Since Russian aggression of Ukraine on February 24 last year, the latter under its young and spirited President Volodymyr Zelenysky has not awarded the former country an easy win that its President Vladimir Putin promised to his nation. However, mindless casualties and human sufferings arising from the war are very discouraging for the freedom loving democratic world.
Even when we are writing this piece on the war, the media reported that a Russian missile attack on a market in Ukraine’s eastern village of Shevchenkove has killed at least two people, both of whom are women.
According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) a total of 6,919 verified civilian deaths occurred during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as of January 2, 2023. Of them, 429 were children.
The BBC yesterday reported, quoting the US’s most senior military officer Gen Mark Milley, that around 100,000 Russian and 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers were killed or injured in the war in Ukraine when no one country in war was willing to give actual figures of deaths.
For Gen Milley, the total civilian death toll would be around 40,000 who were caught up in the conflict. Not to mention the huge destruction of Ukrainian cities and its valuable infrastructure.
The top US general rightly pointed out that the scale of the casualties could convince both Moscow and Kyiv of the need to negotiate over the coming winter months, when fighting may slow due to freezing conditions.
Added to huge casualties, human sufferings are also increasing with creation of about 15-30 million Ukrainian refugees, according to Gen Milley. The UN itself has recorded 7.8 million people as refugees from Ukraine across Europe, including Russia. Even this figure is great in terms of numbers. The sufferings of refugees in this cold winter are only imaginable. Over the past days, though there are indications that Russian troops are failing to dent the Ukrainian defense as it declared troops withdrawal from the important southern city of Kherson, the truth is Russia under Putin always makes it a dangerous country with a huge nuclear arsenal in his hand.
Despite this haunting probability, the international community led by the US needs to extend now, against the backdrop of a retreating Russia, more military and financial help to Ukraine so that it can create even greater and powerful resistance against the Russian military.
The international community must remember that any Russian victory in Ukraine would mean defeat of the spirit of democracy and the rise of ghostly authoritarian rule over the world. This could symbolically herald a future when people have limited or no freedom with shrinking of human rights everywhere.
The international community must prevent the free nations from such a dangerous and ugly prospect. In Bangladesh one party rule began with secret killings, forced disappearances and denial of free election by changing the Constitution.
Only the United States of America has the means and power to help people under dictatorship that resorts to political killing to continue in power. How dangerous the dictatorship could be Russia’s ruthless assault on the sovereign country Ukraine and killing people indiscriminately is a raw example being played in world view!
