Europe, there was a debate as to whether Latin, now revived, was sufficient for the culture, or whether vernacular spoken languages should be elevated for the task. In the early fourteenth century, Dante answered this question in favor of Italian; English, French, Spanish, and Polish writers created other literary languages by codifying local vernaculars. In Ukraine, literary Polish emerged victorious over the Ukrainian vernacular, becoming the language of the commercial and intellectual élite. In a way, this was typical: Polish was a modern language, like English or Italian. But it was not the local language in Ukraine. Ukraine’s answer to the language question was deeply colonial, whereas in the rest of Europe it could be seen as broadly democratic.

The Reformation brought a similar result: local élites converted to Protestantism and then to Roman Catholicism, alienating them further from an Orthodox population. The convergence of colonization, the Renaissance, and the Reformation was specific to Ukraine. By the sixteen-forties, the few large landholders generally spoke Polish and were Catholic, and those who worked for them spoke Ukrainian and were Orthodox. Globalization had generated differences and inequalities that pushed the people to rebellion.

Ukrainians on the battlefield today rely on no fantasy of the past to counter Putin’s. If there is a precursor that matters to them, it is the Cossacks, a group of free people who lived on the far reaches of the Ukrainian steppe, making their fortress on an island in the middle of the Dnipro. Having escaped the Polish system of landowners and peasants, they could choose to be “registered Cossacks,” paid for their service in the Polish Army. Still, they were not citizens, and more of them wished to be registered than the Polish-Lithuanian parliament would allow.

The rebellion began in 1648, when an influential Cossack, Bohdan Khmelnytsky, saw his lands seized and his son attacked by a Polish noble. Finding himself beyond the protection of the law, Khmelnytsky turned his fellow-Cossacks toward revolt against the Polish-speaking, Roman Catholic magnates who dominated Ukraine. The accumulated cultural, religious, and economic grievances of the people quickly transformed the revolt into something very much like an anti-colonial uprising, with violence directed not only against the private armies of the magnates but against Poles and Jews generally. The magnates carried out reprisals against peasants and Cossacks, impaling them on stakes. The Polish-Lithuanian cavalry fought what had been their own Cossack infantry. Each side knew the other very well.

In 1651, the Cossacks, realizing that they needed help, turned to an Eastern power, Muscovy, about which they knew little. When Kyivan Rus had collapsed, most of its lands had been absorbed by Lithuania, but some of its northeastern territories remained under the dominion of a Mongol successor state. There, in a new city called Moscow, leaders known as tsars had begun an extraordinary period of territorial expansion, extending their realm into northern Asia. In 1648, the year that the Cossack uprising began, a Muscovite explorer reached the Pacific Ocean.

The war in Ukraine allowed Muscovy to turn its attention to Europe. In 1654, the Cossacks signed an agreement with representatives of the tsar. The Muscovite armies invaded Poland-Lithuania from the east; soon after, Sweden invaded from the north, setting off the crisis that Polish history remembers as “the Deluge.” Peace was eventually made between Poland-Lithuania and Muscovy, in 1667, and Ukraine was divided more or less down the middle, along the Dnipro. After a thousand years of existence, Kyiv was politically connected to Moscow for the first time.

The Cossacks were something like an early national movement. The problem was that their struggle against one colonial power enabled another. In 1721, Muscovy was renamed the Russian Empire, in reference to old Rus. Poland-Lithuania never really recovered from the Deluge, and was partitioned out of existence between 1772 and 1795. Russia thereby claimed the rest of Ukraine—everything but a western district known as Galicia, which went to the Habsburgs. Around the same time, in 1775, the Cossacks lost their status. They did not gain the political rights they had wanted, nor did the peasants who supported them gain control of the black earth. Polish landowners remained in Ukraine, even as state power became Russian.

Whereas Putin’s story of Ukraine is about destiny, the Ukrainian recollection of the Cossacks is about unfulfilled aspirations. The country’s national anthem, written in 1862, speaks of a young people upon whom fate has yet to smile, but who will one day prove worthy of the “Cossack nation.”

The nineteenth century was the age of national revivals. When the Ukrainian movement began in imperial Russian Kharkov—today Kharkiv , and largely in ruins—the focus was on the Cossack legacy. The next move was to locate history in the people, as an account of continuous culture. At first, such efforts did not seem threatening to imperial rule. But, after the Russian defeat in the Crimean War, in 1856, and the insult of the Polish uprising of 1863 and 1864, Ukrainian culture was declared not to exist. It was often deemed an invention of Polish élites—an idea that Putin endorsed in his essay on “historical unity.” Leading Ukrainian thinkers emigrated to Galicia, where they could speak freely.

The First World War brought the principle of self-determination, which promised a release from imperial rule. In practice, it was often used to rescue old empires, or to build new ones. A Ukrainian National Republic was established in 1917, as the Russian Empire collapsed into revolution. In 1918, in return for a promise of foodstuffs, the country was recognized by Austria and Germany . Woodrow Wilson championed self-determination, but his victorious entente ignored Ukraine, recognizing Polish claims instead. Vladimir Lenin invoked the principle as well, though he meant only that the exploitation of national questions could advance class revolution. Ukraine soon found itself at the center of the Russian civil war, in which the Red Army, led by the Bolsheviks, and the White Army, fighting for the defunct empire, both denied Ukraine’s right to sovereignty. In this dreadful conflict, which followed four years of war, millions of people died, among them tens of thousands of Jews.

Though the Red Army ultimately prevailed, Bolshevik leaders knew that the Ukrainian question had to be addressed. Putin claims that the Bolsheviks created Ukraine, but the truth is close to the opposite. The Bolsheviks destroyed the Ukrainian National Republic. Aware that Ukrainian identity was real and widespread, they designed their new state to account for it. It was largely thanks to Ukraine that the Soviet Union took the form it did, as a federation of units with national names.

The failure of self-determination in Ukraine was hardly unique. Almost all of the new states created after the First World War were destroyed, within about two decades, by Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, or both. In the political imaginations of both regimes, Ukraine was the territory whose possession would allow them to break the postwar order, and to transform the world in their own image. As in the sixteenth century, it was as if all the forces of world history were concentrated on a single country.

Stalin spoke of an internal colonization, in which peasants would be exploited so that the Soviet economy could imitate—and then overtake—capitalism. His policy of collective agriculture, in which land was seized from farmers, was particularly unwelcome in Ukraine, where the revolution had finally got rid of the (still largely Polish) landholders. Yet the black earth of Ukraine was central to Stalin’s plans, and he moved to subdue it. In 1932 and 1933, he enforced a series of policies that led to around four million people dying of hunger or related disease. Soviet propaganda blamed the Ukrainians, claiming that they were killing themselves to discredit Soviet rule—a tactic echoed, today, by Putin. Europeans who tried to organize famine relief were dismissed as Nazis.

The actual Nazis saw Stalin’s famine as a sign that Ukrainian agriculture could be exploited for another imperial project: their own. Hitler wanted Soviet power overthrown, Soviet cities depopulated, and the whole western part of the country colonized. His vision of Ukrainians was intensely colonial : he imagined that he could deport and starve them by the millions, and exploit the labor of whoever remained. It was Hitler’s desire for Ukrainian land that brought millions of Jews under German control. In this sense, colonial logic about Ukraine was a necessary condition for the Holocaust .

Between 1933 and 1945, Soviet and Nazi colonialism made Ukraine the most dangerous place in the world . More civilians were killed in Ukraine, in acts of atrocity, than anywhere else. That reckoning doesn’t even include soldiers: more Ukrainians died fighting the Germans, in the Second World War, than French, American, and British troops combined.

The major conflict of the war in Europe was the German-Soviet struggle for Ukraine, which took place between 1941 and 1945. But, when the war began, in 1939, the Soviet Union and Germany were de-facto allies, and jointly invaded Poland. At the time, what is now western Ukraine was southeastern Poland. A small group of Ukrainian nationalists there joined the Germans, understanding that they would seek to destroy the U.S.S.R. When it became clear that the Germans would fail, the nationalists left their service, ethnically cleansed Poles in 1943 and 1944, and then resisted the Soviets. In Putin’s texts, they figure as timeless villains, responsible for Ukrainian difference generally. The irony, of course, is that they emerged thanks to Stalin’s much grander collaboration with Hitler. They were crushed by Soviet power, in a brutal counter-insurgency, and today Ukraine’s far right polls at one to two per cent. Meanwhile, the Poles, whose ancestors were the chief victims of Ukrainian nationalism, have admitted nearly three million Ukrainian refugees , reminding us that there are other ways to handle history than stories of eternal victimhood.

After the war, western Ukraine was added to Soviet Ukraine, and the republic was placed under suspicion precisely because it had been under German occupation. New restrictions on Ukrainian culture were justified by a manufactured allocation of guilt. This circular logic—we punish you, therefore you must be guilty—informs Kremlin propaganda today. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, has argued that Russia had to invade Ukraine because Ukraine might have started a war. Putin, who has said the same, is clearly drawing on Stalin’s rhetoric. We are to understand that the Soviet victory in the Second World War left Russians forever pure and Ukrainians eternally guilty. At the funerals of Russian soldiers, grieving parents are told that their sons were fighting Nazis.

The history of the colonization of Ukraine, like the history of troubling and divisive subjects in general, can help us get free of myths. The past delivers to Putin several strands of colonial rhetoric, which he has combined and intensified. It also leaves us vulnerable to a language of exploitation: whenever we speak of “the Ukraine” instead of “Ukraine,” or pronounce the capital city in the Russian style , or act as if Americans can tell Ukrainians when and how to make peace, we are continuing imperial rhetoric by partaking in it.

Ukrainian national rhetoric is less coherent than Putin’s imperialism, and, therefore, more credible, and more human. Independence arrived in 1991, when the U.S.S.R was dissolved. Since then, the country’s politics have been marked by corruption and inequality, but also by a democratic spirit that has grown in tandem with national self-awareness. In 2004, an attempt to rig an election was defeated by a mass movement. In 2014, millions of Ukrainians protested a President who retreated from the E.U. The protesters were massacred, the President fled, and Russia invaded Ukraine for the first time. Again and again, Ukrainians have elected Presidents who seek reconciliation with Russia; again and again, this has failed. Zelensky is an extreme case: he ran on a platform of peace, only to be greeted with an invasion.

Ukraine is a post-colonial country, one that does not define itself against exploitation so much as accept, and sometimes even celebrate, the complications of emerging from it. Its people are bilingual, and its soldiers speak the language of the invader as well as their own. The war is fought in a decentralized way , dependent on the solidarity of local communities. These communities are diverse, but together they defend the notion of Ukraine as a political nation. There is something heartening in this. The model of the nation as a mini-empire, replicating inequalities on a smaller scale, and aiming for a homogeneity that is confused with identity, has worn itself out. If we are going to have democratic states in the twenty-first century, they will have to accept some of the complexity that is taken for granted in Ukraine.

The contrast between an aging empire and a new kind of nation is captured by Zelensky, whose simple presence makes Kremlin ideology seem senseless. Born in 1978, he is a child of the U.S.S.R., and speaks Russian with his family. A Jew, he reminds us that democracy can be multicultural. He does not so much answer Russian imperialism as exist alongside it, as though hailing from some wiser dimension. He does not need to mirror Putin; he just needs to show up. Every day, he affirms his nation by what he says and what he does.

Ukrainians assert their nation’s existence through simple acts of solidarity. They are not resisting Russia because of some absence or some difference, because they are not Russians or opposed to Russians. What is to be resisted is elemental: the threat of national extinction represented by Russian colonialism, a war of destruction expressly designed to resolve “the Ukrainian question.” Ukrainians know that there is not a question to be answered, only a life to be lived and, if need be, to be risked. They resist because they know who they are. In one of his very first videos after the invasion, when Russian propaganda claimed that he had fled Kyiv, Zelensky pointed the camera at himself and said, “The President is here.” That is it. Ukraine is here.

More on the War in Ukraine

How Ukrainians saved their capital .

A historian envisions a settlement among Russia, Ukraine, and the West .

How Russia’s latest commander in Ukraine could change the war .

The profound defiance of daily life in Kyiv .

The Ukraine crackup in the G.O.P.

A filmmaker’s journey to the heart of the war .

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By Benjamin Kunkel

By James Carroll

By Gideon Lewis-Kraus

By Adam Gopnik

Russia and Ukraine Explained and Analyzed

Smoke enveloped a Ukrainian air base in Mariupol after a Russian strike Thursday, part of Vladimir Putin’ invasion of his neighbor. Photo by AP/Evgeniy Maloletka

Pardee’s Igor Lukes and Vesko Garčević assess the unfolding crisis: “This is not about Ukraine alone. This is about the future of democracies everywhere”

Rich barlow.

With troops on the ground and rockets from the air, Russia attacked Ukraine Thursday as Vladimir Putin made good on months of threats against a neighboring country that he claims, falsely, wasn’t a country at all until communist Russia created it. The invasion, the largest attack by one European nation on another since World War II, has had widespread global impact, causing stock markets to plummet, oil prices to soar, and NATO countries, including the United States, to threaten aggressive consequences for Russia. 

Among the sanctions against Russia from President Biden that are already in place, or expected soon, are restricting Russia’s access to large financial institutions, cutting it off from advanced technology that could hinder its communications, and sanctioning members of Putin’s closest inner circle. Biden has sent troops to fortify NATO allies, but vows they won’t engage in the Russia-Ukraine war.

For perspective on the stunning developments, BU Today asked two Pardee School of Global Studies professors, Igor Lukes and Vesko Garčević, to assess the crisis. Lukes , a professor of history and of international relations, specializes in Central European history and contemporary Russia (he watched the 1968 Russian invasion of Prague as a teenager). Garčević is a professor of the practice of international relations, specializing in diplomacy, security, and conflict, and in Europe. He has served as Montenegro’s ambassador to several nations and international organizations, including NATO.

With Igor Lukes and Vesko Garčević

Bu today: how dangerous is the european situation, and why should americans care about it.

Igor Lukes: The situation is dangerous. Russia has committed a massive force to seize a peaceful sovereign country that never presented any threat. This will trigger limited countermeasures by NATO. Diplomats and politicians of all nationalities—including Russia’s last plausible partner, China—had warned Putin not to use force. He dismissed their concerns. Launching this attack on Ukraine, he has irreparably damaged the post–Cold War order. Should Americans care? Yes, they should. This is not about Ukraine alone. This is about the future of democracies everywhere. But even the most fervent supporters of Ukraine must bear in mind John Quincy Adams’ view that America, although a champion of universal freedom, “goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.” The Ukrainians are on their own as they face Putin’s armed force.

Vesko Garčević: Vesko Garčević: The world should care about it, because it puts the European security architecture in question. And not just the European architecture; it’s international norms, like respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty of other countries. [If] the big ones can take small countries as booties in world affairs… I come from a small country, therefore I understand it very well.  On top of it, Russia has more nuclear warheads than three NATO states—the United States, the UK, and France— put together . It has the third largest conventional army in the world. And it has a veto in the UN Security Council, which prevents the council from taking any measures in this case. Russia knows its power very well. It’s exercising its power right now in front of our eyes, and I would say that very much matters to somebody who lives in the United States as much as somebody who lives in Europe.

BU Today: Russia is not the military threat that it once was, correct?

Vesko Garčević: Garčević:  I would disagree with that. We can speak about other problems that Russia is facing, like economic crisis and the political system, but whether it is on the same level as the USSR or lagging behind, it is still powerful enough to match the power of other big powers. It has a security culture of an empire that implies they can use power in the way they are using it right now. I would just refer to the open letter signed by 73 European security experts a couple of weeks ago in which they highlighted the military might of Russia.

Igor Lukes: Lukes: The threat has changed. Nobody expects the Russian troops to come pouring through the Fulda Gap in Germany on their way to the English Channel to install the flag of communism along the way. Putin’s objective is to degrade and destabilize the West to camouflage his failure to improve Russia. Looking at the collapsing global markets today, he is rubbing his hands.

BU Today: Some observers say that Putin’s end game is to revive the Soviet empire, while others suggest he has real security concerns, whether unfounded or not. Which is your view?

Vesko Garčević: Garčević: It has something to do with both of those. I would say Russia sees itself more as tsarist Russia than the USSR. They think in terms of spheres of influence, and they need to have buffer zones around them because—I’m speaking of their official narratives—of a need of enlargement; they would like to get security guarantees.  It’s not the first time that Russia brought up this issue. In the ’90s, they believed that they would be able to create, along with Americans and others, some type of umbrella security organization in Europe. It’s about the influence of Russia in regions they consider historically, intimately, inherently part of their sphere of influence. An essay by Putin last year referred to Ukraine as a nation that doesn’t exist as such; the same narrative, according to media reports, Putin used in meetings with other world leaders. I can disagree, but I can recognize the idea of a sphere of influence of Russia.

Igor Lukes: Lukes:  In 2005, Putin said that the “collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the [20th] century.” However, I reject the chimera of Putin’s alleged “security concerns.” Note that Russia, after months of deceptive signals—maskirovka—has attacked its neighbor. The much weaker Ukrainian troops were deployed in a defensive pattern because they had no plan to attack Russia. Under such circumstances, who should feel insecure? Stalin, generations of Soviet arms control negotiators, and now Putin have all sought to gain unilateral advantage by claiming that Russia’s historical experience with foreign invasions justified their disproportionate demands. It is easy to refute the myth of Russia’s vulnerability and victimhood, provided one has patience with a bit of history. The British noted in 1836 that since Peter the Great (1672-1725), the boundaries of Russia had extended 700 miles toward Berlin, 500 miles toward Constantinople, 630 miles toward Stockholm, and 1,000 miles toward Teheran. In 1848, a clear-sighted Central European historian warned the Frankfurt Assembly: “You are aware of the power possessed by Russia; you know that this power, already grown to colossal size, increases in strength and pushes outward from the center from one decade to the next. Every further step that it may be able to take…threatens the speed and creation and imposition of a new universal monarchy, an unimaginable and unmentionable evil, a calamity without limit or end.” This trend was only accelerated by Joseph Stalin, who extended his dominion from Berlin to Vladivostok. The Russian state began emerging in the 15th century and grew into the biggest country on this planet. This could hardly have happened as a result of foreign invasions.

BU Today: We’ve long been told Putin is a master chess player in international affairs. But some say he’s miscalculated and bitten off too much with Ukraine. Which is it?

Igor Lukes: Lukes: Putin is an improviser. He started in 2000 by promising to focus on Russia’s unprecedented population decline, public health, environment, and education. He dropped all of those needed reforms because they took too long and were not properly spectacular. Instead, he focused on military reform, weapons development, killing his critics at home and abroad. Nobody should mistake this mediocre KGB lieutenant colonel for a strategist. With his war on peaceful Ukraine, he has unified NATO, his neighbors, including Finland and Sweden, and the European Union. His troops may swiftly overwhelm the regular Ukrainian forces. But they will merge with the civilians, and later, at a time of their choosing, come out at night; it will hurt.

