As many as 1.8 million soldiers on both sides are said to have been killed or gone missing in action, with Russia losing 1.2 million soldiers and Ukraine around 600,000
Today (Feb. 24) is the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The four years of a grinding war of attrition, which began as Mr Vladimir Putin’s euphemism of ‘special military operation’, have served no one, bringing mayhem and destruction to Ukrainians while Russia has been sinking all its resources and its soldiers into a war that it appears incapable of winning.
As many as 1.8 million soldiers on both sides are said to have been killed or gone missing in action, with Russia losing 1.2 million soldiers and Ukraine around 600,000. The Russian economy, boosted initially by war spending, is tanking now, its oil revenues dwindling and its budget deficit rising even as its people are tired but unable to speak out against a war that has lasted longer than the Great Patriotic War fought against the Nazis in World War II.
As an indescribable fatigue sets in and drones fly both ways across boundaries, near enough to Moscow for the major airports to be shut over the weekend, the objectives of a megalomaniacal
Mr Putin, whose revanchist mission of annexing Ukraine and reshaping the destiny of the former Soviet Union and Europe has hardly been fulfilled.
His troops may have taken close to 20 percent of Ukrainian territory, including Crimea in 2014, but progress on the war front is being measured in yards these days as Ukraine’s fabled ‘unbreakability’ has kicked in. US President Donald Trump may have boasted that this was a war he could stop on his first day back in office, but too he is too tired of it now as evidenced in his disinterest. Not without logic does Mr Narendra Modi keep reminding Mr Putin that this is not the “era of war”, certainly not even for a feared military machine whose brazen land grab has been halted in its tracks, with missiles aimed at Ukraine’s electricity grid doing more damage in bringing deprivation to the people than hypersonic missiles and other hardware said to be a frightening symbol of Russian prowess.
If the czarist president were to pause for a moment and think where Russia might stand in the comity of nations in an era of free trade bringing prosperity to his people, he might just be inclined to be satisfied with what little pieces of Donetsk that Ukraine may be willing to sacrifice for the cause of peace. After four years of death and destruction, peace in Ukraine will be a victory for the world.
