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- Author, Lorna Hankin
- Scroll, BBC World Service
4 hours ago
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The conflict caused “the fastest forced population movement since World War II,” according to the UN.
A year has passed since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
February 24, 2022 will be remembered by many forever.
In a televised address, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared a “military special operation” in the Donbass region of Ukraine.
On the same day, the United Nations Security Council appealed to him not to proceed.
Air raid sirens sounded over Kyiv. The country’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned: “If someone tries to take away our country, our freedom, our lives… we will defend ourselves.”
A year after the war began and with no prospect of an end in the near future the BBC analyzes the impact of the war in Ukraine through graphs on various topics such as the Russian advance, the number displaced and the change in weapons used.
The map of Ukraine before the Russian invasion
Prior to the invasion a year ago, Russianbacked separatists retained control of significant areas of Donbass in eastern Ukraine.
On February 21, 2022, President Putin announced that Russia would now recognize the independence of two breakaway regions the selfproclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic.
The measure was condemned by Ukraine, the NATO military alliance and several Western countries and served as an excuse for Putin to move troops to the region.
Russia had already annexed Crimea in 2014, although most countries still recognize the peninsula as part of Ukraine.
How the maps of invaded Ukraine have changed over the year
A year after the invasion, Russia controls far less territory than it did at the start of the war, when its forces attempted to invade Kiev.
Nevertheless, Russians occupy large areas in eastern and southern Ukraine.
After the failed offensive against the Ukrainian capital, Russian forces focused on uniting the LuhanskDonetsk region with areas near Crimea.
In May, the Russians succeeded when Ukraine evacuated troops defending the Azovstal Steelworks in Mariupol after a long and bloody siege of the site.
This gave Russia an important land bridge connecting southern and eastern territories, as well as control of Ukraine’s southeastern coast and the Sea of Azov.
But since then, almost all major victories of the war have gone to Ukraine.
In a counterattack that began in September, Ukrainian forces recaptured much of the northeastern Kharkiv region.
Then the city of Lyman and other areas in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts were recaptured.
In November, the Ukrainian advance to the south forced Russian troops to withdraw from the city of Kherson to the east bank of the Dnipro River, although Moscow still controlled the area on the west bank.
Increase in attacks on Ukrainian power plants
Russia has responded by firing rockets and attacking Ukrainian cities and power plants with drones a move originally made in response to a daring attack by Ukrainian forces on a key bridge connecting Crimea and Russia in October.
In eastern Ukraine, Russian forces fought a brutal battle to try to take the town of Bakhmut, some 60 km north of Donetsk.
The offensive, however, suggests that Moscow’s forces may be divided as the Russian military and the Wagner Group, a private mercenary organization, publicly disagree over who credited Russia with taking the town of Soledar.
“Biggest refugee crisis since World War II”
The war has claimed thousands of lives, but neither side releases official military data.
As of February 13, 2023, 7,199 civilians have been killed and 11,756 injured in Ukraine, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
However, the organization said it “believes the actual numbers are significantly higher, as information from locations where violent clashes took place has been delayed and many reports have yet to be substantiated”.
Since the Russian invasion, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has determined that around 7.7 million refugees from Ukraine have traveled to various countries in Europe including even Russia.
The total population of Ukraine before the war was about 44 million. It is estimated that almost seven million Ukrainians are internally displaced persons living far from their homes.
Most refugees fled to Russia, Poland, Germany and the Czech Republic.
The UN speaks of the “fastest forced population movement since the Second World War”.
Although many people returned to cities like Kiev after Ukraine’s counteroffensive, the country’s government urged refugees not to return home before spring.
They hope the warmer weather will ease the strain on the power grid, which has been badly hit by drone and missile attacks.
Many Ukrainian refugees, mostly women and children, have been given a warm welcome in countries across Europe.
But as war and the global inflationary crisis rage on, officials in Germany and elsewhere are beginning to wonder how long they can house refugees.
Martina Schweinsburg, a city councilor in Thuringia, Germany, said her district provided Ukrainians with voluntary help from private landlords when the war started but that many are now unwilling to help.