Vesko Garčević: Garčević: Even great chess players make mistakes. I would not say this action has not been carefully planned. A year ago, there were Russian troops on the border of Ukraine, staging something similar, but this was put on hold. Russia didn’t decide to invade Ukraine on a whim—Putin simply woke up one morning and [said], let’s go and invade Ukraine. But that doesn’t mean that this is not a miscalculation. I think for the long run, Russia, and particularly Russian citizens, will pay a steep price. Even if they have immediate gains—one may be to install a puppet government in Ukraine—for the long run, this may not be a right calculation. Because Russia should cooperate with the world and not live as a pariah in world affairs.

BU Today: Several analysts, and history, suggest sanctions won’t be effective. Are there any that the West has imposed, or might impose, that could make Putin negotiate a settlement?

Igor Lukes: Lukes: I agree that sanctions won’t change anything, but they won’t be pleasant. I hope that they will be tailored to hit the Kremlin clique rather than the innocent Russian people. I’d like to see the oligarchs and Putin’s family expelled from the palaces in the West, deported to Russia, their accounts frozen. The banks that finance Russian intelligence services need to be cut off. Putin has turned himself into an international pariah, below the level of Kim Jong Un. Treat him accordingly.

Vesko Garčević: Garčević: I come from a country, [the former] Yugoslavia, that was under sanctions [during the Bosnian and Kosovo wars of the 1990s]. I experienced myself what it means. General economic sanctions don’t work. They affect ordinary people. I just discussed with my students: imagine you live in an authoritarian regime which controls the economy. Once space shrinks, who benefits are those who are connected to the regime. There are not many options on the table, and I think Putin knows that, because Ukraine is not a NATO member. You cannot invoke Article 5 [obligating NATO to defend members under attack]. But you cannot also sit still, looking at what’s going on in front of all eyes. Well-crafted sanctions that target people that are behind [the regime], freezing their assets—or what the UK just did, kicked out [Russian billionaire Roman] Abramovich from the UK—those types of sanctions, but trying to avoid that ordinary people suffer, this is the only way to go. For the long run, I think this [invasion] tells us that Russia feels cornered. Not many countries will side with Russia. But in the short run, militarily, Russia outmatches Ukraine. They may reach Kiev or destabilize Ukraine to bring to power somebody who is similar to [pro-Russia] Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia. They will eliminate any potential threat that Ukraine may turn to the West. If Ukraine becomes a prosperous, democratic country, that’s a message for Russians, too. 

BU Today: Are fears that Putin will threaten other nations if he succeeds in Ukraine warranted? Is this the start of a new and unstable Cold War?

Vesko Garčević: Garčević: When it comes to Russia’s intentions, I’m not sure that they’re going to go further. There is NATO, and the situation is different in the Baltic states. I tweeted that if Ukraine teaches us something, it teaches that for the Baltic states, the best decision they made was to join NATO. [Otherwise], they would have been targeted potentially by Russia on the same pretext—they have a Russian national minority that may call the mother state to intervene to protect their rights. But Russia may play in another part of Europe, like the Balkans, where I come from. The Balkans are not fully integrated into the European Union or NATO. It can be seen as an easy target, low-hanging fruit. It is what many people are concerned about, including me. There are also people [there] very supportive of Russia. 

Igor Lukes: Lukes: Excepting the crises in Berlin, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Able Archer in 1983 [when a NATO military exercise panicked Russia into readying nuclear forces], the Cold War was a stable and predictable affair. The Kremlin leaders, including Stalin and Brezhnev, were rational actors. Putin is not. Therefore, he is a threat to the world order, and he is probably proud of it.

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Rich Barlow is a senior writer at BU Today and  Bostonia  magazine. Perhaps the only native of Trenton, N.J., who will volunteer his birthplace without police interrogation, he graduated from Dartmouth College, spent 20 years as a small-town newspaper reporter, and is a former  Boston Globe  religion columnist, book reviewer, and occasional op-ed contributor. Profile

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There are 12 comments on Russia and Ukraine Explained and Analyzed

This is a great read, Rich. Thanks to all for the insight.

I have to confess to not sleeping well over this the past few nights. Let’s keep the folks of Ukraine in our thoughts.

Thank you for a great article. I tend to agree with most of what the two professors say, but would like to put Professor Lukes’ statements about Russian expansion since the 15th century in context.

Many years ago, at the time of the Cold War, I also read the figures about Russia having expanded xxx miles towards the West … xxx miles towards the South … xxx miles towards the East … In fact, an analyst calculated the number of square miles per year!!! If I am not mistaken, the piece was triggered by British concerns that the Russians were advancing in Central Asia and approaching India … hence the Anglo-Afghan Wars

There is no doubt that Russia expanded … but this was very much part of the massive European expansion of the 18th and 19th century. It was no different from the United States expansion towards the Pacific , or the mighty overseas empires of Portugal, Spain, Britain and France.

The Russians were “somewhat lucky” because Siberia was virtually empty, but they fought nasty wars in the Caucasus and elsewhere … they even partitioned Poland with the Prussians and the Austrians … and they fought endless wars with the Ottoman Turks for control of today’s Ukraine and the Balkans.

It cannot be denied that Russia was an expanding empire but she was far from unique.

However, the invasions they suffered are not a myth, and Hitler was only the last.

They had Napoleon also coming from the West … and before that Swedes and Poles … and from the East they had Tatars and Mongols who destroyed their state several times.

The Russians are afraid of the outside world and it is actually a wonder that they have not invaded more! They genuinely fear the West and cannot think of NATO as purely defensive. They have a siege mentality.

I read somewhere that during the 1980s the CIA went to Ronald Reagan and convinced him that the Russians were truly scared … so Reagan moderated his “Evil Empire” statements.

It is true that we cannot trust Putin. But because of their history, I find it difficult to believe that the Russians will ever trust the West.

Since the 1939 invasion of Poland by Germany and the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union or Russian army attacked or intervened militarily in Finland (1940), Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania (1940), Hungary (1956), Czechoslovakia (1968), Afghanistan (1980), Georgia (2008), and now Ukraine. The Russian argument of being surrounded by enemies does not stand ground in confrontation with their aggressive history of expansionism and brutal russification and/or Sovietization of territories they tried to subjugate.

“Igor Lukes: The situation is dangerous. Russia has committed a massive force to seize a peaceful sovereign country that never presented any threat.”

Ukraine has been wanting to join NATO. That presents a threat to Russia. It appears that this is the root cause due to which Putin decided to invade.

Ukraine may have tried to gain membership to NATO, but it was not granted nor is there any indication that it’s status would change. This is demonstrated by the Western governments not commuting troops directly to the conflict

And once Russia takes over Ukraine they will look around and see there are now many more NATO countries next to them. Then what will they do to alleviate that ‘threat’?

Only those who have lived through the horrors of total war will understand what is going on. Academic deliberation is pointless at this time.

Ukrainians have the right to join any organization they want as they are an independent country. Putin’s feelings are of no relevance here. The military aggression, killing, and subjugating countries and their populations to the will of the strongman can’t be tolerated. The peers of BU students in Ukraine are dying to defend their abandoned and imperfect country, while some BU academics are falsely portraying the USA as the ultimate evil and source of all wrongs. Ask the Ukrainians who they look to most for help! The test of this American generation is coming whether we like it or not.

BU Students and staff should organize a peaceful march on Comm Ave or Marsh Plaza to show support for Ukraine . This is the least we can do .

This is not a crisis, this is war. Please show some integrity with your headlines for once.

Please inform people about the real story behind Luganks and Donetsk. How Ukrainian air force bombed the middle of the city right near the kindergarten and a children’s playground in an attempt to kill the leaders of Lugansk, how there was a massive internal war in Donetsk. How LNR and DNR formed. All of that is vital information.

Also, how about you guys look into other wars going on right now? Saudi bombing Yemen, Israel bombing Syria, USA bombing Somali, Turkey bombing Rojava. Please talk about the fact that since 1945 81% of all wars were started by USA.

I am not saying either side is right or wrong. All I am stating is facts and I am trying to bring them to light. I want people to make decisions for themselves and be able to think and not just consume the information they are told to believe.

As a Ukrainian, it is very painful to hear some of the comments about Ukrainian “crisis”. It has always been about Russian Aggression. Ukrainian nation is the stronger in spirit, patriotic, talented, courageous, and now desperately in need for help! Not debating who is right or wrong, but the world unity and support to the nation that is so brave and standing alone! in front of the 3rd largest army in the world. We are defending not only our land, but the whole concept of democracy and other countries that are lucky enough not to be neighbors with the country aggressor.

“Igor Lukes: The situation is dangerous. Russia has committed a massive force to seize a peaceful sovereign country that never presented any threat.”

Exactly! However, what is missing here is to mention 2008 Georgia. This was the first time Russia openly invaded independent sovereign nation. And what did Obama and Angela Merkel do? Symbolic sanctions and staying quite. This is exactly what motivated Putin to become an international bully and go after Crimea and Eastern Ukraine at first and then attack the rest of the country.

The US, EU & NATO made huge mistakes in dealing with Russia and treating Putin as a rational decision-maker.

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The Harriman Institute strongly condemns the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This attack on the Ukrainian people and on Ukrainian sovereignty violates the principles of international law and has inflicted deplorable suffering and instability across the region. In these tragic times, we will continue to inform and educate, particularly in an atmosphere of authoritarianism and amplified disinformation, as articulated by Columbia University’s President Lee Bollinger. We stand with all who are so terribly affected by this crisis. Please check back as we continue to announce initiatives and projects to support people and scholars of Ukraine. Suggestions for where to donate can be found at Razom for Ukraine .

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In recognition of the need for urgent support of Ukraine’s intellectual community in the face of Russia’s war of aggression, the Harriman Institute, along with partner organizations, has created two new fellowship programs.

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Recognizing the need for ongoing support of Ukraine’s intellectual community in the face of Russia’s war of aggression, the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM Vienna), the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University (HURI), and the Harriman Institute at Columbia University are partnering to offer non-residential fellowships for Ukrainian scholars in the humanities and social sciences.

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Ukrainian History & Culture

Writers Respond to the War in Ukraine. Essays by Yevgenia Belorusets, Georgi Gospodinov, Maria Stepanova.

We’ll Not Die in Paris & Other Poems by Natalka Bilotserkivets (Harriman Resident at the Institute for Ideas & Imagination (Paris)

In Isolation: Dispatches from Occupied Donbas by Stanislav Aseyev (HURI Books, 2022)

Mondegreen: Songs about Death and Love by Volodymyr Rafaienko (HURI Books, 2022)

Apricots of Donbas by Lyuba Yakimchuk (Lost Horse Press, 2021)

The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine by Serhii Plokhy (Basic Books, 2021)

The Orphanage – A Novel Set in the Donbas War by Serhiy Zhadan (Yale University Press, 2021)

The Burden of the Past: History, Memory, and Identity in Contemporary Ukraine by Malgorzata Glowacka-Grajper and Anna Wylegała (Indiana University Press, 2020)

Imperial Urbanism in the Borderlands: Kyiv, 1800-1905 by Serhiy Bilenky (University of Toronto Press, 2019)

Ukraine: A Book of Essays by Intellectuals in English (Ukraine World, 2019)

Ukraine and Russian: From Civilized Divorce to Uncivil War by Paul J. D’Anieri (Cambridge University Press, 2019)

The Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine: An Anatomy of the Holodomor by Stanislaw Kulchytsky (Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 2018)

My Final Territory: Selected Essays by Yuri Andrukhovych (University of Toronto Press, 2018)

Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine by Anna Applebaum (Penguin Random House, 2018)

Ukraine and Europe , edited by Giovanna Brogi Bercof, Marko Pavlyshyn, Serhii Plokhy (University of Toronto Press, 2017)

The White Chalk of Days: The Contemporary Ukrainian Literature Series Anthology compiled and edited by Mark Andryczyk (Academic Studies Press, 2017)

Words for War: New Poems from Ukraine edited by Oksana Maksymchuk & Max Rosochinsky (Academic Studies Press, 2017)

Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder (Basic Books, 2010)

Also check out the Ukraine Event Archive on the Harriman YouTube Station.

Questions about Ukrainian Studies at Columbia University?

For more information about courses or the Ukrainian Studies Program, please contact Mark Andryczyk or send us an email. With questions about the Ukrainian Film Club reach out to Yuri Shevchuk .

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• 9 big questions about Russia’s war in Ukraine, answered

Addressing some of the most pressing questions of the whole war, from how it started to how it might end.

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The Russian war in Ukraine has proven itself to be one of the most consequential political events of our time — and one of the most confusing.

From the outset, Russia’s decision to invade was hard to understand; it seemed at odds with what most experts saw as Russia’s strategic interests. As the war has progressed, the widely predicted Russian victory has failed to emerge as Ukrainian fighters have repeatedly fended off attacks from a vastly superior force. Around the world, from Washington to Berlin to Beijing, global powers have reacted in striking and even historically unprecedented fashion.

What follows is an attempt to make sense of all of this: to tackle the biggest questions everyone is asking about the war. It is a comprehensive guide to understanding what is happening in Ukraine and why it matters.

1) Why did Russia invade Ukraine?

In a televised speech announcing Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine on February 24 , Russian President Vladimir Putin said the invasion was designed to stop a “genocide” perpetrated by “the Kyiv regime” — and ultimately to achieve “the demilitarization and de-Nazification of Ukraine.”

Though the claims of genocide and Nazi rule in Kyiv were transparently false , the rhetoric revealed Putin’s maximalist war aims: regime change (“de-Nazification”) and the elimination of Ukraine’s status as a sovereign state outside of Russian control (“demilitarization”). Why he would want to do this is a more complex story, one that emerges out of the very long arc of Russian-Ukrainian relations.

Ukraine and Russia have significant, deep, and longstanding cultural and historical ties; both date their political origins back to the ninth-century Slavic kingdom of Kievan Rus. But these ties do not make them historically identical, as Putin has repeatedly claimed in his public rhetoric. Since the rise of the modern Ukrainian national movement in the mid- to late-19th century , Russian rule in Ukraine — in both the czarist and Soviet periods — increasingly came to resemble that of an imperial power governing an unwilling colony .

Russian imperial rule ended in 1991 when 92 percent of Ukrainians voted in a national referendum to secede from the decaying Soviet Union. Almost immediately afterward , political scientists and regional experts began warning that the Russian-Ukrainian border would be a flashpoint, predicting that internal divides between the more pro-European population of western Ukraine and relatively more pro-Russian east , contested territory like the Crimean Peninsula , and Russian desire to reestablish control over its wayward vassal could all lead to conflict between the new neighbors.

It took about 20 years for these predictions to be proven right. In late 2013, Ukrainians took to the streets to protest the authoritarian and pro-Russian tilt of incumbent President Viktor Yanukovych, forcing his resignation on February 22, 2014. Five days later, the Russian military swiftly seized control of Crimea and declared it Russian territory, a brazenly illegal move that a majority of Crimeans nonetheless seemed to welcome . Pro-Russia protests in Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine gave way to a violent rebellion — one stoked and armed by the Kremlin , and backed by disguised Russian troops .

The Ukrainian uprising against Yanukovych — called the “Euromaidan” movement because they were pro-EU protests that most prominently took place in Kyiv’s Maidan square — represented to Russia a threat not just to its influence over Ukraine but to the very survival of Putin’s regime. In Putin’s mind, Euromaidan was a Western-sponsored plot to overthrow a Kremlin ally, part of a broader plan to undermine Russia itself that included NATO’s post-Cold War expansions to the east.

“We understand what is happening; we understand that [the protests] were aimed against Ukraine and Russia and against Eurasian integration,” he said in a March 2014 speech on the annexation of Crimea. “With Ukraine, our Western partners have crossed the line.”

Beneath this rhetoric, according to experts on Russia, lies a deeper unstated fear: that his regime might fall prey to a similar protest movement . Ukraine could not succeed, in his view, because it might create a pro-Western model for Russians to emulate — one that the United States might eventually try to covertly export to Moscow. This was a central part of his thinking in 2014 , and it remains so today.

“He sees CIA agents behind every anti-Russian political movement,” says Seva Gunitsky, a political scientist who studies Russia at the University of Toronto. “He thinks the West wants to subvert his regime the way they did in Ukraine.”

Beginning in March 2021, Russian forces began deploying to the Ukrainian border in larger and larger numbers. Putin’s nationalist rhetoric became more aggressive: In July 2021, the Russian president published a 5,000-word essay arguing that Ukrainian nationalism was a fiction, that the country was historically always part of Russia, and that a pro-Western Ukraine posed an existential threat to the Russian nation.

“The formation of an ethnically pure Ukrainian state, aggressive towards Russia, is comparable in its consequences to the use of weapons of mass destruction against us,” as he put it in his 2021 essay .

Why Putin decided that merely seizing part of Ukraine was no longer enough remains a matter of significant debate among experts. One theory, advanced by Russian journalist Mikhail Zygar , is that pandemic-induced isolation drove him to an extreme ideological place.

But while the immediate cause of Putin’s shift on Ukraine is not clear, the nature of that shift is. His longtime belief in the urgency of restoring Russia’s greatness curdled into a neo-imperial desire to bring Ukraine back under direct Russian control. And in Russia, where Putin rules basically unchecked, that meant a full-scale war.

2) Who is winning the war?

On paper , Russia’s military vastly outstrips Ukraine’s. Russia spends over 10 times as much on defense annually as Ukraine; the Russian military has a little under three times as much artillery as Ukraine and roughly 10 times as many fixed-wing aircraft. As a result, the general pre-invasion view was that Russia would easily win a conventional war. In early February, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley told members of Congress that Kyiv, the capital, could fall within 72 hours of a Russian invasion .

But that’s not how things have played out . A month into the invasion, Ukrainians still hold Kyiv. Russia has made some gains, especially in the east and south, but the consensus view among military experts is that Ukraine’s defenses have held stoutly — to the point where Ukrainians have been able to launch counteroffensives .

The initial Russian plan reportedly operated under the assumption that a swift march on Kyiv would meet only token resistance. Putin “actually really thought this would be a ‘special military operation’: They would be done in a few days, and it wouldn’t be a real war,” says Michael Kofman, an expert on the Russian military at the CNA think tank.

This plan fell apart within the first 48 hours of the war when early operations like an airborne assault on the Hostomel airport ended in disaster , forcing Russian generals to develop a new strategy on the fly. What they came up with — massive artillery bombardments and attempts to encircle and besiege Ukraine’s major cities — was more effective (and more brutal). The Russians made some inroads into Ukrainian territory, especially in the south, where they have laid siege to Mariupol and taken Kherson and Melitopol.

