On an everyday basis, international news headlines are filled with gory stories of death and destruction coming out of the war in Ukraine.
The Russo-Ukraine war is now dragging on into its seventh month. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has verified a total of 5,996 civilian deaths as at September 25, 2022, of them, 382 were children. A further 8,848 people were reported to have been injured.
The OHCHR adds, real numbers could be higher. Ukraine’s Defence Ministry estimated the Russo-Ukraine war had left 3.5 million people homeless. The Kyiv School of Economics, revealed the invasion had caused US$108.3 billion in damage to the country’s infrastructure. 114,700 private homes damaged or destroyed and 43,700 agricultural machines, damaged or destroyed. 764 kindergartens, 1,991 shops and 634 cultural facilities were also damaged, some beyond repair.
At an international level, the fallout of the war has resulted in a dramatic rise in the world market prices and shortage of fuel. Among the European Union countries, Slovakia is the most dependent on Russian oil and petroleum products. In 2020, they accounted for over 78% of the country’s total imports of these commodities.
The ‘Washington Post’ reports the blockade of Ukrainian ports and the ripple effects of Western sanctions on Moscow have driven up global food prices, raised fears of looming grain shortages, and exacerbated concerns about rising hunger around the world. According to International Food Policy Research Institute, Ukraine and Russia produce about a third of the wheat traded in global markets, and about a quarter of the world’s barley. Exports from the two countries — which also include sunflower oil and corn to feed livestock — account for about 12% of the total calories traded in the world. Last year, Russia and Ukraine accounted for almost 30% of the global trade in wheat.
The Russo-Ukraine war therefore, affects the wellbeing of people around the globe. Those worst hit are the poorest sections, whether it be in the developed countries of the west or the poor in Africa and Asia.
The US and the West would have us believe the war in Ukraine, is based entirely on Russian aggression and Russian President Putin’s grandiose desire to resuscitate the Soviet Union of old.
The reality is that this is not the complete picture. The United States and its European allies are equally responsible for the present crisis in Ukraine.
The root of the problem has been the enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and its attempted encirclement of Russia in the aftermath of the reunification of Germany in October 1990.
The late USSR leader Mikhail Gorbachev in his memoirs, emphasizes he agreed to the reunification of Germany on the assurance that NATO would not expand eastward. Based on these assurances Berlin was reinstated as the capital city of a united Germany and the former German Democratic Republic joined the Federal Republic of Germany in its membership of NATO.
However, despite the verbal promises, NATO gradually expanded its borders to include the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. These three countries became the first former members of the former Warsaw Pact (states within the USSR) to join NATO in 1999. Subsequently Albania and Croatia joined in April 2009.
The immediate cause of the present Russo-Ukraine crisis leading to the Russian occupation of parts of Ukraine was NATO’s attempts to move Ukraine out of Russia’s orbit and integrate it into the West. Since the mid-1990s, Russian leaders have vehemently opposed NATO’s enlargement. In recent years, President Putin made it clear that he would not stand by while the strategically important neighbour (Ukraine) was turned into a Western pawn.
For Putin, the overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically-elected and pro-Russian president -- which he labeled a “coup”- was the final straw. He responded by taking Crimea, and worked towards destabilizing Ukraine until it abandoned its efforts to join the West.
The war in Ukraine, despite Western efforts to present it as a fight between democratic freedom and autocracy, is in reality a battle for supremacy between the US with its Western allies and the Russian Federation which replaced the USSR.
Despite the collateral damage inflicted on the people of Ukraine, despite the rising cost of living and food shortages inflicted on the poorest sections of the global population, no efforts are being made to bring the war to an end. Rather, billions of dollars are being spent on providing combatants with more armament, while the innocent the world over are left to face ruin, starvation and death.
