About THE WAR IN UKRAINE

In over four years of hostilities, Russia destroyed an estimated up to 30% of the civilian infrastructure in Ukraine, killing and injuring hundreds of thousands of civilians, most brutally. Russian bombs, missiles, and artillery barrages indiscriminately and often purposedly destroy cities and villages, hospitals and facilities critical to civilian population survival. Up to 11 million Ukrainian refugees and internally displaced persons seek shelter in western Ukraine and neighboring countries. Medical transport, drugs, and medical supplies are scarce and critical in saving the lives of those affected by war.

For hundreds of years, Russia tried to subdue Ukraine, attempting to eliminate ethnic Ukrainians and those ethnic groups living in Ukraine by forced russification, imposed hunger, relocation, and brainwashing. It claimed that Russians and Ukrainians are brothers who should live under the rule of the elder brother, Russians. Russia considered an independent, free, democratic Ukraine a threat to its national security.  In retrospect, the beginning of the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war dates back to 2014, when Russia occupied the Ukrainian Crimean peninsula and moved on to organize and support a proxy separatist force in the eastern part of Ukraine.  The hot phase of the Russo-Ukrainian war began on February 24, 2022, when Russia launched an unprovoked so-called special military operation declaring its aims: to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine. 

Using massive bombing, missiles, airstrikes, and heavy artillery fire, Russian tactical battalion groups consisting of hundreds of battle tanks and armored vehicles moved into the sovereign territory of Ukraine from neighboring Belarus in the northwest and the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula in the south. At the same time, Russia attacked Ukrainian cities, Chernihiv, Soumy, and Kharkiv from the north, while Russian proxy forces in the east engaged Ukrainian units holding the front line there since 2014.

Russian air assault units using helicopters for close air support tried to capture a strategic airstrip near Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, to facilitate air-born troops landing and build up, while massive ground forces moved towards and around Kyiv. The main task was to siege and occupy Kyiv and topple the government. Ukrainians have defeated Russian attacking units and forced the remaining Russian troops in the areas around Kyiv out of Ukraine, back to Belarus.

After regrouping, Russia is trying to capture cities and territories in the eastern (known as the Donbas region) and southern Ukraine, on the left bank of the Dnipro river, roughly along the Kharkiv-Mariupol line. In this phase, Russia's goal is to occupy eastern and southern Ukraine and defeat the Ukrainian military, forcing Ukraine to abandon its plans to join European Union and NATO.