But these Russian advances are a bit misleading. Ukraine, Kofman explains, made the tactical decision to trade “space for time” : to withdraw strategically rather than fight for every inch of Ukrainian land, confronting the Russians on the territory and at the time of their choosing.

As the fighting continued, the nature of the Ukrainian choice became clearer. Instead of getting into pitched large-scale battles with Russians on open terrain, where Russia’s numerical advantages would prove decisive, the Ukrainians instead decided to engage in a series of smaller-scale clashes .

Ukrainian forces have bogged down Russian units in towns and smaller cities ; street-to-street combat favors defenders who can use their superior knowledge of the city’s geography to hide and conduct ambushes. They have attacked isolated and exposed Russian units traveling on open roads. They have repeatedly raided poorly protected supply lines.

This approach has proven remarkably effective. By mid-March, Western intelligence agencies and open source analysts concluded that the Ukrainians had successfully managed to stall the Russian invasion. The Russian military all but openly recognized this reality in a late March briefing, in which top generals implausibly claimed they never intended to take Kyiv and were always focused on making territorial gains in the east.

“The initial Russian campaign to invade and conquer Ukraine is culminating without achieving its objectives — it is being defeated, in other words,” military scholar Frederick Kagan wrote in a March 22 brief for the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) think tank.

Currently, Ukrainian forces are on the offensive. They have pushed the Russians farther from Kyiv , with some reports suggesting they have retaken the suburb of Irpin and forced Russia to withdraw some of its forces from the area in a tacit admission of defeat. In the south, Ukrainian forces are contesting Russian control over Kherson .

And throughout the fighting, Russian casualties have been horrifically high.

It’s hard to get accurate information in a war zone, but one of the more authoritative estimates of Russian war dead — from the US Defense Department — concludes that over 7,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in the first three weeks of fighting, a figure about three times as large as the total US service members dead in all 20 years of fighting in Afghanistan. A separate NATO estimate puts that at the low end, estimating between 7,000 and 15,000 Russians killed in action and as many as 40,000 total losses (including injuries, captures, and desertions). Seven Russian generals have been reported killed in the fighting, and materiel losses — ranging from armor to aircraft — have been enormous. (Russia puts its death toll at more than 1,300 soldiers, which is almost certainly a significant undercount.)

This all does not mean that a Russian victory is impossible. Any number of things, ranging from Russian reinforcements to the fall of besieged Mariupol, could give the war effort new life.

It does, however, mean that what Russia is doing right now hasn’t worked.

“If the point is just to wreak havoc, then they’re doing fine. But if the point is to wreak havoc and thus advance further — be able to hold more territory — they’re not doing fine,” says Olga Oliker, the program director for Europe and Central Asia at the International Crisis Group.

3) Why is Russia’s military performing so poorly?

Russia’s invasion has gone awry for two basic reasons: Its military wasn’t ready to fight a war like this, and the Ukrainians have put up a much stronger defense than anyone expected.

Russia’s problems begin with Putin’s unrealistic invasion plan. But even after the Russian high command adjusted its strategy, other flaws in the army remained.

“We’re seeing a country militarily implode,” says Robert Farley, a professor who studies air power at the University of Kentucky.

One of the biggest and most noticeable issues has been rickety logistics. Some of the most famous images of the war have been of Russian armored vehicles parked on Ukrainian roads, seemingly out of gas and unable to advance. The Russian forces have proven to be underequipped and badly supplied, encountering problems ranging from poor communications to inadequate tires .

Part of the reason is a lack of sufficient preparation. Per Kofman, the Russian military simply “wasn’t organized for this kind of war” — meaning, the conquest of Europe’s second-largest country by area. Another part of it is corruption in the Russian procurement system. Graft in Russia is less a bug in its political system than a feature; one way the Kremlin maintains the loyalty of its elite is by allowing them to profit off of government activity . Military procurement is no exception to this pattern of widespread corruption, and it has led to troops having substandard access to vital supplies .

The same lack of preparation has plagued Russia’s air force . Despite outnumbering the Ukrainian air force by roughly 10 times, the Russians have failed to establish air superiority: Ukraine’s planes are still flying and its air defenses mostly remain in place .

Perhaps most importantly, close observers of the war believe Russians are suffering from poor morale. Because Putin’s plan to invade Ukraine was kept secret from the vast majority of Russians, the government had a limited ability to lay a propaganda groundwork that would get their soldiers motivated to fight. The current Russian force has little sense of what they’re fighting for or why — and are waging war against a country with which they have religious, ethnic, historical, and potentially even familial ties. In a military that has long had systemic morale problems, that’s a recipe for battlefield disaster.

“Russian morale was incredibly low BEFORE the war broke out. Brutal hazing in the military, second-class (or worse) status by its conscript soldiers, ethnic divisions, corruption, you name it: the Russian Army was not prepared to fight this war,” Jason Lyall, a Dartmouth political scientist who studies morale, explains via email. “High rates of abandoned or captured equipment, reports of sabotaged equipment, and large numbers of soldiers deserting (or simply camping out in the forest) are all products of low morale.”

The contrast with the Ukrainians couldn’t be starker. They are defending their homes and their families from an unprovoked invasion, led by a charismatic leader who has made a personal stand in Kyiv. Ukrainian high morale is a key reason, in addition to advanced Western armaments, that the defenders have dramatically outperformed expectations.

“Having spent a chunk of my professional career [working] with the Ukrainians, nobody, myself included and themselves included, had all that high an estimation of their military capacity,” Oliker says.

Again, none of this will necessarily remain the case throughout the war. Morale can shift with battlefield developments. And even if Russian morale remains low, it’s still possible for them to win — though they’re more likely to do so in a brutally ugly fashion.

4) What has the war meant for ordinary Ukrainians?

As the fighting has dragged on, Russia has gravitated toward tactics that, by design, hurt civilians. Most notably, Russia has attempted to lay siege to Ukraine’s cities, cutting off supply and escape routes while bombarding them with artillery. The purpose of the strategy is to wear down the Ukrainian defenders’ willingness to fight, including by inflicting mass pain on the civilian populations.

The result has been nightmarish: an astonishing outflow of Ukrainian refugees and tremendous suffering for many of those who were unwilling or unable to leave.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees , more than 3.8 million Ukrainians fled the country between February 24 and March 27. That’s about 8.8 percent of Ukraine’s total population — in proportional terms, the rough equivalent of the entire population of Texas being forced to flee the United States.

Another point of comparison: In 2015, four years into the Syrian civil war and the height of the global refugee crisis, there were a little more than 4 million Syrian refugees living in nearby countries . The Ukraine war has produced a similarly sized exodus in just a month, leading to truly massive refugee flows to its European neighbors. Poland, the primary destination of Ukrainian refugees, is currently housing over 2.3 million Ukrainians, a figure larger than the entire population of Warsaw, its capital and largest city.

For those civilians who have been unable to flee, the situation is dire. There are no reliable estimates of death totals; a March 27 UN estimate puts the figure at 1,119 but cautions that “the actual figures are considerably higher [because] the receipt of information from some locations where intense hostilities have been going on has been delayed and many reports are still pending corroboration.”

The UN assessment does not blame one side or the other for these deaths, but does note that “most of the civilian casualties recorded were caused by the use of explosive weapons with a wide impact area, including shelling from heavy artillery and multiple-launch rocket systems, and missile and airstrikes.” It is the Russians, primarily, who are using these sorts of weapons in populated areas; Human Rights Watch has announced that there are “early signs of war crimes” being committed by Russian soldiers in these kinds of attacks, and President Joe Biden has personally labeled Putin a “war criminal.”

Nowhere is this devastation more visible than the southern city of Mariupol, the largest Ukrainian population center to which Russia has laid siege. Aerial footage of the city published by the Guardian in late March reveals entire blocks demolished by Russian bombardment:

In mid-March, three Associated Press journalists — the last international reporters in the city before they too were evacuated — managed to file a dispatch describing life on the ground. They reported a death total of 2,500 but cautioned that “many bodies can’t be counted because of the endless shelling .” The situation is impossibly dire:

Airstrikes and shells have hit the maternity hospital, the fire department, homes, a church, a field outside a school. For the estimated hundreds of thousands who remain, there is quite simply nowhere to go. The surrounding roads are mined and the port blocked. Food is running out, and the Russians have stopped humanitarian attempts to bring it in. Electricity is mostly gone and water is sparse, with residents melting snow to drink. Some parents have even left their newborns at the hospital, perhaps hoping to give them a chance at life in the one place with decent electricity and water.

The battlefield failures of the Russian military have raised questions about its competence in difficult block-to-block fighting; Farley, the Kentucky professor, says, “This Russian army does not look like it can conduct serious [urban warfare].” As a result, taking Ukrainian cities means besieging them — starving them out, destroying their will to fight, and only moving into the city proper after its population is unwilling to resist or outright incapable of putting up a fight.

5) What do Russians think about the war?

Vladimir Putin’s government has ramped up its already repressive policies during the Ukraine conflict, shuttering independent media outlets and blocking access to Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram . It’s now extremely difficult to get a sense of what either ordinary Russians or the country’s elite think about the war, as criticizing it could lead to a lengthy stint in prison.

But despite this opacity, expert Russia watchers have developed a broad idea of what’s going on there. The war has stirred up some opposition and anti-Putin sentiment, but it has been confined to a minority who are unlikely to change Putin’s mind, let alone topple him.

The bulk of the Russian public was no more prepared for war than the bulk of the Russian military — in fact, probably less so. After Putin announced the launch of his “special military operation” in Ukraine on national television, there was a surprising amount of criticism from high-profile Russians — figures ranging from billionaires to athletes to social media influencers. One Russian journalist, Marina Ovsyannikova, bravely ran into the background of a government broadcast while holding an antiwar sign.

“It is unprecedented to see oligarchs, other elected officials, and other powerful people in society publicly speaking out against the war,” says Alexis Lerner, a scholar of dissent in Russia at the US Naval Academy.

There have also been antiwar rallies in dozens of Russian cities. How many have participated in these rallies is hard to say, but the human rights group OVD-Info estimates that over 15,000 Russians have been arrested at the events since the war began.

Could these eruptions of antiwar sentiment at the elite and mass public level suggest a coming coup or revolution against the Putin regime? Experts caution that these events remain quite unlikely.

Putin has done an effective job engaging in what political scientists call “coup-proofing.” He has put in barriers — from seeding the military with counterintelligence officers to splitting up the state security services into different groups led by trusted allies — that make it quite difficult for anyone in his government to successfully move against him.

“Putin has prepared for this eventuality for a long time and has taken a lot of concerted actions to make sure he’s not vulnerable,” says Adam Casey, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan who studies the history of coups in Russia and the former communist bloc.

Similarly, turning the antiwar protests into a full-blown influential movement is a very tall order.

“It is hard to organize sustained collective protest in Russia,” notes Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist at Harvard who studies protest movements . “Putin’s government has criminalized many forms of protests, and has shut down or restricted the activities of groups, movements, and media outlets perceived to be in opposition or associated with the West.”

Underpinning it all is tight government control of the information environment. Most Russians get their news from government-run media , which has been serving up a steady diet of pro-war content. Many of them appear to genuinely believe what they hear: One independent opinion poll found that 58 percent of Russians supported the war to at least some degree.

Prior to the war, Putin also appeared to be a genuinely popular figure in Russia. The elite depend on him for their position and fortune; many citizens see him as the man who saved Russia from the chaos of the immediate post-Communist period. A disastrous war might end up changing that, but the odds that even a sustained drop in his support translates into a coup or revolution remain low indeed.

6) What is the US role in the conflict?

The war remains, for the moment, a conflict between Ukraine and Russia. But the United States is the most important third party, using a number of powerful tools — short of direct military intervention — to aid the Ukrainian cause.

Any serious assessment of US involvement needs to start in the post-Cold War 1990s , when the US and its NATO allies made the decision to open alliance membership to former communist states.

Many of these countries, wary of once again being put under the Russian boot, clamored to join the alliance, which commits all involved countries to defend any member-state in the event of an attack. In 2008, NATO officially announced that Georgia and Ukraine — two former Soviet republics right on Russia’s doorstep — “ will become members of NATO ” at an unspecified future date. This infuriated the Russians, who saw NATO expansion as a direct threat to their own security.

There is no doubt that NATO expansion helped create some of the background conditions under which the current conflict became thinkable, generally pushing Putin’s foreign policy in a more anti-Western direction. Some experts see it as one of the key causes of his decision to attack Ukraine — but others strongly disagree, noting that NATO membership for Ukraine was already basically off the table before the war and that Russia’s declared war aims went far beyond simply blocking Ukraine’s NATO bid .

“NATO expansion was deeply unpopular in Russia. [But] Putin did not invade because of NATO expansion,” says Yoshiko Herrera, a Russia expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Regardless of where one falls on that debate, US policy during the conflict has been exceptionally clear: support the Ukrainians with massive amounts of military assistance while putting pressure on Putin to back down by organizing an unprecedented array of international economic sanctions.

On the military side, weapons systems manufactured and provided by the US and Europe have played a vital role in blunting Russia’s advance. The Javelin anti-tank missile system, for example, is a lightweight American-made launcher that allows one or two infantry soldiers to take out a tank . Javelins have given the outgunned Ukrainians a fighting chance against Russian armor, becoming a popular symbol in the process .

Sanctions have proven similarly devastating in the economic realm .

The international punishments have been extremely broad, ranging from removing key Russian banks from the SWIFT global transaction system to a US ban on Russian oil imports to restrictions on doing business with particular members of the Russian elite . Freezing the assets of Russia’s central bank has proven to be a particularly damaging tool, wrecking Russia’s ability to deal with the collapse in the value of the ruble, its currency. As a result, the Russian economy is projected to contract by 15 percent this year ; mass unemployment looms .

There is more America can do, particularly when it comes to fulfilling Ukrainian requests for new fighter jets. In March, Washington rejected a Polish plan to transfer MiG-29 aircraft to Ukraine via a US Air Force base in Germany, arguing that it could be too provocative.

But the MiG-29 incident is more the exception than it is the rule. On the whole, the United States has been strikingly willing to take aggressive steps to punish Moscow and aid Kyiv’s war effort.

7) How is the rest of the world responding to Russia’s actions?

On the surface, the world appears to be fairly united behind the Ukrainian cause. The UN General Assembly passed a resolution condemning the Russian invasion by a whopping 141-5 margin (with 35 abstentions). But the UN vote conceals a great deal of disagreement, especially among the world’s largest and most influential countries — divergences that don’t always fall neatly along democracy-versus-autocracy lines.

The most aggressive anti-Russian and pro-Ukrainian positions can, perhaps unsurprisingly, be found in Europe and the broader West. EU and NATO members, with the partial exceptions of Hungary and Turkey , have strongly supported the Ukrainian war effort and implemented punishing sanctions on Russia (a major trading partner). It’s the strongest show of European unity since the Cold War, one that many observers see as a sign that Putin’s invasion has already backfired.

Germany, which has important trade ties with Russia and a post-World War II tradition of pacifism, is perhaps the most striking case. Nearly overnight, the Russian invasion convinced center-left Chancellor Olaf Scholz to support rearmament , introducing a proposal to more than triple Germany’s defense budget that’s widely backed by the German public.

“It’s really revolutionary,” Sophia Besch, a Berlin-based senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform, told my colleague Jen Kirby . “Scholz, in his speech, did away with and overturned so many of what we thought were certainties of German defense policy.”

Though Scholz has refused to outright ban Russian oil and gas imports, he has blocked the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline and committed to a long-term strategy of weaning Germany off of Russian energy. All signs point to Russia waking a sleeping giant — of creating a powerful military and economic enemy in the heart of the European continent.

China, by contrast, has been the most pro-Russia of the major global powers.

The two countries, bound by shared animus toward a US-dominated world order, have grown increasingly close in recent years. Chinese propaganda has largely toed the Russian line on the Ukraine war. US intelligence, which has been remarkably accurate during the crisis, believes that Russia has requested military and financial assistance from Beijing — which hasn’t been provided yet but may well be forthcoming.

That said, it’s possible to overstate the degree to which China has taken the Russian side. Beijing has a strong stated commitment to state sovereignty — the bedrock of its position on Taiwan is that the island is actually Chinese territory — which makes a full-throated backing of the invasion ideologically awkward . There’s a notable amount of debate among Chinese policy experts and in the public , with some analysts publicly advocating that Beijing adopt a more neutral line on the conflict.

Most other countries around the world fall somewhere on the spectrum between the West and China. Outside of Europe, only a handful of mostly pro-American states — like South Korea, Japan, and Australia — have joined the sanctions regime. The majority of countries in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America do not support the invasion, but won’t do very much to punish Russia for it either.

India is perhaps the most interesting country in this category. A rising Asian democracy that has violently clashed with China in the very recent past , it has good reasons to present itself as an American partner in the defense of freedom. Yet India also depends heavily on Russian-made weapons for its own defense and hopes to use its relationship with Russia to limit the Moscow-Beijing partnership. It’s also worth noting that India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, has strong autocratic inclinations .

The result of all of this is a balancing act reminiscent of India’s Cold War approach of “non-alignment” : refusing to side with either the Russian or American positions while attempting to maintain decent relations with both . India’s perceptions of its strategic interests, more than ideological views about democracy, appear to be shaping its response to the war — as seems to be the case with quite a few countries around the world.

8) Could this turn into World War III?

The basic, scary answer to this question is yes: The invasion of Ukraine has put us at the greatest risk of a NATO-Russia war in decades.

The somewhat more comforting and nuanced answer is that the absolute risk remains relatively low so long as there is no direct NATO involvement in the conflict, which the Biden administration has repeatedly ruled out . Though Biden said “this man [Putin] cannot remain in power” in a late March speech, both White House officials and the president himself stressed afterward that the US policy was not regime change in Moscow.

“Things are stable in a nuclear sense right now,” says Jeffrey Lewis, an expert on nuclear weapons at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. “The minute NATO gets involved, the scope of the war widens.”

In theory, US and NATO military assistance to Ukraine could open the door to escalation: Russia could attack a military depot in Poland containing weapons bound for Ukraine, for instance. But in practice, it’s unlikely: The Russians don’t appear to want a wider war with NATO that risks nuclear escalation, and so have avoided cross-border strikes even when it might destroy supply shipments bound for Ukraine.

In early March, the US Department of Defense opened a direct line of communication with its Russian peers in order to avoid any kind of accidental conflict. It’s not clear how well this is working — some reporting suggests the Russians aren’t answering American calls — but there is a long history of effective dialogue between rivals who are fighting each other through proxy forces.

“States often cooperate to keep limits on their wars even as they fight one another clandestinely,” Lyall, the Dartmouth professor, tells me. “While there’s always a risk of unintended escalation, historical examples like Vietnam, Afghanistan (1980s), Afghanistan again (post-2001), and Syria show that wars can be fought ‘within bounds.’”