The emergency accommodation of refugees in gyms is becoming increasingly unpopular among the population.
“Our capacities are exhausted,” she said. “We’re under pressure.”
Many refugees still lead a difficult life far away from the war zone they have to start a new life in another country, still suffer from the trauma of the conflict and miss the bereaved.
“Ukrainian refugees are desperate to work in their host countries, but need extra support and more inclusion in the communities they are staying in,” UNHCR warned in September.
UN human rights experts expressed serious concern in October, saying “women, children, the elderly and people with disabilities have been placed in extremely vulnerable situations”.
Martin Griffiths, United Nations UnderSecretaryGeneral for Humanitarian Affairs and Coordinator for Emergency Relief, said in a recent statement that “war continues to cause death, destruction and displacement on a daily basis on an astounding scale.”
And the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, called on European Union leaders in February 2023 to “reaffirm solidarity and support for all refugees”.
The change in the weapons used and the countries that supply them
One of the biggest changes since the beginning of the war concerns the weapons used in the conflict and also who makes them available to those involved.
Russia is the second largest arms exporter in the world, and at the start of the war its military seemed theoretically much more powerful than Ukraine’s.
But within a year more than 30 countries have supplied Kiev with military equipment.
“Vladimir Putin expected that Ukraine would passively accept the actions of its most powerful neighbor without significant participation from other countries. This grave miscalculation led to a protracted conflict with no end in sight,” Barbara Zanchetta, from King’s College London’s Department of Studies of War, told the BBC.
Thousands of Nlaw handguns designed to destroy tanks with a single shot were supplied to Ukraine as the conflict progressed.
They were instrumental in stopping the Russian advance on Kiev in the early days of the invasion.
Since then, much of the fighting in the war has taken place in the east of the country, where Ukraine has made strides through the use of longrange weapons.
The US, UK, Canada and Australia supplied M777 howitzers and missile systems such as the M142 Himars.
US officials say Russia following international sanctions has been forced to rely on countries like North Korea, from whom it has reportedly bought millions of missiles and artillery shells for use in the war. Both Russia and North Korea deny this.
Ukraine had access to longrange, accurate weapons that would be vital to its successful operations in the east and south.
Advanced western systems also played an important role in defending Ukraine against Russian air raids.
From the beginning of the conflict, Ukraine used batteries of Sovietera surfacetoair missiles like the S300.
But they were complemented by a variety of western weapons, including the US Nasams (National Advanced SurfacetoAir Missile System) and the German IRIST SLMs, as well as smaller systems like the British Starstreak.
In December, Washington announced that it would supply Ukraine with the advanced Patriot missile system. Germany and the Netherlands did the same. Depending on the missile type, the weapon can have a range of up to 100 km.
But in other parts of the war, Ukraine feels it needs help faster.
Although Ukraine received infantry fighting vehicles such as Strykers and Bradleys early in the war, Ukraine has not received tanks from its allies.
Just last month, a coalition of countries agreed to send heavy tanks. First was the UK, which donated Challenger 2s; then the US with the M1 Abrams; and finally Germany with the Leopard 2s.
The Berlin decision could trigger further donations as it allows other users of Germanmade Leopards like Poland to supply their tanks as well.
Ben Barry of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (ISS) told the BBC that western tanks will make a difference in the war but warned that promises so far are unlikely to be enough to win the conflict. According to him, history proves that only tanks don’t win wars.
This news triggered reactions in Moscow. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned that new Western arms shipments “lead to a significant escalation” and other countries “will be directly involved”.
It is this fear of rising tensions that is keeping Ukraine’s allies from supplying fighter jets, despite increasing requests from Kiev.
Drones also get into the conflict. Many have been used for surveillance and target tracking since the beginning of the war.
Turkish defense company Baykar has sold and even donated some of its highly regarded TB2s to replace those Ukraine lost in the fighting.
In recent months, Russia has used large numbers of “kamikaze” drones (along with cruise missiles) to attack Ukrainian cities and power plants.
While Iran said it only supplied drones to Moscow before the war broke out, it is believed to have secretly supplied hundreds of other drones during the conflict.
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