Russia-Ukraine conflict

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Russo-Ukrainian War
Part of the post-Soviet conflicts
From top:

Ukraine dismantles a statue of Lenin in 2014 as part of decommunization;

President Vladimir Putin's televised speech announcing the 24 February 2022 Special Military Operation;

Ukrainian forces using Soviet-era BM-21 "Grad" in 2015;

Right Sector torchlit rally in Kiev in 2015;

2014 "Feast of Solidarity" in Donetsk, featuring crowds with DPR flags.
Date20 February 2014 – present
(10 years, 2 months, 1 week and 1 day)
Location
Ukraine, Russia, and Black Sea (spillover into Poland, Moldova and Belarus)
Status Ongoing
Territorial
changes
  • Russian annexation of Crimea and parts of four southeast Ukrainian oblasts in 2014 and 2022, respectively
  • Russian occupation of about 18% of Ukrainian territory as of November 2022
Belligerents
 Ukraine

Supplied by:

Delivering military aid to Ukraine - detailed.svg.png

 Russia

Supplied by:
 Belarus
 Iran
 DPRK
 PRC (alleged)
Commanders and leaders

 Ukraine

 Russia

Casualties and losses
Reports vary widely, but tens of thousands at a minimum.[1][2]

The Russia-Ukraine conflict is an ongoing ethno-linguistic post-Soviet conflict between Russian and Ukrainian people in modern Ukraine which has been exploited and turned into a proxy war between NATO and the Russian Federation.

The conflict originated with the 2014 Euromaidan color revolution, in which a US-backed[citation needed] coalition of right-wing and liberal[citation needed]forces ousted the pro-Russian President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych. In the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine, major portions of two majority-Russian oblasts, Donetsk and Lugansk, seceded in response to the new government's changes in policy towards use of the Russian language. The Ukrainian government launched a full invasion, or "Anti-Terrorist Operation", of the seceding regions, prompting the Russian government to send unmarked troops[citation needed] to aid the rebels. Tensions also arose in the historically Russian-speaking Crimean peninsula, resulting in the Russian Federation occupying and then annexing the peninsula amid widespread Crimean support.[citation needed] Fighting was mostly limited to the Donbass until February 2022, when Russian forces launched a full invasion, or "special military operation", supplemented by aerial attacks on military targets throughout the country. Since 2014, the war has resulted in at least 10,000 deaths, including those of civilians.

Background

History of ethnic conflict

Soviet national policy

Prelude

2022 escalation

In February 2022, after continued rejection of peace talks by Ukraine and NATO, Russia launched a surprise invasion of eastern Ukraine, escalating the ongoing proxy war.

Propaganda

Western society

Main articles: Impact of the 2022 Russo-Ukrainian War on Western culture and Russian disinformation

Western civil discourse has arguably been irreparably damaged by the propaganda blitz surrounding the war in a manner not seen since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Countless articles about neo-Nazi influence in the Ukraine were memory-holed upon the outbreak of war in 2022. Nazi symbology in use by the Azov Battalion, including the Black Sun and the Wolfsangel, was insistently explained away as unrelated to far-right extremism. Prominent media figures in the United States and western Europe posed proudly with Ukrainians sporting neo-Nazi tattoos and emblems.[3][4] And within less than two years, Western media was openly defending or equivocating about the celebration of a Waffen-SS veteran in the Canadian parliament.[5][6][7] The long-term effects of this development remain to be seen.

Yaroslav Hunka incident

On 22 September 2023, during a visit of Volodomyr Zelenskyy to Canada, the Canadian House of Commons invited Yaroslav Hunka, a 97-year-old veteran of the Galician Division of the Waffen-SS, to be personally honored in front of the chamber. Hunka was praised as a "veteran from the Second World War who fought for Ukrainian independence against the Russians" and received two standing ovations from the House.

Western response to the incident has been shockingly lukewarm. Within two weeks, US news and opinion site Politico released an article entitled "Fighting Against the USSR Didn’t Necessarily Make You a Nazi" which openly defended the Waffen-SS and appealed to the "complexity" of the issue:[8]

"Something that’s untrue but simple is far more persuasive than a complicated, nuanced truth — a major problem for Western democracies trying to fight disinformation and propaganda by countering it with the truth, and one reason why fact-checking and debunking are only of limited use for doing so. In the case of Hunka, the mass outrage stems from his enlistment with one of the foreign legions of the Waffen-SS, fighting Soviet forces on Germany’s eastern front. And it’s a demonstration of how when history is complicated, it can be a gift to propagandists who exploit the appeal of simplicity. This history is complicated because fighting against the USSR at the time didn’t necessarily make you a Nazi, just someone who had an excruciating choice over which of these two terror regimes to resist. However, the idea that foreign volunteers and conscripts were being allocated to the Waffen-SS rather than the Wehrmacht on administrative rather than ideological grounds is a hard sell for audiences conditioned to believe the SS’s primary task was genocide. And simple narratives like “everybody in the SS was guilty of war crimes” are more pervasive because they’re much simpler to grasp." - Politico

Impact

Gallery

  • UN Human Rights Commission chart analyzing percentages of civilian deaths in LDPR territory vs. Ukrainian government-controlled territory.

    UN Human Rights Commission chart analyzing percentages of civilian deaths in LDPR territory vs. Ukrainian government-controlled territory.

  • Bakhmut in April 2023.

    Bakhmut in April 2023.

Notes

  1. ↑ Self-declared republic since 7 April 2014; annexation by Russia declared on 30 September 2022.
  2. ↑ Self-declared republic since 27 April 2014; annexation by Russia declared on 30 September 2022.

References

  1. ↑ "'Terrible toll': Russia's invasion of Ukraine in numbers". Euractiv. 14 February 2023.
  2. ↑ Hussain, Murtaza (9 March 2023). "The War in Ukraine Is Just Getting Started". The Intercept.
  3. ↑ Rubinstein, Alexander (31 Aug 2022). "Jon Stewart and the Pentagon honor Ukrainian Nazi at Disney World". The Grayzone. Retrieved 6 Oct 2023.
  4. ↑ Robeson, Moss (6 Oct 2022). "'Now, All of You Are Azov': 'openly neo-Nazi' Ukrainian delegation meets Congress, tours US". The Grayzone. Retrieved 6 Oct 2023.
  5. ↑ Nicholson, Kate (26 Sep 2023). "Justin Trudeau Responds After Canadian Parliament Accidentally Honoured Ex-Nazi". HuffPost UK. Retrieved 6 Oct 2023.
  6. ↑ Kim, Chloe (27 Sep 2023). "Justin Trudeau apologises after Nazi veteran honoured in parliament". BBC News. Retrieved 6 Oct 2023.
  7. ↑ "Opposition, disinfo experts push government to fight Russian propaganda in wake of Hunka incident". CBC. 28 Sep 2023. Retrieved 6 Oct 2023.
  8. ↑ Giles, Keir (2 Oct 2023). "Fighting against the USSR didn't necessarily make you a Nazi". POLITICO. Archived from the original on 6 Oct 2023. Retrieved 6 Oct 2023.
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