If the United States and NATO heed the call of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to impose a so-called “no-fly zone” over Ukrainian skies, the situation changes dramatically. No-fly zones are commitments to patrol and, if necessary, shoot down military aircraft that fly in the declared area, generally for the purpose of protecting civilians. In Ukraine, that would mean the US and its NATO allies sending in jets to patrol Ukraine’s skies — and being willing to shoot down any Russian planes that enter protected airspace. From there, the risks of a nuclear conflict become terrifyingly high.

Russia recognizes its inferiority to NATO in conventional terms; its military doctrine has long envisioned the use of nuclear weapons in a war with the Western alliance . In his speech declaring war on Ukraine, Putin all but openly vowed that any international intervention in the conflict would trigger nuclear retaliation.

“To anyone who would consider interfering from the outside: If you do, you will face consequences greater than any you have faced in history,” the Russian president said. “I hope you hear me.”

The Biden administration is taking these threats seriously. Much as the Kremlin hasn’t struck NATO supply missions to Ukraine, the White House has flatly rejected a no-fly zone or any other kind of direct military intervention.

“We will not fight a war against Russia in Ukraine,” Biden said on March 11 . “Direct conflict between NATO and Russia is World War III, something we must strive to prevent.”

This does not mean the risk of a wider war is zero . Accidents happen, and countries can be dragged into war against their leaders’ best judgment. Political positions and risk calculi can also change: If Russia starts losing badly and uses smaller nukes on Ukrainian forces (called “tactical” nuclear weapons), Biden would likely feel the need to respond in some fairly aggressive way. Much depends on Washington and Moscow continuing to show a certain level of restraint.

9) How could the war end?

Wars do not typically end with the total defeat of one side or the other. More commonly, there’s some kind of negotiated settlement — either a ceasefire or more permanent peace treaty — where the two sides agree to stop fighting under a set of mutually agreeable terms.

It is possible that the Ukraine conflict turns out to be an exception: that Russian morale collapses completely, leading to utter battlefield defeat, or that Russia inflicts so much pain that Kyiv collapses. But most analysts believe that neither of these is especially likely given the way the war has played out to date.

“No matter how much military firepower they pour into it, [the Russians] are not going to be able to achieve regime change or some of their maximalist aims,” Kofman, of the CNA think tank, declares.

A negotiated settlement is the most likely way the conflict ends. Peace negotiations between the two sides are ongoing, and some reporting suggests they’re bearing fruit. On March 28, the Financial Times reported significant progress on a draft agreement covering issues ranging from Ukrainian NATO membership to the “de-Nazification” of Ukraine. The next day, Russia pledged to decrease its use of force in Ukraine’s north as a sign of its commitment to the talks.

American officials, though, have been publicly skeptical of Russia’s seriousness in the talks. Even if Moscow is committed to reaching a settlement, the devil is always in the details with these sorts of things — and there are lots of barriers standing in the way of a successful resolution.

Take NATO. The Russians want a simple pledge that Ukraine will remain “neutral” — staying out of foreign security blocs. The current draft agreement, per the Financial Times, does preclude Ukrainian NATO membership, but it permits Ukraine to join the EU. It also commits at least 11 countries, including the United States and China, to coming to Ukraine’s aid if it is attacked again. This would put Ukraine on a far stronger security footing than it had before the war — a victory for Kyiv and defeat for Moscow, one that Putin may ultimately conclude is unacceptable.

Another thorny issue — perhaps the thorniest — is the status of Crimea and the two breakaway Russian-supported republics in eastern Ukraine. The Russians want Ukrainian recognition of its annexation of Crimea and the independence of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions; Ukraine claims all three as part of its territory. Some compromise is imaginable here — an internationally monitored referendum in each territory, perhaps — but what that would look like is not obvious.

The resolution of these issues will likely depend quite a bit on the war’s progress. The more each side believes it has a decent chance to improve its battlefield position and gain leverage in negotiations, the less reason either will have to make concessions to the other in the name of ending the fighting.

And even if they do somehow come to an agreement, it may not end up holding .

On the Ukrainian side, ultra-nationalist militias could work to undermine any agreement with Russia that they believe gives away too much, as they threatened during pre-war negotiations aimed at preventing the Russian invasion .

On the Russian side, an agreement is only as good as Putin’s word. Even if it contains rigorous provisions designed to raise the costs of future aggression, like international peacekeepers, that may not hold him back from breaking the agreement.

This invasion did, after all, start with him launching an invasion that seemed bound to hurt Russia in the long run. Putin dragged the world into this mess; when and how it gets out of it depends just as heavily on his decisions.

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• The Weekend Essay

The realists were right

As the much-hyped counteroffensive against Russian forces stalls, the West is asking hard questions about the war in Ukraine.

By Lily Lynch

Eighteen months into the war in Ukraine the breathless hype that characterised early media coverage has curdled into doom. This is the deepest trough of despair that the wartime media has entered yet: the past month of reporting has given us new admissions about a war that increasingly appears to be locked in bloody stalemate, along with a portrait of Ukraine and its leadership shorn of the rote glorification and hero worship of the conflict’s early days. The deadlock has increasingly resembled brutal, unabating, First World War-style combat, with the Ukrainian army rapidly depleting artillery ammunition supplied by the West. Distant audiences, who always treated the war as a team sport, and Ukraine as an underdog defying the odds against a larger aggressor, are thinning out; surely many will soon turn their attention to the partisan conflict of the forthcoming US presidential election. Optimists say the change in the media’s tone is indicative of little more than the inevitable pendulum swings of war and that Ukraine may yet emerge victorious. But such a view elides a host of unavoidable realities.

At the centre of this cascade of disappointment lies Ukraine’s poor performance in the overhyped “spring counteroffensive” , which arrived several months late. Boosters in the press set expectations so high that Ukraine was practically set up for failure. “We’re about to see what a decentralised, horizontal, innovative high-tech force can do,” Jessica Berlin, a German and American political analyst, wrote in May. “Ukraine may be underfunded, undermanned and underequipped compared to Russia . But those tactical, adaptive Ukrainian strengths deliver what money can’t buy and training can’t teach. Get ready for some stunners.” In the Daily Telegraph , the soldier-turned-civilian-military-expert Hamish de Bretton-Gordon was effusive as recently as June: “As a former tank commander, I can say one thing for certain: Putin’s demoralised conscripts are utterly unprepared for the shock action now hitting their lines.”

But by most accounts, the counteroffensive has been a profound letdown. A Washington Post article published on 17 August cited a classified assessment by the US intelligence community which said that Ukraine’s counteroffensive would “fail to reach the key southeastern city of Melitopol”, meaning that Kyiv “would not fulfil its principal objective of severing Russia’s land bridge to Crimea”. Other analyses have testified to the same. As Roland Popp, strategic analyst at the Swiss Military Academy at ETH Zurich told me, “The main cause for the change in [the media’s] tune is certainly general disappointment about Ukrainian military performance in the much-anticipated ‘counteroffensive’. Military experts in Western think tanks had whipped up high expectations based on Ukrainian successes in Kharkiv and Kherson last year. They ignored the Russian ability to adapt – which is historically the main factor explaining the changing odds during wars – and overstated the effects of Western weapons technology and doctrine.”

It is said that “success has a hundred fathers but failure is an orphan”, and a rush to allocate blame for the underwhelming counteroffensive is now under way. Some Western military experts blame the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ failures on its “Soviet legacy” . And several recent articles have condemned Ukraine for refusing to follow US instruction. “The thinly disguised criticism of Ukrainian operational decision-making is also intended to distract from [their] own misjudgments,” Popp said. American officials have complained through media that Ukraine has focused too much on the city of Bakhmut and other points in the East, wasting Western-furnished artillery in crushing barrages, and asserted that Kyiv should concentrate its forces in an area around Tokmak in the south of the country and its artillery fire only on the most important targets. Through unnamed sources and leaks to the press, a story of a more frustrated US-Ukraine relationship has emerged in recent weeks. “We built up this mountain of steel for the counteroffensive. We can’t do that again,” one disappointed former US official is quoted as telling the Washington Post. “It doesn’t exist.” 

[See also: History offers Ukraine slender hope for a decisive victory ]

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“They are clearly trying to show some distance from Ukraine’s decision-making even as the official line is ‘we’re with them 100 per cent’,” Ben Friedman, policy director at Defense Priorities, a foreign policy think tank, said. The Ukrainian side, on the other hand, blames the West for its reluctance to furnish it with weapons and supplies. To cite but one of many examples communicated through the press, an anonymous source in the general staff recently told the Economist that Ukraine had received just 60 Leopard tanks despite having been promised hundreds. Adding to the irritation was the disappointment at the Nato summit in Vilnius in July, where Ukraine was not granted a much hoped-for timeline for accession to the military alliance. Volodymyr Zelensky , the Ukrainian president, responded to the news in a series of furious tweets, calling the decision “unprecedented and absurd”.

But the stage was set for these deflated hopes in the war’s first weeks in 2022. Early on, reporters framed the war as one of David vs Goliath, in which Ukrainian grandmothers downed Russian drones with jars of pickles. Ukraine’s astonishing performance in Kharkiv fuelled expectations. Early mythmaking has made recent disappointments all the more bitter. “There were wishful expectations that Russia would collapse, fold early on, especially after Ukraine heroically survived the first round, and people got carried away,” Patrick Porter, the realist scholar of international relations, said.

Compounding the disillusionment is the fact that the early shock of the war has worn off, meaning it’s lost some of its initial sense of urgency – especially as war takes its toll far beyond Ukraine. “There was the initial widespread feeling of revulsion; then, people were naturally drawn towards ‘we must not compromise’, and moral and strategic maximalism,” Porter said. “That’s easier to hold when you’re not yet feeling the pain. Now, materially, there are costs everywhere.” And while the immediate convulsion of fear that accompanied the full-scale invasion was so strong that it prompted Sweden and Finland to apply to join Nato, the initial panic has since faded, and evolved into a more ambient dread about a long war of attrition, rising inflation, recession and food insecurity.

Recently, Ukraine itself has also been depicted in a more complicated light. On 19 August the New York Times published a story about Kyiv’s wartime policy of jailing conscientious objectors . Meanwhile, Zelensky’s new proposal to equate corruption with treason, transferring cases from anti-graft agencies to the security service, was met with unusually harsh condemnation in Politico . And this summer both the Guardian and BBC have published articles about Ukrainian deserters and men employing other means to avoid conscription, including barricading themselves inside their homes and using Telegram channels to warn other men about the location of roving military recruitment officials. On 24 February 2022 a presidential decree imposed martial law which forbade men aged between 18 and 60 from leaving Ukraine. But according to a BBC report in June this year , tens of thousands of men have crossed the Romanian border alone, and at least 90 men have died attempting to make the perilous crossing, either freezing to death in the mountains or by drowning in the Tisa River.

Further, the Economist recently published an article about the Ukrainian public’s waning morale. Most men eager to defend Ukraine joined the armed forces long ago, and many are now dead. The country now recruits among those effectively forced. Individually, stories about conscientious objectors, deserters, those hiding from conscription, and a war-weary public can appear anecdotal, but taken together, they begin to undermine one of the foundational tenets of the war: that Ukrainians want to fight, in the words of Joe Biden , the US president, “for as long as it takes”. And as expectations are dramatically scaled back, one cannot help but ask: for as long as it takes to do what?

As a more sober reality sets in, it’s worth asking why Western governments and the media were such effusive boosters of Ukraine’s war effort. The writer Richard Seymour has suggested that part of it was about identity formation, wherein Ukraine is emblematic of an “idealised Europe” or even democracy itself, while Russia represents Oriental despotism and authoritarianism. The war thus embodies the supposed civilisational struggle theorised by Samuel Huntington between democracies and autocracies, promoted by the Biden administration through initiatives such as its Summit for Democracy. That annual event aims to “renew democracy at home and confront autocracies abroad”, underlining the continuity between liberal opposition to the putative authoritarian affinities of Donald Trump and Russia’s war in Ukraine.

But beyond the merely symbolic there was a practical rationale for the kinds of coverage we saw in the war’s early months: the conflict in Ukraine has revived a waning Atlanticism – a long-sought aim of proponents of Nato enlargement. Just a few years ago Emmanuel Macron , the French president, declared Nato “braindead”; the war in Ukraine has brought it back to life. Finland and Sweden applied to join. Critics say that the governments of both countries used “shock doctrine” tactics to convince their respective populations to abandon their policy of neutrality, making the decision to apply for membership while the war was top news and the public was still afraid.

Some have wondered whether the media’s shift in tone – and all the anonymous messages transmitted by official US sources – presage an imminent change in policy: negotiations, a peace settlement, or ceasefire. But most experts agree that it is still too early for that. “Russia’s invasion has been a particularly brutal war, one with many atrocities,” Porter explained. “Ukrainians are unlikely to accept peace negotiations yet.” For both Russia and Ukraine, the war is a primal one, and nowhere near its end. But the new crop of articles does mark a return of a sceptical tone largely suppressed until recently. In November last year General Mark A Milley, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, proposed a negotiated settlement to the war. Following Ukraine’s successes in Kharkiv and Kherson, he asserted that “you want to negotiate from a position of strength” and that “Russia right now is on its back”. The Biden administration promptly distanced itself from the idea. Publicly, the US pledged support for Ukraine’s total victory, but privately, many in the administration were said to have shared Milley’s scepticism. Late last month, some in media started revisiting the general’s remarks, suggesting that perhaps he had been right all along.

[See also: Putin has declared war on Russia ]

Realists, most infamously John Mearsheimer , who are highly controversial among liberal boosters of Ukraine, have long warned of the dangers of the exalted rhetoric and mythmaking among Western governments and media. In an op-ed for Politico published in spring 2022 , Porter, along with the grand strategy experts Friedman and Justin Logan, cautioned against the risk of “giving Ukraine false hope”, and stressed that “the rhetoric-policy gap could also raise excessive Ukrainian expectations of support”. Eighteen months into the war, with a dejected Zelensky chastising Nato for insufficient support, their unheeded warnings look prescient.

Instead of total victory, at summer’s end the media now appears to be girding the Western public for a long, protracted war of attrition . The editorial board of the Washington Post , citing US statistics of nearly half a million killed or injured, recently cautioned that “no end to the carnage is in sight, and calls for a negotiated solution are wishful thinking at this point”. The editorial asserts grimly that “the war could continue for years – waxing, waning or frozen”. The Centre for Strategic and International Studies has also recently warned that “the most probable outcome… is a war of attrition that has no clear outcome or time limit”. Le Monde also reported that in July a French general, Jacques Langlade de Montgros, warned that the conflict in Ukraine “is a war of attrition, set for the long term” like “two boxers in a ring, exhausting each other blow by blow, not knowing which one will call first”.

Also hanging over the grim media coverage is the 2024 US presidential election. “The Biden administration now has the difficult task of convincing the public that an attritional approach, that is, opting for a long war, can still lead to some kind of Ukrainian victory or at least a standstill in order to maintain support for continued financial and military assistance for Ukraine,” Popp said. The war in Ukraine has polarised US public opinion. According to a recent poll by CNN, 71 per cent of Republicans are against new funding for Ukraine; among Democrats, 62 per cent support it. Significantly, the war has also divided the Republican Party. At the first Republican presidential candidate debate on 23 August, the cracks in the party were on full display: the insurgent populist right, embodied in the millennial figure of Vivek Ramaswamy, hopes to see such aid diminished or eliminated entirely, while more conventional Republicans like Chris Christie and former vice-president Mike Pence expressed a commitment to continuing it. Ramaswamy said: “I think that this is disastrous, that we are protecting against an invasion across somebody else’s border, when we should use those same military resources to prevent… the invasion of our own southern border here in the United States of America.” He also mocked American deference to Zelensky, referring to him as some politicians’ “pope” to whom they paid pilgrimage while ignoring domestic catastrophes. Trump, who was not on the debate stage, called for an end to the war in an interview with Tucker Carlson, saying “that’s a war that should end immediately, not because of one side or the other, because hundreds of thousands of people are being killed”. And now, it appears that most Republicans agree with the positions of the populist candidates: 59 per cent say they believe that the US has “already done enough to support Kyiv”.

But for some, hope is not yet lost. There is new talk of a “reset” of Ukrainian strategy. In a Washington Post op-ed co-authored by David Petraeus, a retired US army general, and Frederick W Kagan, of the American Enterprise Institute, readers were cautioned against excess pessimism. The authors argued that major breakthroughs could happen at any moment, and that Ukraine is indeed making slow, steady progress, field by field. Those with similarly optimistic views argue that the media always vacillates wildly between unrealistic claims of imminent victory and maudlin pronunciations about catastrophic losses, both territorial and human, and the spectre of a war without end. But that the increasingly exhausted public – in Ukraine and the West – will be eager to accede to more war with the same enthusiasm it did in the war’s early months appears less likely by the hour.

[See also: What if Ukraine loses? ]

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This article appears in the 06 Sep 2023 issue of the New Statesman, Crumbling Britain

• OH&S, Risk Management

Russia’s war on Ukraine forces Europe to weaponise its economic might

Ukraine experts say Kyiv’s refusal to buckle under Moscow’s war represents a transformative moment for the continent.

Whatever the exact territorial outcome of the war in Ukraine, the political outcome is already clear – Russia has lost its gambit to create a vassal state and buffer zone in Eastern Europe, because Ukraine’s Westward course is now irreversible.

That was one of the key messages of an international symposium of diplomats and academics who gathered at Cambridge University under the auspices of the Centre for Geopolitics on Thursday, April 4. The focus was the Maidan Revolution of 2013 , which overthrew Ukraine’s Moscow-friendly president Viktor Yanukovych and set the country on a path towards Europe, but it also dwelled on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of the country in February 2022.

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“Putin has lost Ukraine. It has become crystal clear. He has invaded their sovereignty and they have resisted him,” said Baroness Catherine Ashton, who was the European Union’s first foreign policy chief between 2009 and 2014, and held frequent talks with Yanukovych and Putin during the turbulent months of the uprising. “All those years before he was losing them, and now he’s lost them completely.”

The Maidan protests started on the evening of November 21, 2013, when Yanukovych decided not to sign an association agreement with the European Union, which had been under negotiation for seven years, opting instead for a free trade deal with Moscow.

“I remember that evening very well,” said Argita Daudze, Latvia’s ambassador to Ukraine at the time, who was hosting a reception that day. “Ukrainian foreign ministry officials joined us late and they were in a very bad mood.”

“Ukrainian society in 2013 was living in certain hopes that closer ties with the EU would bring more order and faster economic development in Ukraine,” said Daudze. “It seemed the notion of Europe started to become an answer to many problems that Ukrainian lawmakers were facing — and became a synonym of a good life for the common people.”

