A note from EvolutionWriters
We publish this sample essay while the active stage of the Russian-Ukrainian war is still unfolding. Thousands of civilians were killed by Russian troops during shellings of Ukrainian cities and in captured towns and villages. Millions of survivors were forced to flee from their homes. Our company, staff, and essay writers have already contributed to the fundraiser campaign to help people affected by war. You can join this effort too and donate!
- Razom for Ukraine – a Ukrainian non-profit organization that purchases medical supplies for crisis situations.
- Save Ukraine – a fundraising initiative by Ukrainian business leaders.
- Come Back Alive – a Ukrainian charity fund that helps both refugees and the army.
- Voices of Children – a Ukrainian charitable organization that organizes psychological help for children.
- Airbnb.org – people worldwide use this platform to provide housing for displaced Ukrainian citizens or donate directly to Ukrainians by booking their apartments.
- World Central Kitchen – an initiative by the famous chef José Andrés focused on feeding Ukrainian refugees at the border of neighboring Poland.
On the early morning of February 24, 2022, millions of people across Ukraine woke up to the sounds of air-raid sirens and cruise missile explosions. Minutes later, Russia launched the full-scale ground invasion of Europe’s second-largest nation. This marked the start of the most significant armed conflict in the Old World since World War II. And the fall of the global security system as we know it.
Preconditions of the Russian-Ukrainian War 2022
If you google the Russian Ukrainian war, 2021 results will give you a full picture of how Russia was consistently fueling tensions and pulling troops to the Ukrainian border under the guise of military drills. However, in fact, the Russian invasion took place in 2014. First, it illegally annexed Crimea – the Ukrainian peninsula in the Black Sea. Then, it fired up armed conflict in the part of the Donbas region by sending special operation squads, a regular army, and billions worth of weapons (including tanks, multiple-rocket launchers, anti-aircraft systems, etc.) over the Russia-controlled chunk of the border (InformNapalm, 2018).
With time, the clash between the Ukrainian forces on the one side and Russian troops without identification signs and Russia-backed units on the other turned into a low-activity conflict. Until on February 21, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin recognized the independence of previously occupied Donbas regions and promised them military support – this time, openly (Meyer et al., 2022). Two days later, Putin launched what he called “a special military operation” on Ukrainian soil. Official justification of these actions included “Russia’s security concerns,” “demilitarization and “denazification of Ukraine,” and protection of the Russian-speaking population from oppression by far-right nationalists (Fisher, 2022).
Many observers immediately noticed that Putin’s war declaration strikingly reminds Adolf Hitler’s speeches before Nazi Germany plunged the world into the horrors of the global war (Pomerantsev, 2022). Consequently, the actual reason for Putin’s actions is his inability to accept the existence of Ukraine as an independent nation (Amar, 2022) and the only working democracy out of former Soviet states apart from Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia that are now in the European Union and NATO.
Apart from hypocritical reasoning, there’s another paradox to the Russian and Ukrainian war. According to the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, Russia, along with the U.S., the UK, France, and China, is one of the guarantors of Ukraine’s security in response to the government in Kyiv giving up the third-largest nuclear weapons arsenal. The document prohibits the signers from threatening or using military force or economic coercion against Ukraine (“Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances,” 2022). Importantly, since regaining independence in 1991, Ukraine remained a neutral country. It was only in 2019 that Ukraine amended its Constitution and formalized its aspiration to join the E.U. and NATO.
Immediate Response: U.S. Details Costs of a Russian Invasion of Ukraine
Since the USSR breakdown, the United States has been declaring its support to Ukraine but did too little in real terms. Nowadays, it looks like Washington’s response to help resolve the crisis is virtually all it takes except for sending American troops to Ukraine.
The U.S. took the leading role in imposing a wide range of sanctions on Russian individuals, companies, and economy segments. They target Russia’s financial system, the wealth of oligarchs who support Putin, and fossil fuels that bring the lion’s share of trade profits into the Russian state budget (Funakoshi et al., 2022).
On the other hand, despite being the Budapest Memorandum signer, the U.S. refused Kyiv’s plea to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine. While Ukrainian troops fiercely resist the invasion on the ground, Russia’s air force advantage is undeniable. Reports prove that Russia regularly uses ‘dumb’ bombs and multiple rocket launchers to indiscriminately shell residential areas in Ukrainian cities. As a result, there are thousands of verified civilian victims, including dozens of children (Schlein, 2022).
How Will US Respond to Russian Invasion of Ukraine if It Continues?
In February 2021, Poland reportedly held a massive wargame to see how its military would do without NATO’s help against all-out Russian invasion. The simulation result was devastating as it showed that Poland’s army would be defeated in 5 days (Rossomando, 2021). The information was communicated to NATO and the U.S. No wonder that while considering what would a Russian invasion of Ukraine look like, U.S. officials were confident that the capital city Kyiv would fall within 48 hours (Restuccia, 2022).
Yet, after three weeks of intense fighting in northern, eastern, and southern fronts, the Ukrainian army didn’t give up Kyiv and still effectively inflicts severe casualties to Russian forces on the ground, in the air, and at sea. This made the U.S. government reconsider its initial plans and expand military and financial help to Ukraine. Moreover, on March 11, 2022, President Biden stated that the U.S. would continue to impose sanctions on Russia.
At the same time, he warned that “we will not fight a war against Russia in Ukraine. Direct confrontation between NATO and Russia is World War Three, something we must strive to prevent” (White House, 2022).
What Was the E.U. and NATO Response to Russian Invasion of Ukraine?
