My next-door neighbour is Russian. Actually, Russian-Canadian, because several months ago he proudly showed me his Canadian citizenship certificate. The ink was still moist.
This spring, we took in a refugee Ukrainian family until they got themselves settled here. That’s one reason Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been on my mind.
By now, many Barrie citizens have met Ukrainian refugees.
Most people probably think the war started 18 months ago, when Russian troops advanced into Ukraine’s eastern provinces and on Kyiv.
However, Ukrainians know it actually began Feb. 20, 2014 with Russian takeover of Crimea.
Russia’s attack on Kyiv was halted partly because of the unexpectedly vigorous defense mounted by the Ukrainians. Ukraine’s military performed well against far larger Russian forces.
Ukrainian soldiers are highly motivated, while the invading troops are largely conscripts. They understand that, win or lose, their lives back home will not change – if they survive. For most, I suspect, their primary aim is indeed to survive.
To make matters worse, the invasion – sorry, 'Special Military Operation' – was poorly led. Russian commanders created a traffic jam on the road to Kyiv, leaving their own supply vehicles unable to get through. Tanks, armoured troop transports and artillery vehicles were left helpless without fuel.
Russian soldiers, with just three days of rations, became hungry. Ukrainians attacked the Russian columns at will, ably assisted by Ukrainian farmers, who towed away abandoned armoured vehicles at night with their tractors.
Initially, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed to have invaded Ukraine to “liberate his fellow Slavs from a Nazi government.” That argument was easily shredded with the revelation that recently elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was Jewish.
On the other hand, Russia’s most effective troops have been the mercenaries of the Wagner Group, a “private army” with neo-Nazi and white supremacist links, many of whom came from Russian prisons. They were promised freedom if they fought with Wagner. Not surprisingly, Wagner’s fighters stand accused of many atrocities: rape, torture, and the killing of children and unarmed civilians.
Putin also suggested he had invaded to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO, an action Ukraine had no intention of taking – then. Ukraine had made overtures to the European Union (EU), hoping to join that prosperous trading bloc, but military co-operation was not, initially, contemplated.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, their threat receded and NATO struggled to remain relevant. Putin’s brutal “Special Military Operation” puffed fresh wind into NATO sails. Far from improving Russian security, the invasion raised the (largely imagined) NATO threat – massively.
The suggestion that Putin wanted to “liberate” his fellow Slavs has been very hard to justify as Russians repeatedly target Ukrainian residential districts, hospitals, town markets, and schools. Many villages have been obliterated and whole urban districts flattened.
It’s hardly surprising that Ukraine is now determined to join NATO. With their lives upended and property damaged, even Russian-speaking residents of eastern Ukraine are having second thoughts as to where their loyalties should lie. Many have taken Ukrainian language lessons.
In the “bad old days,” powerful leaders invaded neighbours to plunder, capture slaves and perhaps aggrandize themselves. Even if you accept such aims as legitimate, Putin’s approach is illogical as residential buildings, civic centres, schools, and hospitals are attacked, effectively destroying their value.
Ukraine was always an agricultural powerhouse. Prior to the invasion, it was the world’s largest exporter of edible oils, but also the source of 15 per cent of the world’s corn, 13 per cent of its barley and 10 per cent of its wheat.
Now its eastern provinces are littered with unexploded mines, artillery shells, missiles and cluster bombs. These will take years to clear before it is safe to resume farming – more value destroyed. Many African and Middle Eastern countries face large rises in food prices, even famine due to a shortage of Ukrainian edible oil and grain supplies.
In addition to agriculture, before Russia’s invasion, Ukraine’s steel production was 20 per cent that of the world’s largest steel smelting nation, China. Antonov aircraft are made both in Ukraine and Russia. Prior to the war, just 12 per cent of Ukraine’s GDP was agricultural, but 30 per cent industrial.
If Putin did intend to take over Ukrainian industry, he has gone about it strangely, pulverizing the huge Azovstahl steel smelter in Mariupol, destroying Ukraine’s largest hydroelectric dam and threatening the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest.
People wishing to understand why Ukraine do fiercely resisted the Russians should learn about the “Holomodor.” Ninety years ago, Josef Stalin forcibly took so much grain from the country that six to seven million Ukrainians starved to death. Russians occupied these now vacant properties. A decade later, Stalin expelled Tatars from Crimea, replacing them with Russians.
Ukrainians and Tatars who tried to return to ancestral homes and lands, found them occupied.
If Putin did defeat Ukraine, and I certainly hope he does not, he would rule a sullen population. They would work to undermine their new overlords – just as people in USSR satellite countries (Hungarians, Poles, Czechs, Romanians, etc.) did, trying to accelerate communism’s collapse.
I am left with the only possible conclusion: Putin’s invasion was cynically planned to distract Russians from his failed domestic policies. After all, very few people – even Russians – really want to buy a Russian refrigerator or motor vehicle.
Several reports suggest that 50,000 Russian soldiers have been killed — Russia admits to less than 6,000. Another 50,000 are reckoned to have been seriously injured. Ukraine’s military mortality seems to be half that, but civilian deaths have topped 120,000, largely because Russia repeatedly attacked urban residential districts.
Was all the death and destruction worth it?
Peter Bursztyn is a self-proclaimed “recovering scientist” who has a passion for all things based in science and the environment. The now-retired former university academic has taught and carried out research at universities in Africa, Britain and Canada. As a member of BarrieToday’s community advisory board, he also writes a semi-regular column. If you have a question Peter might be able to answer or something you’re curious about, email us at [email protected].