As the protests against Yanukovych grew, “the atmosphere was fantastic – it was families, young people, NGO leaders, journalists, a spectrum of people from across society in Kyiv,” recalled Ashton, who visited the gathering crowds.

“And it was very, very cold, so you know people are committed … there was a clear sense this was a movement of people who were not going to go away.”

The spontaneity and length of the uprising belied the Russian argument that it had been engineered by Western officials.

But it’s not just Ukraine that is pinning its hopes on benefits from stronger ties with the EU.  Ashton believes the experience of absorbing Ukraine is transforming the European Union, too. “It’s made the EU stronger in foreign policy terms … more coherent,” she told Al Jazeera.

Foreign and defence policy remain national competences, requiring unanimity for action at the EU level, but Ashton said European willingness to work together was “absolutely extraordinary” and had increased since her tenure.

During the Maidan uprising, for example, many EU members were still deferential towards Russia. “Many people considered the Polish official reaction as too timid,” said Lukasz Kulesa, deputy head of research at the Polish Institute of International Affairs. “[Then-Foreign Minister Radoslav] Sikorsky told Ukrainians to agree to a compromise with Yanukovych.”

Even after Putin annexed the Crimean Peninsula the following March, European officials advised Ukraine not to use arms against Russians, and Germany agreed with Russia to build the Nordstream gas pipelines under the Baltic Sea that would circumvent Ukraine.

Poland is now one of Ukraine’s most unequivocal allies, Germany has abandoned Nordstream, and the EU has imposed a dozen sanctions packages against Russia and is this year putting in place predictable, multiyear military and financial aid to Ukraine.

“The EU has never understood how strong it is,” said Ashton. “As an economic power, it is enormous, and it doesn’t yet really get that it has the capability to use that incredible economic strength to achieve things.” It was high time, she said, for EU leaders to start forming security strategies for the next 50 years.

In December, the EU invited Ukraine and Moldova to start their membership processes, and that, too, was seen as a form of security.

Vygaudas Usackas, the EU ambassador to Moscow in 2013-17, called for “an unprecedented political decision by both Europeans and NATO to expedite negotiations of Ukraine’s membership of the EU and invite Ukraine to join NATO at the Washington summit” in July. Both processes normally take several years, but membership would strengthen Ukraine’s hand in negotiations with Russia to end the war, whenever they took place, Usackas said.

For the same reason, he called for the deployment of NATO troops to Ukraine and “immediate and urgent, massive military and financial support to Ukraine so it regains the momentum and can talk to the enemy from a position of strength”.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg this week reportedly proposed a NATO aid package that would send $100bn in military assistance to Ukraine over five years.

These coordinated policies among EU and European NATO members stand in contrast to US congressional lawmakers beholden to presidential hopeful Donald Trump, who have frozen aid to Ukraine this year , throwing even more responsibility on European shoulders.

“This is the greatest success of Russia’s political warfare,” Mark Voyager, a lecturer in international relations at Kyiv American University, told Al Jazeera. “I believe Mr Trump most certainly is in some shape or form an asset for the Kremlin. Whether it was his visits in the late Soviet period or his Miss Universe affairs in Moscow or his business dealings with Trump Tower, financial personal entanglements, I believe the Russians have something quite substantial on him.”

Investigations in the US, however, have so far failed to turn up evidence that Moscow holds any compromising information about Trump that could make the former US president susceptible to political pressure from Moscow.

Whatever Trump’s reasons for seeking to cut off aid to Ukraine, Daudze called to mind the results of not standing up to Russia during and after the second world war, when Stalin’s armies swept across Eastern Europe, ending the brief interwar independence of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

“Politicians of Baltic states decided not to fight and to accept Soviet promises not to touch their sovereignty,” she said. “In the context of a world war, we could not expect help from other countries and we lost our freedom.”

clock This article was published more than  1 year ago

Opinion 7 opinions on the war in Ukraine after one year

One year after Russia invaded Ukraine , Post Opinions is looking back at what has transpired and forward to what is to come.

The selection of opinions below forms a snapshot of that coverage, intended to help you understand the war.

These charts suggest peace isn’t coming anytime soon

By Michael O’Hanlon, Constanze Stelzenmüller and David Wessel of the Brookings Institution

After gathering data on territory, economics, refugees and more, O’Hanlon, Stelzenmüller and Wessel came to the same conclusion : The war could last for quite some time.

“Pressure to make peace could rise within and outside Ukraine and Russia in 2023 (or thereafter),” they write . “But the data doesn’t suggest that will happen right now.”

How to break the stalemate in Ukraine

By the Editorial Board

The Post’s Editorial Board reviewed the year of war and looked for solutions .

“To thwart Russia and safeguard Ukraine’s sovereignty, the United States and its European allies have little choice but to intensify their military, economic and diplomatic support for Kyiv,” the Editorial Board concluded .

Why Ukraine will win the war

By Mark Hertling, retired Army lieutenant general

Hertling examined five phases of the war and says Ukraine’s forces significantly outperformed Russia’s in each one.

“Ukraine’s armed forces have admirably adapted in each phase of this fight, learning lessons from training they received over the past decade, and from the scars earned on the battlefield itself,” he writes . “And Russia has repeatedly demonstrated an inability to do the same.”

How the war will enrich Ukraine when it’s over

By Iuliia Mendel, journalist and former press secretary for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky

Sharing a story of a New Year’s Eve delivery she received while hiding in her bathroom from Russian strikes, Mendel shows how she believes the war will make Ukraine stronger when it’s over .

“Today’s war heroes, organizers and businesspeople will be the leaders of tomorrow,” she writes . “The energies unleashed by this war will enrich the country that comes after it.”

What a year of war has revealed of three leaders

By David Ignatius , Post Opinions columnist

Three figures have largely defined the war so far: Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and President Biden. Ignatius looks at what we’ve learned about each leader over the last year.

“Putin was convinced that his cold-eyed, brutal resolve would outlast everyone else’s,” Ignatius writes . “But a year on, Putin’s staying power begins to look questionable, while Zelensky and Biden have never looked stronger.”

You can’t understand the war without knowing history

By Timothy Snyder, the Levin professor of history at Yale University

Snyder dives into the contrast between the historical importance of this war and the lack of coursework in history.

“Ukrainian history makes today’s world make more sense,” he writes .

Putin can win only if Hawley-esque isolationists multiply

By George F. Will , Post Opinions columnist

Will homes in on how American politics could affect the war’s result .

“Putin can win only by Ukraine’s allies choosing to lose by not maximizing their moral and material advantages,” he writes . “He is counting on Western publics’ support for Ukraine being brittle, and especially on the multiplication of Josh Hawleys.”

What to know about Ukraine’s counteroffensive

The latest: The Ukrainian military has launched a long-anticipated counteroffensive against occupying Russian forces , opening a crucial phase in the war aimed at restoring Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty and preserving Western support in its fight against Moscow.

The fight: Ukrainian troops have intensified their attacks on the front line in the southeast region, according to multiple individuals in the country’s armed forces, in a significant push toward Russian-occupied territory.

The front line: The Washington Post has mapped out the 600-mile front line between Ukrainian and Russian forces .

How you can help: Here are ways those in the United States can support the Ukrainian people as well as what people around the world have been donating.

Read our full coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war . Are you on Telegram? Subscribe to our channel for updates and exclusive video .

• Opinion | How Ukraine’s tech army is taking the fight to Russia April 5, 2024 Opinion | How Ukraine’s tech army is taking the fight to Russia April 5, 2024
• Opinion | ‘A lot of grim realism’: What our columnists heard in Ukraine April 4, 2024 Opinion | ‘A lot of grim realism’: What our columnists heard in Ukraine April 4, 2024
• Opinion | I am proud to have spoken out against Putin’s crimes in Ukraine April 3, 2024 Opinion | I am proud to have spoken out against Putin’s crimes in Ukraine April 3, 2024

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• Russia Ukraine Conflict UPSC Notes

Russia - Ukraine Conflict [UPSC Notes]

Latest Developments in Russia – Ukraine Conflict

On Feb 24, 2022, Russia launched a full-fledged invasion of Ukraine . Know more about this in the link given. This page gives a background of the issue with an analysis of the developments before the invasion.

The tensions on Ukraine’s border with Russia are at their highest in years. Fearing a potential invasion by Russia, the US and NATO are stepping up support for Ukraine. In this article, we explain the reason for tensions between Russia and Ukraine, the latest developments, the stand of various stakeholders in the region, and the way forward for the UPSC exam IR segment.

Russia – Ukraine Conflict Background

Post the disintegration of the Soviet Union , Ukraine gained independence in 1991.

• Ukraine was a member of the Soviet Union until 1991 when it disintegrated, and Russia has tried to maintain the country in its orbit since then.
• In 2014, a separatist insurgency started in Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, Donetsk Basin, also known as,
• Russia further gained a maritime advantage in the region due to its invasion and annexation of Crimea.
• As a result, both the US and the EU have pledged to safeguard the integrity of Ukraine’s borders.

Image Source: Al Jazeera

Importance of Ukraine to Russia

• Ukraine and Russia have shared cultural and linguistic ties for hundreds of years.
• Ukraine was the most powerful country in the Soviet Union after Russia.
• Ukraine has been a hub for commercial industries, factories and defence manufacturing.
• Ukraine also provides Russia with access to the Black Sea and crucial connectivity to the Mediterranean Sea.

Reasons for Russian Aggression

The chief reasons for Russian aggression are discussed below.

• Russia, considering the economic significance of Ukraine, sought Ukraine’s membership in the Eurasian Economic Community (EAEC), which is a free trade agreement that came into being in 2015.
• With its huge market and advanced agriculture and industrial output, Ukraine was supposed to play an important role. But Ukraine refused to join the agreement.
• Russia claims that the eastward expansion by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) which they call “ enlargement ”, has threatened Russia’s interests and has asked for written security guarantees from NATO.
• NATO, led by the U.S., has planned to install missile defence systems in eastern Europe in countries like Poland and the Czech Republic to counter Russia’s intercontinental-range missiles.

Russia – Ukraine Latest Developments

Russia has been indulging in military build-up along its border with Ukraine, an aspiring NATO member. Russia has stated that its troop deployment is in response to NATO’s steady eastward expansion. Russia argues that its moves are aimed at protecting its own security considerations.

• Russia has mobilised around 1,00,000 troops on its border with Ukraine.
• Russia seeks assurance from the US that Ukraine shall not be inducted into NATO.
• This has resulted in tensions between Russia and the West which have been supportive of Ukraine. The U.S. has assured Ukraine that it will “respond decisively” in case of an invasion by Russia.

Image Source: The Hindu

Russia’s demands

• Russia has demanded a ban on further expansion of NATO that includes countries like Ukraine and Georgia that share Russia’s borders.
• Russia asked NATO to pull back its military deployments to the 1990s level and prohibit the deployment of intermediate-range missiles in the bordering areas.
• Further, Russia asked NATO to curb its military cooperation with Ukraine and other former Soviet republics.

The response from the West

• The U.S. has ruled out changing NATO’s “open-door policy” which means, NATO would continue to induct more members.
• The U.S. also says it would continue to offer training and weapons to Ukraine.
• The U.S. is said to be open to a discussion regarding missile deployment and a mutual reduction in military exercises in Eastern Europe.
• Germany has also warned Russia that the Nord Stream 2 pipeline would be stopped if Russia were to invade Ukraine.
• The U.S. threatens Russia by imposing new economic sanctions in case of attempts of invasion against Ukraine.

Russia – Ukraine Crisis: Implications on India

What implications does the Russia – Ukraine crisis have on India? This is discussed in this section.

• Maintaining strong relations with Russia serves India’s national interests. India has to retain a strong strategic alliance with Russia as a result, India cannot join any Western strategy aimed at isolating Russia.
• There is a possibility of CAATSA sanctions on India by the U.S. as a result of the S-400
• A pact between the US and Russia might affect Russia’s relations with China. This might allow India to expand on its efforts to re-establish ties with Russia.
• The issue with Ukraine is that the world is becoming increasingly economically and geopolitically interconnected. Any improvement in Russia-China ties has ramifications for India.
• There is also an impact on the strong Indian diaspora present in the region, threatening the lives of thousands of Indian students.

Also read: India – Russia relations

India’s stand

• India called for “a peaceful resolution of the situation through sustained diplomatic efforts for long-term peace and stability in the region and beyond”.
• Immediately after the annexation, India abstained from voting in the UN General Assembly on a resolution that sought to condemn Russia.
• In 2020, India voted against a Ukraine-sponsored resolution in the UN General Assembly that sought to condemn alleged human rights violations in Crimea.
• India’s position is largely rooted in neutrality and has adapted itself to the post-2014 status quo on Ukraine.

Way forward

• The US along with other western countries is expected to revive the peace process through diplomatic channels in mitigating the tensions between Ukraine and Russia which would be a time-consuming process.
• Experts recommend more dialogues between the west and Russia that exert emphasis on the issue surrounding Ukraine.
• Ukraine should approach and focus on working with its Normandy Format allies, France and Germany, to persuade the Russian government to withdraw assistance for its proxies and allow for the region’s gradual safe reintegration into Ukraine.
• The Russian military expansion in Ukraine can be prevented on the geoeconomic grounds that will hamper its trade in the region especially with the Nord Stream pipeline that can carve out a way of resolving the ongoing crisis as pointed out by an expert.
• Ukraine’s internal disturbances need to be addressed to revive the Minsk II agreement for the development of peace in the region and dissolve the ongoing tensions.

UPSC Questions related to Russia – Ukraine Conflict

What is the relation between russia and ukraine.

Ukraine was a member of the Soviet Union until its disintegration in 1991. Post the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Ukraine gained independence in 1991 and Russia has tried to maintain its influence on the country in its orbit since then.

Why did Ukraine not join NATO?

Although Ukraine has no membership offer from NATO, it has been closer to the alliance since its establishment in 1997. Plans for NATO membership were dropped by Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych, who preferred to keep the country non-aligned.

Is Crimea a part of Russia?

The majority of the world considers Crimea to be a part of Ukraine. Geographically, it is a peninsula in the Black Sea that has been battled over for ages due to its strategic importance. In 2014, Russia invaded and annexed Crimea which was a part of Ukraine due to its declining influence over the region and emerging insecurities.

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How to Write War Essay: Russia Ukraine War

Understanding the Purpose and Scope of a War Essay

A condition of armed conflict between nations or between groups living in one nation is known as war. Sounds not like much fun, does it? Well, conflicts have been a part of human history for thousands of years, and as industry and technology have developed, they have grown more devastating. As awful as it might seem, a war typically occurs between a country or group of countries against a rival country to attain a goal through force. Civil and revolutionary wars are examples of internal conflicts that can occur inside a nation.

Your history class could ask you to write a war essay, or you might be personally interested in learning more about conflicts, in which case you might want to learn how to write an academic essay about war. In any scenario, we have gathered valuable guidance on how to organize war essays. Let's first examine the potential reasons for a conflict before moving on to the outline for a war essay.

• Economic Gain - A country's desire to seize control of another country's resources frequently starts conflicts. Even when the proclaimed goal of a war is portrayed to the public as something more admirable, most wars have an economic motivation at their core, regardless of any other possible causes.
• Territorial Gain - A nation may determine that it requires additional land for habitation, agriculture, or other uses. Additionally, the territory might serve as buffer zones between two violent foes.
• Religion - Religious disputes can stem from extremely profound issues. They may go dormant for many years before suddenly resurfacing later.
• Nationalism - In this sense, nationalism simply refers to the act of violently subjugating another country to demonstrate the country's superiority. This frequently manifests as an invasion.
• Revenge - Warfare can frequently be motivated by the desire to punish, make up for, or simply exact revenge for perceived wrongdoing. Revenge has a connection to nationalism as well because when a nation has been wronged, its citizens are inspired by patriotism and zeal to take action.
• Defensive War - In today's world, when military aggression is being questioned, governments will frequently claim that they are fighting in a solely protective manner against a rival or prospective aggressor and that their conflict is thus a 'just' conflict. These defensive conflicts may be especially contentious when conducted proactively, with the basic premise being that we are striking them before they strike us.

How to Write War Essay with a War Essay Outline

Just like in compare and contrast examples and any other forms of writing, an outline for a war essay assists you in organizing your research and creating a good flow. In general, you keep to the traditional three-part essay style, but you can adapt it as needed based on the length and criteria of your school. When planning your war paper, consider the following outline:

Introduction

• Definition of war
• Importance of studying wars
• Thesis statement

Body Paragraphs

• Causes of the War
• Political reasons
• Economic reasons
• Social reasons
• Historical reasons
• Major Players in the War
• Countries and their leaders
• Military leaders
• Allies and enemies
• Strategies and Tactics
• Military tactics and techniques
• Strategic planning
• Weapons and technology
• Impact of the War
• On the countries involved
• On civilians and non-combatants
• On the world as a whole
• Summary of the main points
• Final thoughts on the war
• Suggestions for future research

If you found this outline template helpful, you can also use our physics help for further perfecting your academic assignments.

Begin With a Relevant Hook

A hook should be the focal point of the entire essay. A good hook for an essay on war can be an interesting statement, an emotional appeal, a thoughtful question, or a surprising fact or figure. It engages your audience and leaves them hungry for more information.

Follow Your Outline

An outline is the single most important organizational tool for essay writing. It allows the writer to visualize the overall structure of the essay and focus on the flow of information. The specifics of your outline depend on the type of essay you are writing. For example, some should focus on statistics and pure numbers, while others should dedicate more space to abstract arguments.

How to Discuss Tragedy, Loss, and Sentiment

War essays are particularly difficult to write because of the terrible nature of war. The life is destroyed, the loved ones lost, fighting, death, great many massacres and violence overwhelm, and hatred for the evil enemy, amongst other tragedies, make emotions run hot, which is why sensitivity is so important. Depending on the essay's purpose, there are different ways to deal with tragedy and sentiment.

The easiest one is to stick with objective data rather than deal with the personal experiences of those who may have been affected by these events. It can be hard to remain impartial, especially when writing about recent deaths and destruction. But it is your duty as a researcher to do so.

However, it’s not always possible to avoid these issues entirely. When you are forced to tackle them head-on, you should always be considerate and avoid passing swift and sweeping judgment.

Summing Up Your Writing

When you have finished presenting your case, you should finish it off with some sort of lesson it teaches us. Armed conflict is a major part of human nature yet. By analyzing the events that transpired, you should be able to make a compelling argument about the scale of the damage the war caused, as well as how to prevent it in the future.

Tired of Looming Deadlines?

Get the help you need from our expert writers to ace your next assignment!

Popular War Essay Topics

When choosing a topic for an essay about war, it is best to begin with the most well-known conflicts because they are thoroughly recorded. These can include the Cold War or World War II. You might also choose current wars, such as the Syrian Civil War or the Russia and Ukraine war. Because they occur in the backdrop of your time and place, such occurrences may be simpler to grasp and research.

