On February 24, 2022, 190,000 soldiers and 2,000 Russian tanks, attacked Ukraine. A country of 140 million inhabitants, a nuclear power, invaded its neighbor of 40 million inhabitants, which in 1994 had delivered nuclear weapons to the USSR in exchange for recognition of its independence and territorial apparatus, including the Crimea. Obviously, promises only commit those who believe them. Was the budapest memory which obliges Moscow. (1)
Russia intended to control Ukraine in 4 days. kyiv resists. It continues to fight to recover 18% of its occupied by the Kremlin forces, lately led by General Valeri Guerassimov, respected abroad. President Vladimir Putin It has set a deadline until the end of March 2023, to definitively take refuge in the provinces of Donestsk and Lugansk, in Donbass, plus another 2 in the south, Gerson and Zaporizhia, not counting the Crimea annexed in 2014.
Suddenly, Europe saw 80 years of peace eclipse. Russia does not consider Ukraine a legitimate “people”, nor “nation”, or “state”. It intends to “federalize” it, ignoring its 1991 independence, a country supposedly governed by “neo-Nazis”, “drug addicts”. To overthrow them, Moscow is embarking on a 500,000-strong counteroffensive, as part of the “special military operation” launched 12 months ago. Volodymyr Zelensky He was democratically elected President of Ukraine in 2019, with 73% of the vote, conquering 24 of the 26 regions.
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Russia has been comforted by the “unlimited friendship” that on February 4, 2022, the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, three weeks before the invasion. The 2 votes against the Muscovite plans in the UN General Assembly, supported by 140 and 141 votes in favor out of 193, asked Russia to cease the aggression and withdraw its troops from Ukraine, despite the abstentions of China, India, Pakistan and South Africa, among others, which due to the amount of population, geographical extension and diplomatic influence, diminish its effectiveness. Beijing’s peace plan did not condemn the Russian invasion or call for the withdrawal of its expeditionary force.
“The members of the Organization must refrain, in their international relations, from resorting to the threat or use of force, either against the territorial integrity or the political independence of any State, being in any way incompatible with the objectives of the United Nations…No territorial acquisition obtained by the threat or use of force will be legally recognized.“, hammered the UN Secretary General, António Guterres, on the first anniversary of the Muscovite military incursion against Ukraine.
“In the name of humanity, do not allow what could be the worst war since the beginning of the century to begin in Europe, with its consequences not only devastating for Ukraine…and tragic for the Russian Federation, with an impact that cannot be What can we predict about the world economy?We hear implicit threats of the use of nuclear weapons“; even “tactical”: it is “totally unacceptable,” warned Guterres.
The General Secretary of the UNhe continued to target Russia, citing “serious violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law against prisoners of war, hundreds of cases of enforced disappearances, arbitrary detention of civilians” and “conflict-linked sexual violence committed against men women and minors…attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure must stopGuterres concluded.
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Volker Turk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, estimated that Russia’s aggression not provoked by Ukraine entails a unimaginable damage: 8 million Ukrainians have sought asylum abroad, preferably in European countries, while there are 6.5 million internally displaced people, and 10 million people without electricity, while there is a lack of clean water and sanitation, added to the loss of 30% of pre-war jobs. There are 3,000 schools destroyed and the WHO has registered 700 bombed health centers.
In turn, 18 million people need humanitarian aid in Ukraine, 1.2 million children suffer from post-traumatic stress, and 5 million have had to drop out of school due to the destruction of the country’s civil infrastructure, and are moved by the death of 100 thousand adults. Another 3,000,000 minors have been kidnapped and sent to Russia, susceptible to being illegally adopted with forged identities, constituting war crimes. 40% of the population in Ukraine does not get to eat, and has endured a “glacial” winter. (2)
For next April and May, a natural enemy will mainly stalk the invader, the “rasputitsa”, the almost liquid mud of the spring thaw that makes the roads impassable, stagnating in the slowness of motorized displacements. That creates logistical problems along the 700-kilometre “front line” that Russia must break to advance on kyiv. Ukraine will oppose its entire human arsenal, a total of 250,000 soldiers and 350,000 reservists.
On such dates, the arrival in Ukraine of the Western supply of new tanks, missiles, grenade launchers, cannons, howitzers and ammunition, essential in hostilities, should be consolidated. The noise of Volodymyr Zelensky calling for planes from the United States, France and England to replace the 200 dilapidated Soviet-era planes has been muted. It is alleged that time is needed to master the technological complexity, and to face the difficulties of training Ukrainian pilots abroad, given the urgency of winning the war in 2023.
From Geneva, Juan Gasparini
(1) The Memorandum, of Budapest, of December 5, 1994, consecrated the independence and sovereignty of the borders of Ukraine, originally proclaimed in 1991. It was signed by Russia, England and the United States. China and France joined the agreement separately. It constituted the largest concentration of strategic nuclear weapons after those of Russia and the United States, superior to those of China, England and France combined. They were finished evacuating in 1996, all delivered to Russia.
(2) The United Nations is aware that the confrontation within Ukraine has claimed 21,580 civilian victims (8,101 killed and 13,479 wounded), duly identified by UN experts present within the country since 2014, who provide periodic reports of casualties. .
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