A Year of Hostilities in Ukraine

Moscow Just one year ago, at dawn on February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine from the north (Belarus), the south (Crimea) and the east (Russia), as well as bombing with planes and missiles from dozens of cities, after months of denying having that intention and concentrating troops and weapons on the border with that neighboring Slavic country.

Gallery: The war in Ukraine is one year old Since then, day by day, La Jornada has reported on what is happening in and around this war, with special emphasis on what up to now can be considered key moments in a narrative that is entering its second year and is far from over.

among others: the large-scale invasion; the drama of refugees and displaced persons; the withdrawal of the Russian troops that were attempting the assault on kyiv; the horrors of Bucha; the negotiations in Istanbul; the denunciations about the laboratories of the United States in the Ukraine; the risk of accident or sabotage at nuclear power plants; threats to use nuclear weapons; the sinking of the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet; the resistance and fall of Mariupol; the cereal pact in Istanbul; the Ukrainian counteroffensive and the recovery of the city of Kherson Also, the massive bombardments on Ukrainian cities with missiles and drones; the Ukrainian attack on the strategic bridge in Crimea; the siege of Bakhmut by the Wagner mercenary group; drone explosions at Russian military airfields inside the country; the arrival of winter and the relative stagnation of the 1,500-kilometre-long front line; preparations for offensive paths for the spring; the exchange of prisoners of war; the arrival of more and better weaponry from the United States and its allies, from portable Javelin launchers to Leopard tanks and the call for fighters; the refusal of both to negotiate a ceasefire.

It makes no sense to repeat here what has already been published It is better to try to understand the reasons that led the Kremlin to start this war.

The example of Chechnya When Putin launched what he called a "special military operation", based on what is already recognized as poor intelligence, he wanted to make the Russians understand that there would be a speedy victory and that the tacit pact with Chechnya was upheld the society, that allowed the chief executive to take any action without directly involving the population, accustomed to carrying on with their lives as if nothing had happened.

The first – a blitzkrieg (translated from German, lightning war) – was not achieved In a way, the history that led then President Boris Yeltsin, Putin's predecessor, to launch the first Russo-Chechen war in December 1994 (which Russia lost and had to have a second war until May 2000, was repeated).

a ceasefire with the Kadyrov clan), when General Pavel Grachov, Defense Minister, offered to bring Grozny, the Chechen capital, to its knees “in no more than three days” Over time, more details will undoubtedly be known, but with the information now available, it could be concluded that the role played by a double agent was decisive, banker Denis Kireyev (killed believing he was a traitor by Ukraine's security service for lack of coordination with the Defense Ministry), who – by tipping off Ukrainian military intelligence of the plans and exact date of the attack – botched the air landing on the outskirts of Kiev of special units of the Russian army whose mission was to seize the main government headquarters, as well as detain, assassinate or force President Volodymir Zelensky to flee to London.

The second – the tacit pact – was broken, months later, by having to retreat in half of the territories occupied in the first weeks after the invasion and announcing a “partial mobilization” that is not transparent by including a secret point (the number of people to recruit), that continues to this day and knocks on the door of many families with the drop in their standard of living due to foreign sanctions and the militarization of the Russian economy, which affect those who have less the most, not to mention the most important thing: the death and/or maiming of loved ones on the battlefields When ordering the start of hostilities, Putin mentioned the goals of the operation to liberate Donbas, that is, the mining regions of the Don River, Donietsk and Lugansk, populated mostly by people of Russian origin, and added two more goals: demilitarize and denazify.

Ukraine When the invasion began, the so-called Donietsk and Lugansk people's republics, which declared their independence from kyiv, occupied only a third of the Ukrainian regions of the same name.

Now, Russia still does not control all of its territories, but it already declared its annexation as entities of the Russian Federation last September, along with two other regions, Kherson and Zaporizhia, equally incomplete, and if we add Crimea, incorporated in 2014, Kiev -since From Moscow's point of view, it would have to give up about 20 percent of its widely recognized land area when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 And once Russia got the land corridor linking the country to the Crimean peninsula, it continues to attack areas of Ukraine that have nothing to do with the objectives that Putin set when launching the “special military operation”.

"State secret" A few weeks ago one of his most trusted people, Matthias Warning, who worked from the Stasi, the East German secret service, As Putin's liaison at the KGB station in Dresden and for years had served as his representative on the boards of directors of the main Russian public consortiums, he asked him how far he intends to go The answer left him speechless: "It's a state secret," he told him, according to Warning in an interview with the German weekly Die Zeit.

For this reason, since the end of February 2022 and to date, the initial goals indicated by Putin have been completed with all sorts of arguments that, taken out of context, aim to justify preventive aggression, in the manner and likeness of the one that launched by the United States against Iraq to anticipate the alleged use of "chemical weapons" that Baghdad did not, in reality, have Crossing of accusations Russia accuses the United States and its allies of having organized a coup in Ukraine that deposed President Viktor Yanukovych and brought ultranationalist and neo-Nazi elements to power.