To help you decide which war to write about, we have compiled some facts about several conflicts that will help you get off to a strong start.

Russia Ukraine War

Russian President Vladimir Putin started the Russian invasion in the early hours of February 24 last year. According to him. the Ukrainian government had been committing genocide against Russian-speaking residents in the eastern Ukraine - Donbas region since 2014, calling the onslaught a 'special military operation.'

The Russian president further connected the assault to the NATO transatlantic military alliance commanded by the United States. He said the Russian military was determined to stop NATO from moving farther east and establishing a military presence in Ukraine, a part of the Soviet Union, until its fall in 1991.

All of Russia's justifications have been rejected by Ukraine and its ally Western Countries. Russia asserted its measures were defensive, while Ukraine declared an emergency and enacted martial law. According to the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the administration's objective is not only to repel offensives but also to reclaim all Ukrainian land that the Russian Federation has taken, including Crimea.

Both sides of the conflict accuse the other of deploying indiscriminate force, which has resulted in many civilian deaths and displacements. According to current Ukraine news, due to the difficulty of counting the deceased due to ongoing combat, the death toll is likely far higher. In addition, countless Ukrainian refugees were compelled to leave their homeland in search of safety and stability abroad.

Diplomatic talks have been employed to try to end the Ukraine-Russia war. Several rounds of conversations have taken place in various places. However, the conflict is still raging as of April 2023, and there is no sign of a truce.

World War II

World War II raged from 1939 until 1945. Most of the world's superpowers took part in the conflict, fought between two military alliances headed by the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union, and the Axis Powers, led by Germany, Italy, and Japan.

If you'd like to explore it more in-depth, consider using our history essay service for a World War 2 essay pdf sample!

After World War II, a persistent political conflict between the United States, the Soviet Union, and their allies became known as the Cold War. It's hard to say who was to blame for the cold war essay. American citizens have long harbored concerns about Soviet communism and expressed alarm over Joseph Stalin's brutal control of his own nation. On their side, the Soviets were angry at the Americans for delaying their participation in World War II, which led to the deaths of tens of millions of Russians, and for America's long-standing unwillingness to recognize the USSR as a genuine member of the world community.

Vietnam War

If you're thinking about writing the Vietnam War essay, you should know that it was a protracted military battle that lasted in Vietnam from 1955 to 1975. The North Vietnamese communist government fought South Vietnam and its main ally, the United States, in the lengthy, expensive, and contentious Vietnam War. The ongoing Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union exacerbated the issue. The Vietnam War claimed the lives of more than 3 million individuals, more than half of whom were Vietnamese civilians.

American Civil War

Consider writing an American Civil War essay where the Confederate States of America, a grouping of eleven southern states that seceded from the Union in 1860 and 1861, and the United States of America battled each other. If you're wondering what caused the civil war, you should know that the long-standing dispute about the legitimacy of slavery is largely responsible for how the war started.

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

After over a century, the Israel-Palestine conflict has evolved into one of the most significant and current problems in the Middle East. A war that has claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people destroyed their homes and gave rise to terrorist organizations that still hold the region hostage. Simply described, it is a conflict between two groups of people for ownership of the same piece of land. One already resided there, while the other was compelled to immigrate to this country owing to rising antisemitism and later settled there. For Israelis and Palestinians alike, as well as for the larger area, the war continues to have substantial political, social, and economic repercussions.

The Syrian Civil War

Pro-democracy protests broke out in southern Deraa in March 2011 due to upheavals against oppressive leaders in neighboring nations. When the Syrian government employed lethal force to quell the unrest, widespread protests calling for the president's resignation broke out.

The country entered a civil war as the violence quickly increased. After hundreds of rebel organizations emerged, the fight quickly expanded beyond a confrontation between Syrians supporting or opposing Mr. Assad. Everyone believes a political solution is necessary, even though it doesn't seem like it will soon.

Russia-Ukraine War Essay Sample

With the Russian-Ukrainian war essay sample provided below from our paper writing experts, you can gain more insight into structuring a flawless paper.

Why is there a war between Russia and Ukraine?

Final Words

To understand our past and the present, we must study conflicts since they are a product of human nature and civilization. Our graduate essay writing service can produce any kind of essay you want, whether it is about World War II, the Cold War, or another conflict. Send us your specifications with your ' write my essay ' request, and let our skilled writers help you wow your professor!

Having Hard Time Writing on Wars?

From the causes and consequences of wars to the strategies and tactics used in battle, our team of expert writers can provide you with a high-quality essay!

Related Articles

Ukrainians suffer Russia-imposed ‘violence, intimidation, and coercion’

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UN human rights chief Volker Türk on Tuesday called for the fighting and occupation of Ukraine to end, so the country can begin “healing the deep wounds and painful divisions” caused by Russia’s invasion.

Over two years since the invasion began, “harrowing stories of human suffering” unfold in the country every day, High Commissioner Türk told the UN Human Rights Council via a video statement, expressing concern that “the world has grown numb to this crisis ”.

More than 10,500 civilians have been killed, more than 20,000 injured over the past two years of “immense suffering, bloodshed, loss and grief”, the UN rights chief reminded, noting that actual figures are likely to be “significantly higher”.  

Ten years of occupation in Crimea

The rights violations began 10 years ago with the occupation of Crimea by Russian forces, he reminded citing  a recent report by the UN Human Rights Office ( OHCHR ).

“The imposition of the Russian Federation’s legal and administrative systems has resulted in people in Crimea being charged and convicted, sometimes retroactively, for acts that are not crimes under Ukrainian law,”   Mr. Turk said.

The occupation has expanded to parts of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia regions since the February 2022 invasion.

He also noted the conscription of men in Crimea, forced to fight against their own country.  

Generalized impunity

Russian armed forces, the Human Rights Commissioner said, have committed widespread violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, including unlawful killings, torture, enforced disappearances, and arbitrary detention in occupied areas.

Targeting of individuals deemed “pro-Ukrainian” and posing security risks have expanded while Russia has closed down Ukrainian internet providers, mobile networks, TV, and radio, rerouting communications through Russian networks.

“Russian occupying authorities have quashed peaceful protests, restricted free expression, imposed strict controls over residents’ movements, and pillaged homes and businesses”, he said.

“They have actively encouraged people to inform on one another, breeding fear and distrust between neighbors and friends,”  he added.

In an atmosphere of “generalized impunity”  those actions have created “ a pervasive climate of fear , which has allowed the Russian Federation to solidify its control”.

Holding Russian citizenship is increasingly necessary to access vital services, social security, and employment, Volker Türk noted, saying also that people in the occupied territory were pressured to vote in Russian elections.

He highlighted the plight of prisoners of war and Russia’s ongoing abuses: “My Office has recorded allegations of the executions of at least 32 captured Ukrainian PoWs in twelve separate incidents”.

Collaborators facing reprisals

After Ukraine reclaimed territories previously held by Russia, many of these violations ceased. However, some residents deemed to be collaborators have suffered a backlash, he continued. 

Some have been prosecuted for performing routine tasks in their communities during the occupation, often under pressure or coercion, said Mr. Türk. 

Others have been convicted for actions permissible under international humanitarian law when compelled by an occupying power. Additionally, instances of torture, arbitrary detention, and infringements on fair trial rights were documented by OHCHR against some accused of collaboration.

‘Commence healing’

“The tragedy in Ukraine has gone on for too long. I call – again – on the Russian Federation to cease its armed attack,” Mr. Türk said, imploring the Russian authorities to take immediate action to conduct investigations into each allegation of execution of PoWs, and to take steps to end their torture and ill-treatment. 

“ It is time to put an end to this war and occupation and to commence healing the deep wounds and painful divisions they have caused,” the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights underscored.

“History has shown us that the legacy of occupation is painful, complex and long-lasting ,” he added, encouraging Ukraine to adopt a comprehensive approach to accountability, based on broad and inclusive consultations. 

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Home » Writing a Compelling War Essay: Crafting a Powerful Narrative of the Russia Ukraine War 2022

Writing a Compelling War Essay: Crafting a Powerful Narrative of the Russia Ukraine War 2022

Writing a compelling war essay can be a daunting task. It requires a deep understanding of the subject matter and a keen sense of story-telling to craft a powerful narrative that captures the essence of the Russia Ukraine War 2022. In this blog article, we will explore the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the historical context of the war, and the elements of a powerful essay. We will also look at strategies for researching and presenting the evidence in the essay, as well as tips for writing and editing the essay. Finally, we will discuss how to review the essay before submission.

Understanding the conflict between Russia and Ukraine

The conflict between Russia and Ukraine is not a new one. In fact, the two countries have been at odds since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Russia has long been an ally of Ukraine, with the two countries sharing both a cultural and political history. However, tensions have been escalating in recent years due to the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the ongoing war in eastern Ukraine.

The conflict between Russia and Ukraine is primarily driven by geopolitics and economics. Russia sees Ukraine as a strategic buffer against the West and as a potential market for its energy resources. Ukraine, on the other hand, is keen to assert its independence from Russia and has sought to strengthen its ties with the West. This has led to a number of clashes between the two countries, including the current ongoing conflict in the Donbas region of Ukraine.

The Russia Ukraine War 2022 is a major event in world history and has had a profound impact on both countries. It is, therefore, important to understand the conflict and its implications in order to write a compelling war essay.

Historical context of the Russia Ukraine War and its implications

In order to write a powerful narrative of the Russia Ukraine War 2022, we should understand the historical context of the conflict. The conflict between Russia and Ukraine dates back to the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, when Ukraine declared its independence from Russia. The two countries have since been locked in a tense and often hostile relationship, with Russia attempting to reassert its influence over Ukraine and Ukraine striving to maintain its independence.

The conflict escalated in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea, sparking outrage in the international community. This led to the imposition of sanctions on Russia by the European Union and the United States. In response, Russia has continued to support separatist forces in eastern Ukraine, leading to the ongoing war in the Donbas region.

The Russia Ukraine War 2022 is the culmination of this long and bitter conflict. The war has had far-reaching implications, not only for the two countries involved, but for the entire region and beyond.

Crafting a powerful narrative: Elements of a compelling War Essay

Writing a powerful narrative of the Russia Ukraine War 2022 requires an in-depth understanding of the conflict and its implications. A compelling war essay should include a clear thesis statement and well-structured argument. It should also include evidence to support the argument, as well as an analysis of the sources used.

In order to craft a powerful narrative, it is necessary to understand the key elements of a compelling war essay. These include:

-A clear and concise thesis statement -An understanding of the historical context of the conflict -A well-structured argument -Evidence to support the argument -An analysis of the sources used -A conclusion that ties together all the elements of the essay

By incorporating these elements into the essay, it is possible to craft a powerful narrative of the Russia Ukraine War 2022.

Analyzing and evaluating the sources used in the essay

To writing a compelling war essay, using reliable sources that provide accurate information is important. It is also important to analyze and evaluate the sources in order to determine their credibility.

When analyzing sources, we should consider the source’s reliability, accuracy, and relevance. Sources should be reviewed for bias and possible errors. It is also important to look at the date of publication and the author’s credentials.

When evaluating sources, we need to consider the evidence presented in the source. Does the evidence support the argument? Is the evidence presented in a fair and balanced manner? Does the evidence contradict or support other sources?

By analyzing and evaluating the sources used in the essay, it is possible to ensure that the argument is supported by reliable evidence.

Writing an effective thesis statement

The thesis statement is the cornerstone of any essay,  a thesis statement should clearly and concisely state the main argument of the essay. It should also be specific and clearly identify the focus of the essay.

When writing a thesis statement for a war essay, we should consider the scope of the essay. The thesis statement should be broad enough to cover all the elements of the essay, but not so broad that it becomes vague or unfocused.

It is also important to take a stance on the issue. The thesis statement should make a clear and unambiguous argument. It should not be vague or open-ended.

By writing an effective thesis statement, it is possible to set the stage for a powerful and compelling narrative of the Russia Ukraine War 2022.

Structuring the essay: outlining and introduction, body, and conclusion

Once the thesis statement has been written, structure the essay into an introduction, body, and conclusion. The introduction should provide an overview of the essay, as well as a brief explanation of the thesis statement.

The body of the essay should include evidence to support the argument, as well as an analysis of the sources used. It should also include a discussion of the implications of the war.

The conclusion should tie together all the elements of the essay and provide a brief summary of the argument. It should also include a call to action, if applicable.

By outlining the essay and structuring it into an introduction, body, and conclusion, it is possible to create a powerful narrative of the Russia Ukraine War 2022.

Strategies for researching and presenting the evidence for the essay

In order to write a compelling war essay, it is important to research the subject thoroughly and present the evidence in a clear and concise manner.

When researching for the essay, we need to use a variety of sources, including primary and secondary sources. Primary sources, such as news articles, are direct sources of information about the war. Secondary sources, such as books and academic journals, provide an in-depth analysis of the conflict.

When presenting the evidence, it is important to be clear and concise. Evidence should be presented in a logical order, with each point supporting the argument. Also don’t forget to cite all sources used in the essay.

By following these strategies for researching and presenting the evidence, it is possible to create a compelling narrative of the Russia Ukraine War 2022.

Writing and editing the essay

Once the research has been completed and the evidence has been presented, it is time to write the essay. Our essay should be clear and concise. The argument should be well-structured, with each point building on the previous one.

It is also important to use language that is appropriate for the subject matter. The tone of the essay should be appropriate for the topic, and the language should be clear and concise.

Once the essay has been written, the final step in writing a war essay is editing and proofreading. Editing involves making changes to the structure, tone, and content of the essay. Proofreading involves checking essay for any errors in grammar, punctuation, and spelling.

By writing and editing the essay, it is possible to craft a powerful narrative of the Russia Ukraine War 2022.

Reviewing the essay before submission

Before submitting the essay, we need to review it carefully. It is important to make sure that the essay is well-structured and that the argument is clear and concise. The used sources are reliable and accurate. Essay is within the word limit and that it follows the instructions provided by the instructor.

By reviewing the essay before submission, it is possible to ensure that the essay is of the highest quality.

Writing a compelling war essay about the Russia Ukraine War 2022 requires a deep understanding of the conflict and its implications.

While crafting a compelling war essay, it is necessary to understand the elements of a powerful narrative and to analyze and evaluate the sources used. It is also necessary to write an effective thesis statement and structure the essay into an introduction, body, and conclusion. Author should research and present the evidence in a clear and concise manner. Finally, a complete review the essay before submission.

Writing a powerful narrative of the Russia Ukraine War 2022 can be a daunting task, but it is possible with the right approach. By following the tips outlined in this blog article, it is possible to craft a compelling war essay that captures the essence of the war.

By Lily James

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Russia-Ukraine war: White House says US passed written warning of Moscow attack to Russia – as it happened

US describe Russian’s allegation that Ukraine was involved in attack as ‘nonsense’ and says it passed warning to Russian security services

• 28 Mar 2024 Closing summary
• 28 Mar 2024 US dismisses 'nonsense, propaganda' Russian concert attack claims against Ukraine
• 28 Mar 2024 Zelenskiy warns war 'can come to Europe, and to the US'
• 28 Mar 2024 Afternoon summary
• 28 Mar 2024 Russia claims evidence links concert hall attackers to 'Ukrainian nationalist'
• 28 Mar 2024 White House says US passed written warning of Moscow attack to Russia
• 28 Mar 2024 Russia's veto of North Korea sanctions monitors a 'reckless action', says the White House
• 28 Mar 2024 Russian investigators say they have obtained evidence of links between Moscow concert hall attackers and Ukraine - RIA report
• 28 Mar 2024 Russia blocks renewal of North Korea sanctions monitors
• 28 Mar 2024 France blocks fake Ukraine war recruitment website
• 28 Mar 2024 Russia strikes Ukraine's Kharkiv with aerial bombs killing at least one civilian, say local officials
• 28 Mar 2024 Poland and Ukraine hold talks on farm imports dispute
• 28 Mar 2024 Kremlin says questions about the missing after concert attack are for investigators
• 28 Mar 2024 Putin's spy chief visited North Korea, Russian intelligence service says
• 28 Mar 2024 Russia will not attack Nato countries, Putin says
• 28 Mar 2024 Opening summary

White House says US passed written warning of Moscow attack to Russia

The White House on Thursday described Russia ’s allegation that Ukraine was involved in the attack on the Crocus city concert hall as “nonsense”, saying it was clear that Islamic State was “solely responsible”.

According to Reuters, in a briefing to reporters, the White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said that the US passed a written warning of an extremist attack to Russian security services, one of many provided in advance to Moscow .

Closing summary

Here’s a recap of today’s latest developments:

Russian investigators claimed on Thursday they had uncovered evidence that the gunmen who killed more than 140 people in an attack on a concert hall near Moscow last week were linked to “Ukrainian nationalists”. While it described the nature of the alleged evidence, it did not publish it. In a statement, the state investigative committee claimed the attackers had received significant amounts of cash and cryptocurrency from Ukraine, and that another suspect involved in terrorist financing had been detained.

The White House on Thursday described Russia’s allegation that Ukraine was involved in the attack on the Crocus city concert hall as “nonsense”, saying it was clear that Islamic State was “solely responsible”. In a briefing to reporters, the White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said that the US passed a written warning of an extremist attack to Russian security services, one of many provided in advance to Moscow.

Russia vetoed on Thursday the annual renewal of a panel of experts monitoring enforcement of longstanding UN sanctions against North Korea over its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programme. The move comes amid US-led accusations that North Korea has transferred weapons to Russia, which Moscow has used in its war in Ukraine. Both Moscow and Pyongyang have denied the accusations.

The White House called Russia’s veto of the renewal of North Korea sanctions monitors a “reckless action” that “further undermines” the UN security council’s actions on North Korea. South Korea’s UN ambassador Joonkook Hwang said the veto was “almost comparable to destroying a CCTV to avoid being caught red-handed”, while the deputy US ambassador to the UN, Robert Wood, told the council that Moscow had “undermined the prospect of the peaceful, diplomatic resolution of one of the world’s most dangerous nuclear proliferation issues”.

Russia has no designs on any Nato country and will not attack Poland, the Baltic states or the Czech Republic but if the west supplies F-16 fighters to Ukraine then they will be shot down by Russian forces, president Vladimir Putin said late on Wednesday. “The idea that we will attack some other country – Poland, the Baltic States, and the Czechs are also being scared – is complete nonsense. It’s just drivel,” Putin said, according to a Kremlin transcript released on Thursday.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the Ukrainian president, has warned that Vladimir Putin will push Russia’s war “very quickly” on to Nato soil unless he is stopped in Ukraine. In an interview with CBS, Zelenskiy acknowledged that his troops are not prepared to defend against another imminent major Russian offensive, and highlighted the urgency for American Patriot missile defense systems and more artillery.

