Two years of war in Ukraine
Two years ago tomorrow, it started. Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, raining down death and destruction on a neighbouring democratic country that had dared to defy the Kremlin.
On 24 February 2022, Russian troops poured into Ukraine from Belarus and Russia. They moved on the capital Kyiv but were pushed back after a heroic resistance by Ukrainian forces and civilians.
The Americans and the British had warned it was coming, but too many European states would not believe it. Even Ukraine’s President had been reluctant to believe Putin would really move. When it happened, Zelensky stayed, his bravery inspiring a people to fight against an enemy committing war crimes.
The shockwaves rippled out. Sanctions were placed on Russia’s political leaders and central bank, and global food prices hit a record high. An energy crisis threatened to destabilise Europe.
In May 2022, Sweden and Finland applied to join Nato, Russia captured the Black Sea port city of Mariupol and the number of Ukrainian refugees passed five million. Over that summer, the World Bank’s pledged support for Ukraine topped $4 billion and Gazprom significantly cut oil and gas exports to Europe. In September 2022, has prices rose by 30 per cent.
By November 2022, Russia had ordered its forces to abandon Kherson, the only regional capital it had captured so far. In December, Zelensky made his first trip abroad since the outbreak of war visiting the US. By the end of the year, inflation rose to 10.6 per cent across the 19 countries that used the euro.
The next year started with gains for Russian troops and further commitment from Ukraine’s allies at the World Economic Forum in Davos. In March 2023, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin and China’s President Xi Jinping visited Russia for the first time since the war. In the summer, leaders from seven African nations visited Ukraine and Russia on a self-styled “peace mission” and at the Nato Summit in Vilnius there was renewed support for Ukraine from Western nations. Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of the Wagner group, staged a brief mutiny marching on Moscow before dying – surprise, surprise – in a plane crash.
At the end of 2023, Russia received substantial weapons deliveries from North Korea and Iran, while Putin continued to keep Aleksandr Lukashenko of Belarus and China’s Xi on his side. Squabbling in Brussels and Washington left brave Ukraine increasingly exposed and without the funding it needed to properly defend itself.
In 2024, Volodymyr Zelenksy has already sacked his popular army chief Valery Zaluzhny. A Russian opposition leader has died in prison and at last Ukraine has received aid from the EU.
There is a lot of gloom about Ukraine’s prospects, with Putin cranking up the Russian war machine and Donald Trump perhaps about to become President. But in the Black Sea, Ukrainian operations against Russia mean Ukraine can trade. Against a barbaric, large adversary, the Ukrainians have fought back and denied Putin the easy victory he seems to have assumed would be his.
To mark the second anniversary of the full-scale invasion, US President Joe Biden has unveiled a huge raft of the most serious economic sanctions on Russia to date.
Following the UK which sanctioned the jailers of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny who died recently in a Siberian penal colony, the US has placed sweeping sanctions on not only prison officials, but the Mir payment system, Russian financial institutions and its military industrial base.
On the first anniversary of the war, the US government sanctioned over 200 individuals and entities and its Commerce Department added 90 companies to the trade restriction list. Now, another 550 Russian citizens and entities have been sanctioned while another 90 companies were added to the list.
President Joe Biden said that sanctions “will ensure Putin pays an even steeper price for his aggression abroad and repression at home.” On the two-year anniversary of this unjust war, the raft of additional sanctions is welcome news but only proves how deep the mess is. The death, destruction and further economic decoupling in the shadow of Nato’s largest exercise to date in the Baltics show a world far from peace.
The UK’s Foreign secretary Lord Cameron was quite clear at the UN Security Council in New York this afternoon. He spoke of his time as PM in 2014 when Putin’s “little green men” entered Crimea.
“I said that if we did not stand up to Putin, he would be back for more. Now, having tried and failed to conquer all of Ukraine, the lesson of this history is clear. If we do not stand up to Putin, he will be back for more.”
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