Kiev insists that the Rada (Parliament) dismissed Yanukovych, with the votes of his own Party of Regions (which also expelled him from its ranks), and that after leaving office and spending six days in an unknown destination, he appeared in Rostov, Russia Russia maintains that Ukraine, nine years later, has a regime that continues to identify with neo-Nazi ideology, while Kiev reiterates that there is a government elected in free elections with the votes of the majority of Ukrainians, including voters from the 10 regions with populations of Russian origin to a greater or lesser degree.

The Ukrainians argue that those who are inspired by Adolf Hitler, and of course they admit that such zealots exist there, won only one seat in the Rada in the most recent elections Russia rightly condemns the crimes of the neo-Nazi and ultranationalist battalions that fought on the side of Ukraine – Azov from Mariupol, Aidar from Ivano-Frankovsk, Dnipro from Dnipropetrovsk, Donbas from Severodonietsk or Sich from the nationalist party Svoboda – while Ukraine It does the same with respect to separatist groups and Orthodox Christians such as the Somali, Sparta, Vostok, Oplot, Zaria, Batman and Prizrak battalions, the Cossacks who arrived from the other side of the border.

In the recent history of Ukraine there is a year – from 2014 to 2015 – marked by the tragedy of a civil war, period in which atrocities were committed by both sides (torture, extrajudicial executions, sexual abuse, looting), without anyone being able to determine in each case who did it first, concluded the observer mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Russia is convinced that Ukraine persecutes and wants to exterminate Ukrainians of Russian origin, and gives an example of shocking cases that occurred nine years ago.

The Zelensky government rejects the accusation of genocide of Ukrainians of Russian origin and emphasizes that throughout the period from the annexation of Crimea in 2014 to the signing of the second Minsk agreement in 2015 there were, according to data from the High Commissioner of the United Nations for Human Rights, 14 thousand 400 deaths between Ukrainian soldiers and separatist fighters, of which just under 24 percent –3,404 people– correspond to the civilian population on both sides Moscow asserts that it had to intervene because Kiev had applied to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a threat it cannot tolerate, apart from the fact that it announced its intention to acquire nuclear weapons to recover Crimea.

Kiev responds that the negotiations in Istanbul, in March 2022, failed after Ukraine agreed to resign from being part of NATO and to declare itself a neutral country in exchange for receiving international guarantees of non-aggression and for Russia to withdraw all its troops Kiev claims that Moscow rejected his proposal to reach a political settlement regarding the disputed third part of Donietsk and Lugansk, and to leave the fate of Crimea pending to be negotiated within 10 years.

Moscow claims that kyiv, following orders from Washington, abandoned the negotiations using the Bucha massacre as a pretext Russia points out that the network of laboratories that the United States installed in Ukraine was used to develop biological weapons against the Russian genotype through, for example, "mosquitoes capable of carrying a virus that infects only Russians", a hypothesis that the Russian representative before the UN, Vasily Nebenzia, disclosed at a meeting of the Security Council.

Ukraine does not deny the existence of the laboratories, but points out that they were only used to develop medicines and find solutions against all kinds of pandemics Mercenaries and prisoners A distinctive feature of this war is the massive presence of mercenaries.

Before there were and now there are also so many volunteers who feel the need to support one cause or another, like condottieres who, for something as trivial as money, fight alongside regular armies But it is perhaps the first time that the tens of thousands of soldiers of fortune – some speak of 20,000, others increase the figure to 50,000 – have been joined by a large number of those convicted of murders, organized crime, kidnappings and other serious crimes.

And they are fighting on the Russian side in Ukraine not to liberate Donbas, but for the promised presidential pardon if they survive six months on the battlefields This scheme to recruit common prisoners is due to the business imagination of the head of the Wagner mercenary group, magnate Yevgeny Prigzohin, himself an ex-convict, who spent nine years in Soviet-era prisons.

As a summary, One year after the “special military operation” began, a full-blown war broke out; president zelensky remains in power; millions of civilians lost everything and became refugees in other countries or internally displaced persons; tens of thousands of soldiers on both sides are still dying or severely injured; The fighting continues and both the Russians and the Ukrainians, who do not even want to hear about sitting down to negotiate peace, are preparing major offensives for this spring With this unflattering balance sheet, a year begins that will be crucial due to the wear and tear caused to everyone by the war between two peoples who –since the Eastern Slavs founded Kievan Rus, from where the current Russia and Ukraine emerged– were brothers and now they hate.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has turned into a devastating war of attrition, claiming the lives of thousands of people and displacing millions while laying waste to cities and destroying vital infrastructure across the country Via Graphic News.

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