Poland’s prime minister on Thursday hosted his Ukrainian counterpart for long-awaited talks designed to ease friction over Ukrainian farm imports and border blockades by disgruntled Polish farmers. On Thursday, Polish prime minister Donald Tusk welcomed his counterpart Denys Shmyhal to Warsaw.

Putin’s foreign intelligence chief paid a visit to North Korea this week to deepen bilateral cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang and discuss broader regional security, Russia’s spy service said on Thursday. Sergei Naryshkin, the head the SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence service, visited Pyongyang on 25-27 March, the SVR said. North Korea’s KCNA state media first reported the visit, said Reuters.

The Kremlin gave no indication on Thursday that Russian president Vladimir Putin plans to visit family members of those killed in last Friday’s attack on a Moscow concert hall , which killed 143 people. “If any contacts are necessary, we will inform you accordingly,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said, when asked if Putin planned to meet family members of the dead.

Security measures in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv will be tightened after a spate of Russian ballistic missile attacks and threats of escalation , a city official said on Thursday. Russia staged concerted airstrikes on Ukraine’s energy system last week in what Moscow said was part of a series of “revenge” strikes in response to Kyiv’s bombardment of Russian regions.

Russia struck the north-eastern city of Kharkiv with aerial bombs on Wednesday for the first time since 2022, killing at least one civilian and wounding 16 others, local officials said. The airstrikes caused widespread damage, hitting several residential buildings and damaging the city’s institute for emergency surgery.

Authorities in the Mykolaiv region, near the Black Sea in southern Ukraine, said 12 people were injured and six residential buildings were damaged in a Russian strike on the city on Wednesday afternoon with a ballistic missile.

In an overnight attack on the southern Ukraine region of Zaporizhzhia, Shahed drones struck a residential area, injuring two women aged 72 and 74 , according to regional governor Ivan Fedorov. Rescue services said seven buildings were damaged.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the Ukrainian president, has appointed Oleh Ivashchenko as the new head of Ukraine’s foreign intelligence service.

A Russian military aircraft crashed into the sea on Thursday off the Crimean port of Sevastopol, the Russian-installed governor of the region, Mikhail Razvozhayev, said. The pilot safely ejected and was picked up by rescuers, he added.

The Kremlin said on Thursday complete silence was needed when it came to discussions about possible prisoner exchanges involving Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter arrested in Russia a year ago on suspicion of espionage . Gershkovich, 32, became the first US journalist arrested on spying charges in Russia since the cold war when he was detained by the Federal Security Service (FSB) on 29 March. The reporter, the Wall Street Journal and the US government all deny he is a spy.

Ukraine asked western allies for additional air defences in an extraordinary meeting of the Nato-Ukraine Council that took place at ambassadors’ level on Thursday. Rustem Umerov, the Ukrainian defence minister, briefed the ambassadors and “called on Nato member states to provide additional air defence systems and missiles to protect Ukrainian cities and citizens”.

Ukraine’s foreign minister arrived in New Delhi on Thursday for a two-day visit to boost bilateral ties and cooperation with India , which considers Russia a time-tested ally from the cold war-era.

Poland’s Internal Security Agency (ABW) has carried out searches as part of an investigation with other European security services into alleged Russian espionage , the agency said on Thursday.

French authorities uncovered a website containing a fake recruitment drive for French volunteers to join the war in Ukraine, the defence ministry said on Thursday. The site has now been taken down by French services, a government source, who asked not to be named, told AFP without giving further details on the nature of the operation.

The Moscow attacks appear to have been the work of the group’s branch in Afghanistan, known as Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) .

ISKP, which was founded in 2015 , has targeted propaganda and outreach to central Asia and previously has made multiple efforts to launch recruits into Europe and Russia. Turkey has also been a focus of activity. The four suspects presented in court by Russia were from Tajikistan.

Islamic State (IS) remains defeated in its core strongholds of the Middle East but has made significant progress in Africa and parts of south Asia, winning territory and resources that could serve as a launchpad for a new campaign of extremist violence, analysts and officials believe.

European governments have moved to their highest levels of alert for years after the attack on a concert hall in Moscow last week by militants from IS that killed 140 people .

The attack in Moscow, the most lethal Islamist extremist operation ever in Europe , was claimed by IS, which, officials believe, has been planning new operations against European targets for several years.

Between 2015 and 2019, when IS ran a so-called caliphate across a swath of land it controlled in eastern Syria and western Iraq, the group’s central leadership had little need of its newly established affiliates to launch operations in Europe, as it had all resources to hand with foreign recruits, money and training camps. This led to a series of lethal attacks in France and Belgium .

However, years of counterterrorism operations by local security forces, the US and others, have degraded IS in its former strongholds, and the group is fragmented and weak.

Western security officials with close knowledge of IS in Iraq and Syria said the group had abandoned its project of rebuilding the so-called caliphate but that successful strikes against international targets were seen as “good for morale and the IS brand and compensate for failure closer to home”.

Zelenskiy warns war 'can come to Europe, and to the US'

Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the Ukrainian president, has warned that Vladimir Putin will push Russia’s war “very quickly” on to Nato soil unless he is stopped in Ukraine.

In an interview with CBS published today, Zelenskiy acknowledged that his troops are not prepared to defend against another imminent major Russian offensive.

“We need help now,” the Ukrainian leader said, highlighting the urgency for American Patriot missile defense systems and more artillery.

Zelenskiy warned that if Ukraine does lose, Putin will not stop there. He said:

At the moment, it’s us, then Kazakhstan, then Baltic states, then Poland, then Germany. At least half of Germany … This aggression, and Putin’s army, can come to Europe, and then the citizens of the United States, the soldiers of the United States, will have to protect Europe because they’re the Nato members.

He added that Ukraine is grateful for US support “but the United States don’t have the war going on … but it can come to Europe , and to the United States of America. It can come very quickly to Europe.”

Afternoon summary

It has gone 6pm in Kyiv and 7pm in Moscow. Here is a recap of today’s latest developments:

Russian investigators claimed on Thursday they had uncovered evidence that the gunmen who killed more than 140 people in an attack on a concert hall near Moscow last week were linked to “Ukrainian nationalists”. While it described the nature of the alleged evidence, it did not publish it. In a statement, the state investigative committee claimed the attackers had received significant amounts of cash and cryptocurrency from Ukraine , and that another suspect involved in terrorist financing had been detained.

Ukraine asked western allies for additional air defences in an extraordinary meeting of the Nato-Ukraine Council that took place at the ambassadors level on Thursday. Rustem Umerov, the Ukrainian defence minister, briefed the ambassadors and “called on Nato member states to provide additional air defence systems and missiles to protect Ukrainian cities and citizens”.

Ukraine’s foreign minister arrived in New Delhi on Thursday for a two-day visit to boost bilateral ties and cooperation with India , which considers Russia a time-tested ally from the cold war era.

French authorities uncovered a website containing a fake recruitment drive for French volunteers to join the war in Ukraine, the defence ministry said on Thursday. The site has been taken down by French services, a government source, who asked not to be named, told AFP without giving further details on the nature of the operation.

Reuters have more detail on the Russian military aircraft that crashed into the sea off of Sevastopol ( see 15:35 GMT )

According to Reuters, the Russian military aircraft crashed into the sea on Thursday off the Crimean port of Sevastopol , the Russian-installed governor of the region said.

The pilot safely ejected and was picked up by rescuers, Sevastopol governor Mikhail Razvozhayev said.

Earlier, Russian Telegram channels reported that a Russian Su-35 fighter jet had crashed near Sevastopol. It was not clear what caused the incident.

Russia claims evidence links concert hall attackers to 'Ukrainian nationalist'

Russian investigators claimed on Thursday they had uncovered evidence that the gunmen who killed more than 140 people in an attack on a concert hall near Moscow last week were linked to “Ukrainian nationalists”, reports Reuters.

Russia has said from the outset that it is pursuing a Ukrainian link to the attack, even though Kyiv has denied it and the militant group Islamic State has claimed responsibility.

According to Reuters, in a statement, the state investigative committee said for the first time that it had uncovered evidence of a Ukrainian link. While it described the nature of the alleged evidence, it did not publish it.

“As a result of working with detained terrorists, studying the technical devices seized from them, and analysing information about financial transactions, evidence was obtained of their connection with Ukrainian nationalists,” the statement said.

It claimed the attackers had received significant amounts of cash and cryptocurrency from Ukraine , and that another suspect involved in terrorist financing had been detained.

Eleven people were arrested in the first 24 hours after last Friday’s attack and eight of these, including the four suspected gunmen, have been placed in pre-trial detention. Seven are from Tajikistan and the other from Kyrgyzstan .

The US had publicly warned before the concert shooting that it had received intelligence of a possible attack by extremists in Russia. US officials say they believe it was Islamic State Khorasan , the network’s Afghan branch, that was responsible.

Russia says it is suspicious that the US was able to name the alleged perpetrator of the attack so soon after it took place. The head of Russia’s FSB Security Service said earlier this week, again without providing evidence, that he believed Ukraine, along with the US and the UK , were involved.

Western security analysts have said that the attack raised questions about the resourcing and priorities of Russian intelligence agencies that have been heavily focused on the Ukraine war and the need to stamp out opposition to it within Russia.

Reuters have a breaking news line on a Russian military plane which has crashed in the sea near Sevastopol , according to a local governor.

More deatails soon …

Russia's veto of North Korea sanctions monitors a 'reckless action', says the White House

The White House has called Russia’s veto of the renewal of North Korea sanctions monitors a “reckless action” that “further undermines” the UN security council’s actions on North Korea.

“This is almost comparable to destroying a CCTV to avoid being caught red-handed,” South Korea ’s UN ambassador Joonkook Hwang said of Russia ’s veto of the renewal of North Korea sanctions monitors, reports Reuters.

“Moscow has undermined the prospect of the peaceful, diplomatic resolution of one of the world’s most dangerous nuclear proliferation issues,” deputy US ambassador to the UN, Robert Wood, told the council.

According to Reuters, Russia’s UN ambassador Vassily Nebenzia questioned the experts’ work, telling the security council before the vote: “Its work is increasingly being reduced to playing into the hands of western approaches, reprinting biased information and analysing newspaper headlines and poor quality photos.”

North Korea has been under UN sanctions for its ballistic missile and nuclear programmes since 2006 and those measures have been strengthened over the years.

The panel of independent experts has monitored those UN sanctions for the past 15 years, reporting twice a year to the security council and recommending action for improved implementation of the measures.

The mandate for the current panel of experts will expire on 30 April 2024.

The panel’s most recent report was made public earlier this month and said it was investigating dozens of suspected cyber-attacks by North Korea that raked in $3bn to help it further develop its nuclear weapons programme.

“The panel, through its work to expose sanctions non-compliance, was an inconvenience for Russia,” said the UK’s UN ambassador Barbara Woodward. “But let me be clear to Russia – the sanctions regime remains in place and the UK remains committed to holding DPRK to account for its compliance.”

For the past several years the UN security council has been divided over how to deal with Pyongyang . Russia and Chin a, veto powers along with the US, the UK and France , have said more sanctions will not help and want such measures to be eased.

China and Russia say joint military drills by the US and South Korea provoke Pyongyang, while Washington accuses Beijing and Moscow of emboldening North Korea by shielding it from more sanctions.

Russian investigators say they have obtained evidence of links between Moscow concert hall attackers and Ukraine - RIA report

Reuters has a couple of breaking news lines on the wires about Russia ’s investigative committee saying it has obtained evidence of links between the Crocus city concert hall attackers and Ukraine . Reuters are citing the Russian state news agency RIA.

According to the RIA report, as shared by Reuters, Russian investigators said another suspect involved in “terrorist financing” has been detained.

More details soon …

Russia blocks renewal of North Korea sanctions monitors

Russia vetoed on Thursday the annual renewal of a panel of experts monitoring enforcement of longstanding UN sanctions against North Korea over its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programme, reports Reuters.

The move comes amid US -led accusations that North Korea has transferred weapons to Russia, which Moscow has used in its war in Ukraine . Both Moscow and Pyongyang have denied the accusations, but vowed last year to deepen military relations.

China abstained from the vote on Thursday, while the remaining 13 council members voted in favor.

Authorities in the Mykolaiv region, near the Black Sea in southern Ukraine , said 12 people were injured and six residential buildings were damaged in a Russian strike on the city on Wednesday afternoon with a ballistic missile, according to the Associated Press (AP). In an overnight attack on the southern Ukraine region of Zaporizhzhia , Shahed drones struck a residential area, injuring two women aged 72 and 74, according to regional governor Ivan Fedorov . Rescue services said seven buildings were damaged. The Black Sea city of Odesa repelled three missile and drone attacks, officials said.

A duty that the EU plans to impose on Russian wheat supplies will hit the European market, Sergei Dankvert , head of Russian agriculture watchdog Rosselkhoznadzor , was quoted as saying by state-owned news agency Tass.

The imposition of duties could lead to a loss of grain handling capacity, while Russia would be able to divert to other markets the 2.5-3m metric tons of grain it had been shipping to the EU, Dankvert said, according to Reuters.

France blocks fake Ukraine war recruitment website

French authorities have uncovered a website containing a fake recruitment drive for French volunteers to join the war in Ukraine , the defence ministry said on Thursday, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The site has now been taken down by French services, a government source, who asked not to be named, told AFP without giving further details on the nature of the operation.

The site, which is now inaccessible, said 200,000 French people were invited to “enlist in Ukraine”, with immigrants given priority.

A link to the site – that resembled the French army’s genuine recruitment portal – had been posted on X, the French defence ministry said.

“The site is a fake government site,” the ministry said, also on X, “and has been reposted by malevolent accounts as part of a disinformation campaign”.

According to AFP, the ministry did not name any suspects in the website spoof, but a government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the site bore “the hallmarks of a Russian or pro-Russian effort as part of a disinformation campaign claiming that the French army is preparing to send troops to Ukraine”.

French president Emmanuel Macron angered the Russian leadership last month by hardening his tone on the conflict sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, refusing to rule out sending ground troops and insisting Europe had to do all that was needed for a Russian defeat.

Similar recent examples of disinformation posts included pictures of French army convoys wrongly presented as moving towards the Ukrainian border, the official said.

The fake website invited potential recruits to contact “unit commander Paul” for information about joining.

The defence ministry and government cyber units are investigating, ministry staff told AFP.

The French government has recently stepped up efforts to denounce and fight what it says are Russian disinformation and destabilisation campaigns aimed at undermining French public support for Ukraine in its war against Russia.

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Ukraine’s Deepening Fog of War

Two years after Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukrainian leaders are seeking a path forward in the face of ferocious assaults and daunting unknowns.

A Russian strike this week in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, damaged a water filtration plant, cutting the water supply to part of the city. Credit... Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

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By Marc Santora

Reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine

• Feb. 24, 2024

The forecasts are anything but optimistic: The best Ukraine can hope for in 2024, many Western officials and analysts say, is to simply hold the line.

Only a year ago, Ukraine was brimming with confidence. It had defied expectations , staving off Russia’s attempt to take over the country. Western nations, buoyed by Ukraine’s success, promised aid to help Ukrainians break through Russian lines.

But the flow of much-needed weapons from allies into the country was unpredictable, and slow. Ukraine’s own domestic arms production was mired in bureaucracy, top military officials have said. And the command structure of the army was not changing quickly enough to manage a force that had expanded from 200,000 troops to nearly a million in a matter of months.

Those weaknesses, and some strategic battlefield missteps, stymied Ukraine’s widely telegraphed counteroffensive, which resulted in only marginal territorial gains. At the same time, Russia was fortifying its defensive lines, converting its economy to war production, conscripting hundreds of thousands of fighters and adjusting its strategy for renewed offensives this winter.

Now, as the war enters its third year, leaders in Kyiv are trying to find a new path forward amid ferocious Russian assaults, while facing a series of daunting unknowns.

The most urgent of these is out of Ukraine’s control: Will the United States Congress come through with billions more in military and economic aid? Without that, Western officials and military analysts have said, Ukraine’s war effort would be at grave risk.

But other issues are within Ukraine’s power to address. Can its civilian leaders muster the will to enact a potentially unpopular mobilization plan to replenish its depleted forces? Can the military command and the civilian government mend the rifts that have divided them and that led to the recent firing of Ukraine’s top general ?

“Of course, uncertainty always affects all processes,” Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council, said in an interview. “We can talk for a very long time now about how the war has changed, because it is completely different than it was in February and March 2022. But the main thing that should be there is certainty.”

For now, Ukraine has to move forward without that certainty. Even as he presses the case for more Western support, President Volodymyr Zelensky is starting to take steps to improve some of the systemic problems under his control.

For instance, Kyiv has added several command headquarters to oversee brigades more efficiently. And while the new top general, Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, is a product of the Soviet military system, Mr. Zelensky has installed a younger generation of generals under him who he hopes will bring more innovation to the battlefield.

The minister of defense, Rustem Umerov, has vowed to accelerate the development of ammunition production in Ukraine. He has also introduced a new procurement process to replace a post-Soviet system that was slower and more susceptible to corruption; one goal is to ensure the system integrates more seamlessly with those of other nations.

Another initiative is the Future Force Project, which brings together experts from different departments of the government, with the assistance of NATO partners. Its mission is to better organize the Ukrainian military for the needs of fighting a large-scale war, seeking to improve things like communication and coordination between branches.

It is based on best practices in Western militaries and already has the verbal blessing of the president, military officials said.

Despite these expected changes, military analysts and Western officials have voiced sobering assessments of Ukraine’s chances against a Russian Army with superior troop numbers and ammunition stockpiles, and a clear willingness to sacrifice thousands of soldiers to achieve even small gains.

As Ukraine confronts these imbalances, it also faces the once unthinkable prospect of waging a long war without American military backing.

With U.S. support held up for months by a faction of increasingly isolationist Republicans in Congress, severe shortages of ammunition have contributed to Ukrainian losses — like the brutal and ultimately unsuccessful fight to hold on to Avdiivka — which in turn has led to Ukraine suffering heavier casualties, further straining its already depleted forces.

Ukrainian military commanders will need to find ways to slow that vicious cycle while the political leaders engage in yet another desperate diplomatic push to try to fill the void left by the United States.

Mr. Zelensky must also repair the relationship between the civilian government and the military. The tensions simmered for months amid disagreements over halting mobilization efforts and military priorities competing with the political need to show allies progress.

Military officials were concerned last year that the government wanted a road map for victory without telling them the amount of men, ammunition and reserves they would have to execute any plan, according to Gen. Viktor Nazarov, an adviser to the former commanding general in Ukraine’s army, Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhny.

“This is what, unfortunately, our political leadership did not understand or did not want to understand when they demanded strategic plans from the military without strategic reserves and resources,” General Nazarov said in an interview.

