Ukraine’s year of pain, death — and also nation-building
In the final hours before the Russian onslaught, a last grasp at peace. Russian troops would soon pour across Ukraine’s borders and Russian missiles would fill Ukrainian skies, taking Ukrainian lives in the biggest air, sea and ground assault in Europe since World War II. But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy still appealed, on war’s brink, for reason to prevail.
Staring intently into the camera in a last-ditch, deadof-night, video-recorded plea against the invasion, Zelenskyy warned Russia that the consequences would be “an abundance of pain, filth, blood and death.”
“War is a huge calamity,” Zelenskyy said, in what proved to be one of his last outings in a suit before his switch to military-style casual wear. “This calamity carries a huge cost — in every meaning of this word.”
The date was Feb. 24, 2022 — cataclysmic for Ukraine, course-changing for Russia, history-shaping for the wider world. Every hour of every day since has proven those words to be right.
As milestones go, the invasion’s first anniversary Friday is both grim and vexing. It marks a full year of killing, destruction, loss and pain felt even beyond the borders of Russia and Ukraine — with war-related price shocks being just one example. But it also raises a question that is unsatisfying because it can’t be answered at this partway point: How much longer until this stops?
“Not soon enough” might be one response, though any peace deal looks far off as Russia’s invasion force meatgrinds into Year Two, with neither side close to reaching hoped-for objectives.
The misery of 365 days of bloodshed and the full scale of the global repercussions are difficult to sum up with mere words. Russia is more isolated than at any time since the Cold War. Western nations are banding together for Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘s defeat while also gambling that the ex-KGB spy won’t go nuclear. China is filing away lessons that could be used against Taiwan.
And how to measure all the tears? How to adequately describe all the suffering and atrocities? Or even the broken heart of just one of the children who have lost loved ones and futures?
The numbers are dizzying: hundreds of thousands of Russian men escaping abroad to avoid being thrown into battle, millions of Ukrainians uprooted from their homes, tens of billions of dollars poured into weaponry that is making war ever-more lethal, trillions more dollars estimated lost for the global economy. And even those figures don’t do justice to the human and economic costs.