02/24/2024 – 5:39
Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 began conflict in the country that would culminate in a Russian invasion on February 24, 2022. On February 24, 2022, Maryna Lyushyna would teach a chocolate cooking course. She set the tables the night before and was looking forward to the arrival of the children who would attend her children's theater in the town of Konotop in northern Ukraine. The day before, the actress and mother of two didn't sleep well: she heard noises and thought it was the tram.
“At seven in the morning, a friend called and said, 'turn on the TV, it's war,'” recalls Lyushyna, who now lives in Bonn, Germany.
Konotop is about 80 kilometers from the Russian border. Two years ago, the city was surrounded by Russian troops within hours. There was resistance, but the forces were unequal, and the Ukrainian army retreated (eventually, the city would be liberated by Kiev troops).
In the first days of the war, Lyushyna fled to her mother's house on the outskirts of the city, where she encountered Russian soldiers.
“I asked what they were doing there. And the answer was: 'We came to look for the president [Volodimir] Zelenski'”, he says. She was outraged: it was as if Ukraine were not an independent state.
According to the Ukrainian, the Russian occupiers thought they would be welcome – and were surprised when that was not the case. After three days, Lyushyna fled to western Ukraine and from there, along with millions of her compatriots, to the European Union. Her husband stayed.
Today, she still feels helpless and betrayed. “I didn’t expect there to be a big war. How could something like this happen in the middle of Europe in the 21st century?”, she asks. Lyushyna accuses the West of seeing Ukraine as a pawn and bargaining chip. “Europe watched and waited to see whether we would be killed or not,” she says.
Not all of Ukraine's allies acted passively. The United States, United Kingdom and other countries already supplied weapons to Kiev before the Russian invasion. Despite the delay in its reaction, Germany is currently at the top of the list of supporting countries.
Many were surprised at the time, including in Ukraine itself. But in reality, the Russian attack had begun eight years earlier, with the annexation of Crimea, on February 27, 2014. At that time, armed, masked men without badges occupied the peninsula's parliament and administration. Russian President Vladimir Putin later admitted they were his soldiers.
It's not a frozen war
At the time, Ukraine was seriously weakened. In Kiev, opposition protests forced then-pro-Moscow president Viktor Yanukovych to flee to Russia. The new pro-Western government did not dare to defend Crimea with weapons. The West also recommended that Kiev act with restraint – and this even when battles in the Donbass coal region of eastern Ukraine erupted in the spring of 2014.
There were no harsh sanctions. Russia placed its own people at the head of pro-Moscow forces in Donetsk and Luhansk and increasingly secretly armed them. The West tried to freeze the conflict through negotiations; Ukraine has not imposed martial law. The war was called an “anti-terrorist operation”.
All of this made the war seem distant to many. “Most Ukrainians didn’t understand that the war was theirs,” says Lyushyna.
This does not apply to Maksym Kosub. The Kiev interpreter remembers taking part in a protest calling for a break in relations with Moscow in front of the Russian embassy in June 2014. “I understood that it was a war,” says Kosub. He volunteered for the front in Donbass and was wounded. He was part of a patriotic minority that stood in Russia's way – and returned to fight in the Ukrainian army after the February 2022 attack.
Should Ukraine have fought for Crimea? Many think so. “I'm inclined to say we should have tried,” says Susan Stewart, a Ukraine expert at the Berlin think tank Science and Policy Foundation (SWP). However, she highlights the “weak leadership in Kiev” at the time.
The fact is that Russia also massed troops along Ukrainian borders in 2014 and threatened a massive invasion. The Ukrainian army in Crimea was demoralized and many deserted.
Important Western aid
The war in Donbas seemed frozen between 2015 and 2022, but in fact it was a trench war, with thousands of deaths. Why did the West believe it would continue like this, not supplying heavy weapons to Ukraine and continuing with business projects with Russia, such as the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline? Susan Stewart sees the answer in the belief that integration can prevent wars in Europe.
After 2022, Ukraine has changed. “We resist and continue fighting for Ukraine, even if the price is very high,” says soldier Maksym Kosub.
The army has evolved a lot and become more professional, although there are still problems. “Society has demonstrated a lot of self-organization,” says Kosub. As an example, he cites the volunteers who have been supplying the army for ten years – with cars, night vision devices and medicines.
Kosub believes the war will be long, with many casualties, but with a Ukrainian victory in the end. Looking back, he assures: “Everyone underestimated Putin and his willingness to ignore the rules.”
Lyushyna also believes in victory. The war made her tougher and more uncompromising towards Russia, Russian language and culture. In the future, she would like to return to her husband, but she no longer wants to live in Konotop, but in western Ukraine: “it’s safer there.” Russia will remain a dangerous neighbor.
Stewart doesn't dare make predictions beyond a year. She does not expect any “surprises” in Russia. With Western support, Ukraine will resist, but exhaustion after ten years of war is becoming increasingly noticeable. “Not enough thought is given to what will happen if Ukraine loses,” says the expert. The costs would be “much higher”, she assesses.
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