Pushed by the U.S., the European Union and NATO countries also imposed economic and financial sanctions on Russia, making it the world’s most-sanctioned nation (Wadhams, 2022). They also send thousands of tons of humanitarian aid to Ukraine. Remarkably, NATO as a defense organization didn’t provide any arms or military aid to Kyiv. However, particular member countries send anti-tank and anti-aircraft systems, munitions and equipment on behalf of their own.
However, it appears the most effective blow is delivered not by governments but by international business. During the first three weeks of the war, over 200 companies stopped or declared their intentions to stop operations in Russia. Some do it voluntarily; others leave Russia because it is now almost impossible to conduct normal business there; yet others are forced to do so due to the ‘cancel culture’ effects.
What Was the U.N. Response to Russian Invasion of Ukraine?
The response by the organization whose primary mission is to prevent and stop wars is strikingly weak and disappointing. On March 2, 2022, the U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution demanding that Russia immediately end its military operations in Ukraine. It was supported by 141 countries out of 193 represented (United Nations, 2022). Also, U.N. officials regularly condemn Russia’s actions, speak out about the signs of war crimes its troops commit on Ukrainian soil, and publish the map of Ukraine with marks of humanitarian crisis places. That’s basically it. Even the fact that Russia captured two nuclear energy plants in Ukraine (one of them is the ill-fated Chernobyl), which could cause a global-scale disaster, didn’t cause any practical action.
Remarkably, Russia, who violated the U.N.’s statute and multiple international security treaties, remains the U.N. Security Council member and vetoes any action plans aimed at helping Ukraine. The U.N. conflict prevention efforts don’t work, just like the League of Nations didn’t work before World War II broke out.
Conclusion
The world is only yet to realize the consequences of the Russian aggression in Ukraine. However, we can already tell that the global security system as we know it has failed. A country’s neutral status doesn’t guarantee that it wouldn’t become a victim of an unprovoked attack. International treaties and security guarantees proved worthless. A country that possesses nuclear weapons can invade another nation and scare off its allies by threatening to use the nuclear arsenal if anyone tries to stand up for the victim. For all the nations who want to ensure their security, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) is now basically a non-obliging piece of paper.
Russia must be stopped and punished. Its dictatorship regime must be destroyed, and democratic development must be supervised like it was done in post-war Germany and Japan. Along with that, the global security system must be updated to ensure the freedom of any peaceful country to choose its way without the fear of being attacked by a nuclear weapon-wielding superpower. The U.N. must be reformed to ensure that the aggressor cannot remain in the Security Council or in the organization in general. Europe should consider creating its own joint armed forces.
At this very moment, we don’t know what future global and regional security systems will look like, but we do know that the existing structure failed and must be changed. Or World War III will happen sooner than we expect, and humanity will disappear in nuclear flames.
References:
Amar, T.C. (2022, March 4). Putin’s War on Ukraine Shows the Dreadful Power of History. Time. https://time.com/6154954/putin-ukraine-history-lesson/
Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances. (2022, March 12). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Security_Assurances
Fisher, M. (2022, February 24). Putin’s Case for War, Annotated. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/24/world/europe/putin-ukraine-speech.html
Funakoshi, M., Lawson, H., Deka, K. (2022, published March 9, updated March 11). Tracking sanctions against Russia. Reuters Graphics. https://graphics.reuters.com/UKRAINE-CRISIS/SANCTIONS/byvrjenzmve/
InformNapalm. (2018, April 12). Proofs of the Russian Aggression: InformNapalm releases extensive database of evidence. InformNapalm International Volunteer Community. https://informnapalm.org/en/proofs-of-the-russian-aggression-informnapalm-releases-extensive-database-of-evidence/
Meyer, H., Champion, M., Halpin, T. (2022, February 21). Putin Orders Forces to Breakaway Ukraine Areas in Escalation. Bloomberg. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-21/putin-to-recognize-ukraine-separatist-republics-kremlin-says
Pomerantsev, P. (2022, March 4). What Putin’s Nazi Talk Reveals About His Plans for Ukraine. Time. https://time.com/6154853/putins-nazi-talk-reveals-plans-for-ukraine/
Restuccia, A. (2022, February). White House: Kyiv Falling to Russia Is a ‘Real Possibility’. The Wall Street Journal. https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/russia-ukraine-latest-news/card/white-house-kyiv-falling-to-russia-is-a-real-possibility–P5UWx1No98wnqko7FB3U
Rossomando, J. (2021, February 20). How Poland Just Lost to Russia in a Massive Wargame (And What It Means). The National Interest. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/how-poland-just-lost-russia-massive-wargame-and-what-it-means-178578
Schlein, L. (2022, March 11) U.N.: Russian Attacks Against Civilians in Ukraine May Amount to War Crimes. Voice of America. https://www.voanews.com/a/un-russian-attacks-against-civilians-in-ukraine-may-amount-to-war-crimes/6480776.html
United Nations. (2022, March 2). General Assembly resolution demands end to Russian offensive in Ukraine. U.N. News. https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/03/1113152
Wadhams, N. (2022, March 7). Russia Is Now the World’s Most-Sanctioned Nation. Bloomberg. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-07/russia-surges-past-iran-to-become-world-s-most-sanctioned-nation
White House. (2022, March 11). Remarks by President Biden Announcing Actions to Continue to Hold Russia Accountable. The White House Briefing Room. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/03/11/remarks-by-president-biden-announcing-actions-to-continue-to-hold-russia-accountable/