General Zaluzhny leveled many of these same criticisms at the government before his dismissal. In an essay for CNN, for example, he contended that regulatory and production issues had hampered the defense industry, leading to “production bottlenecks — in ammunition, for instance — which further deepen Ukraine’s dependence on its allies for supplies.”

Both men were dismissed in Mr. Zelensky’s military shake-up early this month. But Mr. Zelensky named General Zaluzhny a “Hero of Ukraine” and shared a public embrace in an effort to demonstrate unity. And General Nazarov said the disagreements should not obscure the fact that the military and civilian government wanted the same thing: victory. Without that, he said, there is no military and there is no government.

Officials in the president’s office declined requests for interviews.

Despite the public tensions between the civilian administration and the military command, Mr. Zelensky may have some room to maneuver as he tries to patch up the relationship.

Though his rating in opinion polls has slipped slightly, he still enjoys broad public support. Almost 70 percent of Ukrainians believe he should remain in office for however long the country is under martial law, and that elections should be postponed until it is lifted, according to a survey released this week by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology.

Mr. Zelensky and the military leadership are in lock step in professing that they are not interested in any cease-fire that would be struck on terms favorable to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

The Ukrainian leader has said time and again that Russia needs to relinquish any territory it has captured. He has also emphasized that any pause in fighting would not lead to the end of the war. It would simply give Russia time to rearm.

Kyiv’s position is “not only about the territory, but also about the security,” Mr. Zelensky told Fox News on Thursday. The world, he said, should know by now that Mr. Putin simply cannot be trusted.

At the moment, General Syrsky has conceded, the initiative has shifted to the Russians and Ukraine must focus on strategic defense — maximizing Russian losses while fighting smartly to preserve its own fighting force.

General Syrsky has also spoken about the need to increase domestic arms production as well as developing and exploiting new technologies. But, like his predecessor, he will have to make strategic plans without knowing fully what resources his army will have at its disposal.

Simply put, he needs more soldiers.

That challenge is in Kyiv’s control, but the government has yet to reveal a plan to deal with it.

A bill that would overhaul the mobilization process — and potentially add up to 500,000 conscripts — is making its way through the Ukrainian Parliament. But lawmakers nervous about the political ramifications have already added some 1,300 amendments to the proposed law and it is not clear when it will be ready for a vote.

Beyond the thorny politics of the issue, Mr. Zelensky must demonstrate to the public the dire need for new troops without undermining morale, causing social unrest or damaging the already battered economy.

As the world assesses Ukraine’s prospects and the Kremlin pushes a narrative meant to convince onlookers that it cannot be beaten, Mr. Zelensky must work equally hard to show that Ukraine can win.

On Saturday, the second anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Mr. Zelensky visited the shuttered airport at Hostomel outside Kyiv, where Ukrainians soldiers fought back Russian paratroopers in a key early battle that helped save the capital.

“Any normal person wants the war to end,” Mr. Zelensky said in a video recording. “But none of us will allow our country to end.”

“That is why we always add ‘on our terms’ to the words about ending the war,” he said. “That is why the word ‘independent’ will always stand next to the word ‘Ukraine’ in future history. Let’s fight for it. And we will win.”

Marc Santora has been reporting from Ukraine since the beginning of the war with Russia. He was previously based in London as an international news editor focused on breaking news events and earlier the bureau chief for East and Central Europe, based in Warsaw. He has also reported extensively from Iraq and Africa. More about Marc Santora

Our Coverage of the War in Ukraine

News and Analysis

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has signed into law three measures aimed at replenishing the ranks of his country’s depleted army, including lowering the draft age to 25 .

With continued American aid to Ukraine stalled and against the looming prospect of a second Trump presidency, NATO officials are looking to take more control of directing military support from Ukraine’s allies  — a role that the United States has played for the past two years.

Exploding drones hit an oil refinery and munitions factory far to the east of Moscow, in what Ukrainian media and military experts said was among the longest-range strikes with Ukrainian drones so far in the war .

Conditional Support: Ukraine wants a formal invitation to join NATO, but NATO has no appetite for taking on a new member  that, because of the alliance’s covenant of collective security, would draw it into the biggest land war in Europe since 1945.

“Shell Hunger”: A desperate shortage of munitions in Ukraine  is warping tactics and the types of weapons employed. What few munitions remain are often mismatched with battlefield needs as the country’s forces prepare for an expected Russian offensive this summer.

Turning to Marketing: Ukraine’s troop-starved brigades have started their own recruitment campaigns  to fill ranks depleted in the war with Russia.

How We Verify Our Reporting

Our team of visual journalists analyzes satellite images, photographs , videos and radio transmissions  to independently confirm troop movements and other details.

We monitor and authenticate reports on social media, corroborating these with eyewitness accounts and interviews. Read more about our reporting efforts .

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Russia-Ukraine War Essay in English

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Russia-Ukraine War Essay in English 100 words

Over the past two years, 2021 and 2022, the tension between Russia and Ukraine has only gotten worse because Russia has been building up its military on the border with Ukraine. It has hurt their relationships with each other, especially with the U.S. The US made it clear to Russia that following the invasion, the Russian economy would be in a mess, and this would lead to bad things.

Russia seems to be getting ready for a third world war, and on Thursday, February 24, 2021, at dusk, they attacked with artillery, air strikes, and missiles. Without a doubt, this has been the most dangerous time for security in Europe in the last ten years. No matter what happens, everyone in the world is praying for peace. Please end this war soon!

Russia-Ukraine War Essay in English 200 words

It is possible for individuals, groups, communities, or even countries to be at odds with one another, which can lead to conflict. Disagreements are the root cause of all disputes, including subsequent confrontations. It is a condition in which people are forced to endure hardships on multiple levels, including the physical, the mental, the emotional, the political, and so on.

They come to believe what they do depending on the values they have, the culture they come from, the experiences they’ve had, and their gender. The war frenzy we are currently seeing is in a transitory phase; while there has not been a single flame raised, hundreds of winds are ready to ignite it.

Even when there is only a conflict between two words, the entire world is split into two camps, each of which supports one of the opposing camps. In addition, the confrontation between Russia and Ukraine has caused a great deal of harm, and it is only becoming worse as time goes on. The likelihood of superpowers going to war as a result of this debate has now significantly increased.

This conflict first broke out in 2014 and has since mostly involved Russia and forces sympathetic to Russia on one side and Ukraine on the other. The position in Crimea and sections of the Donbas, which are recognized internationally as being a part of Ukraine, were the focus of the conflict that led to the war.

Russia-Ukraine War Essay in English 250 words

INTRODUCTION

In the month of February 2022, Russian troops launched an invasion of the nearby nation of Ukraine. The Russians fired missiles against military sites as well as residential areas in cities all across the territory of Ukraine. More than 2 million people were forced to flee their homes in Ukraine in order to get away from the conflict. The governments of numerous other nations all over the world demanded an end to the conflict, yet, hostilities persisted.

RUSSIA-UKRAINE CONFLICT

In the latter half of 2021, Putin began stationing additional troops along the border with Ukraine. The invasion of Ukraine by Putin’s forces took place on February 24, 2022. As they went farther into the country, they launched attacks on a wide variety of locations. The people of Ukraine and the Ukrainian soldiers fought back against their attackers. On the other hand, tens of thousands of people escaped to Poland and other countries in order to get away from the conflict. The violence resulted in a significant amount of property damage.

Many nations, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and others, made efforts to convince Putin to call off the war. They contributed to the assistance of the Ukrainian forces by sending weaponry. In addition to this, they put sanctions on Russia. Economic sanctions are a form of retribution. They make it difficult for Russia to sell their goods and have access to money due to their actions. The fighting, on the other hand, proceeded.

Russian aggression towards Ukraine crushed any last hopes for stability in post-Cold War Europe, putting Ukraine and the West scrambling to respond while Russia gloried in the finished product and began to accept its isolation.

Environmental Pollution Essay Save the environment for future generations Essay Winter Season Essay Essay on Pariksha pe Charcha Importance of Education Essay Srinivasa Ramanujan essay Essay on Future Educational Challenges Know Your Freedom Fighters Essay Essay on 5G Technology in English

Russia-Ukraine War Essay in English 300 words

Fears of conflict and possible invasion of Ukraine have been fueled by reports that Russia has amassed a large number of soldiers near the border between Russia and Ukraine.

WHAT LED TO THE RUSSIA-UKRAINE CONFLICT?

Russia offered the West an eight-point security accord proposal in December 2021. The document’s stated goal was to ease tensions in Europe, particularly the situation in Ukraine. However, it included problematic measures like preventing NATO from expanding, banning drills in the region, and preventing Ukraine from joining. The consistent failure of drought talks and rising tensions due to a Russian troop buildup on the border between Russia and Ukraine. It has been speculated that this issue could spark a new “cold war” or even a “third world war,” gaining widespread attention around the world.

THIS WAR BETWEEN RUSSIA AND UKRAINE TOOK PLACE IN THE MODERN ERA.

Russia’s latest military show near the Ukrainian border is related to earlier incidents. Russia isn’t the only country interested in Ukraine; the United States and the European Union do as well. Despite decades of shared culture, the United States and the European Union see Ukraine as a strategic buffer between Russia and the West. Russia wants Western guarantees that Ukraine will not be accepted by NATO because of the alliance’s anti-Russian bias. The United States, however, is not going to give in to Russia’s demands.

An escalation of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine might have far-reaching effects on international stability. The argument for de-escalation is strong, as mending strained relations through peaceful means is good for all parties involved. The United States can play a vital role in ending the Russia-Ukraine situation with the help of other European allies, including the United Kingdom, Germany, and France.

Russia-Ukraine War Essay in English 500 words

CAUSE OF CONFLICT BETWEEN RUSSIA AND UKRAINE.

Since Ukraine broke apart from the Soviet Union, both Russia and the west have been competing with one another to have a stronger influence in the country. Their goal is to maintain a power balance in the region that tilts in their favor. The buffer zone that Ukraine provides between Russia and the west is extremely essential. Russia has significant strategic advantages thanks to the one-of-a-kind terrain of the region where the Black Sea first formed. There are various factors that have contributed to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine; nevertheless, many believe that NATO is the primary cause. It all began in the year 1999.

In the beginning, there were just 12 members, but now there are a total of 30 members. In addition, Ukraine is interested in joining NATO. But Russia does not like it. Because the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has a principle that states if a country becomes involved in a conflict with any other countries, then every country that is a member of NATO must fight alongside that country, it indicates that everyone will respond to it at the same time.

WHY DID RUSSIA INVADE UKRAINE?

Although there had already been difficulties involving Russia and Ukraine, an ex-Soviet republic, for a considerable amount of time, the situation did not start to spiral out of control until the beginning of 2021. In January of the previous year, the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, pleaded with the Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden, to allow Ukraine to join NATO.

This infuriated Russia, and in response, they began conducting “training exercises” in the spring of the previous year near their border with Ukraine, and they stepped up their presence in the fall. By December, the United States had begun to ratchet up the publicity surrounding the impending deployment of Russian forces, and President Biden had warned that Russia would face severe punishment if it attacked Ukraine.

Russia has requested that the West provide an assurance that NATO would not engage in any military activity in eastern Europe or Ukraine. This guarantee must be legally binding. Vladimir Putin asserts that Ukraine is a Western puppet state and that it was never a legitimate state, to begin with.

It is not the first time that tensions between Russia and Ukraine have reached a breaking point; in fact, this is not even the most recent instance. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014, when separatists backed by President Putin captured vast swaths of eastern Ukraine, Russia has been engaged in combat with the Ukrainian army. At the time, Russia had included Crimea in its territory.

IMPACT OF RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR ON INDIA.

Despite the fact that India imports more than 80 percent of the oil it consumes, the proportion of oil imports to the country’s total imports is just about 25 percent. This is concerning since the conflict between Russia and Ukraine may result in an increase in oil prices, which will, in turn, increase the risk of India’s already rising inflation. The widening of the current account deficit will also be affected by the surge in the price of oil. There is a disparity between the monetary worth of the commodities and services that are brought in and taken out of the country.

While there were certainly alternate paths that could have been taken, the causes of the conflict ran considerably deeper, and the participants were subject to many more external and internal constraints than is suggested by the blame-oriented literature. As a result, plans to turn Ukraine into a neutral state or hoping that Vladimir Putin will eventually leave office are not viable options for ending the conflict.

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Analysis: Netanyahu’s War Strategy Doesn’t Make Any Sense

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Netanyahu’s War Strategy Doesn’t Make Any Sense

Even on their own terms, israel’s plans don’t add up..

• Middle East and North Africa
• Anchal Vohra

In November, I met Hamas-held hostage Liri Albag’s father, Eli Albag, in Tel Aviv. As he sat in the middle of Begin Road holding a picture of his 19-year-old daughter, he said he backed the government’s military campaign to put pressure on Hamas. “Do you think Hamas would let go of hostages on their own?” But Albag seems to have run out of patience. In late March, in an ultimatum to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he told the  local press  that the families would no longer hold rallies but gather on the streets, joining an expanding anti-Netanyahu protest movement. 

The trouble is that while hostages’ families see the return of their relatives and Hamas’s removal from their neighborhood as victory—in that order—many have long known that those two war aims have been at odds. But Netanyahu has deliberately prioritized the elimination of Hamas over the release of the hostages since the beginning of the military campaign without actually having a coherent plan to achieve either. 

The prime minister increasingly stands accused by military analysts, and a growing portion of the Israeli public, of merely reacting to events while lacking a vision that could end the war, free the hostages, and usher in any semblance of peace. 

Yet he remains indignant. In response to the protests, Netanyahu  said that in “the moment before victory,” early elections would “paralyze” the country and only benefit Hamas. He has now set his eyes on Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, where more than a million Palestinians have sought shelter. Any such attack will not only cause international outrage but make negotiations with Hamas much harder. 

Soon after Hamas rampaged through Israeli towns and kibbutzim on Oct. 7, 2023, and killed 1,200 people and abducted more than 250, Netanyahu declared war. The underlying message to hostage families was that the bombing of Gaza would pressure Hamas into releasing its captives and at the same time eliminate the group. 

But he skirted more fundamental questions over exactly how he intended to eliminate a group that has massive public support not just inside Gaza and other Palestinian territories but also bases in Lebanon, Syria, Iran, and elsewhere. According to an annual threat assessment compiled by U.S. intelligence, Israel could face years of resistance from Hamas, an assessment backed by two senior Israeli security officials who spoke with Foreign Policy . 

Even if, after years of counterinsurgency operations, Israeli security forces manage to destroy the group in Gaza, what about future reincarnations? Even if the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) destroy Hamas’s offshoots over an even longer period of time, how would Netanyahu eliminate the idea of armed resistance without a political solution on the horizon? 

“We have destroyed 18 out of the total 24 battalions of Hamas, but how far are we from eliminating the group? That is a big question,” a senior security official told Foreign Policy on the condition of anonymity. “We can eliminate Hamas, but we don’t have a timeline, and, yes, other groups can emerge.” 

Israel’s military operations inside Gaza have significantly damaged Hamas’s infrastructure and military capabilities, but they haven’t guaranteed peace. The fact that Israel’s world-renowned defense forces and security services haven’t managed to nab the two masterminds of the Oct. 7 attack—Mohammed Deif and Yahya Sinwar, who are still hiding somewhere in Gaza’s crevices—is telling of the country’s limitations and the support that Hamas’s leadership still receives. 

In February, when Netanyahu finally announced the outline of a plan, it was scant on details, quickly dismissed as a “ non-plan ” by an Israeli expert who described it as “untethered from reality,” and more than anything else sounded like a road map to reoccupy Gaza. 

Netanyahu said he wants “security control” of Gaza for the foreseeable future and will only allow reconstruction once the area has been completely demilitarized. He wants Palestinians to be deradicalized and has ruled out recognition of Palestinian statehood. Any agreement, he said, would only be reached “through direct negotiations” between Israelis and Palestinians, but he hasn’t offered any timeline. According to reports , the plan circulated states that the civilian administration in postwar Gaza would be run by non-Hamas nonhostile local elements. 

At first glance, it makes sense to Israelis who are understandably terrified after Hamas’s brutal attack and want to live in safety. But on closer scrutiny, it doesn’t add up. For starters, Netanyahu hasn’t clarified if he is going to depute Israeli boots on the ground for an indefinite period or wants unimpeded Israeli access to the strip as and when required. The former would amount to reoccupying Gaza and the latter to its de facto control. Both options have yet to be presented to the Israeli people and Israel’s international partners. 

Even if Netanyahu agrees to a multinational force composed of Israel’s newest Arab allies to take over security in Gaza, there are questions over how such a force would gain credibility among Palestinians. Demilitarizing all of Hamas’s battalions might be a short-term task but to fight its remnants, and reincarnations, will take years, maybe decades. Tackling an insurgency is still a more manageable task for security forces than monitoring an antagonistic proto-state, but it will inflict heavy costs on Israeli forces. It is unclear whether the costs will be worth it since Israel’s heavy-handedness could either discourage Palestinian attacks inside Israel or encourage them. 

The goal to deradicalize Palestinians, a former Israeli security official said, was more in the direction of lasting peace. “Deradicalization is key because we need to change the perception of Palestinians that we are a transient phenomena and sooner or later would crumble under pressure,” said Eran Lerman, a former Israeli deputy national security advisor. Deradicalization programs in schools and mosques would be aimed at those who do not “accept Israel’s right to exist.”

But Palestinians say it’s yet another Netanyahu tactic to delay a two-state solution. After all, Palestinians aren’t merely opposed to Israel due to Hamas’s propaganda. Many have been victims of dispossession by the Israeli state and settlers—and that’s before the suffering imposed by the current war. Netanyahu hasn’t revealed any plans for how to shape Palestinian ideas of self-determination in a more productive fashion. 

Netanyahu’s suggestion that locals will be handed eventual civilian control also seems disingenuous. Who exactly does he have in mind? One Israeli security source said locals beholden to Israel-friendly Arab nations of the Abraham Accords—particularly the United Arab Emirates—would pass the test. But any such leaders would be seen as Israeli puppets who may lack standing among Palestinians. They might become just as much a subject of ridicule as the subdued Palestinian Authority, led by Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank. 

Netanyahu’s campaign to decimate Hamas, demilitarize Gaza, and deradicalize Palestinians in effect amounts to the strip’s reoccupation. Even if reoccupying Gaza is not what most Israelis are comfortable with, that’s where Netanyahu’s non-plan is headed. “Israelis don’t want to use the O-word, but they don’t have any choice,” said Jonathan Conricus, a former spokesperson for the IDF. 

Last month, the United States abstained from a vote at the United Nations Security Council that called for a cease-fire. Gaza’s reoccupation will further widen the rift. Netanyahu’s strategy, in other words, may be headed for a pyrrhic victory in the form of responsibility for Gaza and its 2 million inhabitants, an increasingly alienated U.S. government, and growing international isolation. 

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