On February 24, 2022, to the world’s astonishment, and after weeks of denying that his country was planning Ukraine’s invasion, Russia’s Vladimir Putin ordered the military to invade Ukraine. The United Nations, the United States, and most European countries condemned the invasion.
Although there were international condemnation of Russia’s aggression against its smaller neighbor, in the initial phase for the world, the international community was still reluctant, or, to put it madly, scared to support Ukraine militarily. US president Joe Biden, who first informed the world that Russia was gearing up for the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, advised Ukraine President Volodymyr Zenlensky to flee.
President Biden’s advice that Zenlensky leaves Ukraine was predicated on the presumption from most military analysts that the Russian would completely demolish Ukraine’s military within the first seventy hours, if not within the first week of the invasion. President Zenlensky not only rejected Biden’s call but rallied his people to fight against what, on paper, is the world’s second most powerful army.
According to US and British intelligence sources, President Putin’s objective was to capture Kyiv, and arguably the entire Ukraine, and install a puppet administration that Moscow would have controlled. The Ukrainian military, fighting for the homeland, put up an incredible resistance. After weeks of fierce fighting and considerable losses, Ukraine’s military pushed the Russians out of Kyiv, prompting Russian troops to abandon the goal of taking the capital.
Russia’s withdrawal from around the Ukrainian capital came at a high cost. According to the General staff of the Ukrainian army, Russia lost 35,500 troops including other vital pieces of military equipment. In Butcha, for example, the Russian military was accused of killing armless civilians. As Russia shifts its focus to Eastern Ukraine, Russian troops continue bombing schools, hospitals, shopping malls, and even a movie theater where many innocent children were hiding in the basement to escape the Russian troops’ indiscriminate shelling.
After leaving Kyiv and its surroundings in destruction and failing to accomplish the stated objective, Russia now focuses its firepower on the east, where they are pounding Ukraine citizens’ infrastructure and leaving massive destruction along the way.
As Russia sets its eyes on Donbas and despite international condemnation, the Russian military’s indiscriminate shillings, mostly of citizen infrastructure, continue without anyone taking any meaningful action to provide Ukraine with the kind of weapon it needs to stop or slow Russia.
The United States, which for now is the biggest supplier of military assistance to Ukraine, has always sent that assistance after Russia has taken territories from Ukraine. When the war started, and President Zenlensky requested the international community to impose a no-fly zone, Western nations insisted that would not happen because taking such attention would escalate the war.
In Mariupol, where Russian bombardments leveled the city for months, the horror inflicted on that city seems to escape the United States and its allies’ consciousness. They insist on giving Ukraine the necessary weapons even on the battlefield with Russia.
However, following criticism from a bipartisan group of senators, including Sen. Lindsay Graham, the Biden administration agreed and gave 20 howitzers to Ukraine but not before Russian forces had done considerable destruction and captured the decimated cities of siversky, Lyshchank, and other cities across Ukraine. Germany has promised to send Iris Air defense system, but that would get to Ukraine until mid to later July. Again, the United has agreed to send long-range missiles to Ukraine because Ukraine’s military does not use those weapons to hit targets inside Russia. Before the United States provided Ukraine with the first batch of the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), the United States technically had to get Russia’s approval before its allies transferred those weapons to Ukraine.
War is full of secrecy and deception, but western leaders seem to forget that fact. Before providing weapons to Ukraine, western leaders announce for weeks the type of weapons they are sending. Moreover, they consistently disclose these weapon transfers, which some consider letting Russia know which weapon they are transferring. The frustrating aspect of the whole thing is those weapons do not get into Ukraine’s hands promptly.
According to President Zenlensky, the Russians now control 20 percent of the Ukrainian territory, mainly in the eastern Donbas region. Now that Russian troops have captured more territory in eastern Ukraine, there is no reason that President Putin will not continue to seek to take more of Ukraine’s land despite the enormous losses the Russian army has suffered since the invasion.
At the recent G – 7 summit in Germany, the western leaders promised to continue to support Ukraine for as long as it took to fight the Russian invasion. But as the G – 7 leaders were at that summit in Germany, the Russians carried out widespread missile strikes on several Ukrainian cities, including the capital.
Russians had stepped up shelling schools, hospitals, and children’s playgrounds with no concrete action from the western government led by the United States. In 2011, these same governments that went to Libya and bombed the country to help rebel troops oust then-President Mahammad Kaddafi are now refraining or afraid of escalating the Ukraine conflict for fear of Russia. As the western continues to dag its feet, innocent Ukrainian mothers and children are being bombed almost daily.
President Volodymyr, seeing the suffering of his people and the reluctance of his western backer to provide the weapon promised expeditiously, expressed his frustration over how these leaders make all these promises but take forever for the weapons his country’s military needs to defend their country from the carnage that Russia continues to inflict on his land.
If Putin is to be stopped, he must stop the military and not through negotiation. But with Ukraine’s western backer scare and unwillingness to militarily support Ukraine, President Zenlensky will have to settle for making a tough choice of ceding territory to Russia.
As the war continues, the United States and its western allies face profound humiliation and lasting damage to their reputation if Ukraine is not supported in the way that the Ukrainian army retakes land that Russia currently occupies. Firstly, Ukraine’s defeat is mostly a defeat for the United States and its allies. The west claimed at the start of the war that they would support Ukraine to weaken Russia so that Russia never does what she has done to Georgia and now Ukraine. Second, Taiwan and others and other countries that currently look up to the United States will have to develop their military capacities, knowing that the west cannot defend them when conflict with china or Russia breaks out.