Satyaraj Hazarika, IPS
Deputy Inspector General of Police, Assam
Introduction: On February 24th 2022 Russian troops launched a full scaled attack on Ukraine. And for the last nine days the world waited with bated breath as cruise missiles, vacuum bombs and tanks rolled out a destruction to Kyiv, Kharkiv, Sumy and host of other cities. Medyka is one of the eight border crossings in Poland where thousands of refugees streamed into it. Similar is the case with Orlivka border crossing into Romania. Ukrainian women and children, old women took to the roads from Zhytomyr in Western Ukraine to Medyka at a distance of 500 kms. For the Kyiv and Kharkiv population the border is too far away. They had to remain billeted in bomb bunkers to escape the Russian shelling.
Refugees also thronged the Siret town of Romania from Cernauti and Solotvyno in Ukraine. The Western Ukrainian province of Lviv are the ones who had easy access to the Polish and Romanian border. Out of the 660,000 refugees leaving Ukraine 450,000 crossed into Poland and 113,000 arrived in Romania. Ukraine has long played an important, role in the global security order. Today, the country is on the front lines of a renewed great-power rivalry that many analysts say will dominate international relations in the decades ahead. Meanwhile, Russia’s aggression in Ukraine has triggered the greatest security crisis in Europe since the Cold War.
The Beginning of the Ukrainian Crisis
The Crimean Peninsula, on which the de facto republic is located, became a part of post-Soviet Ukraine in 1991, upon the latter's independence, by virtue of Ukraine's inheritance of the territory from the Ukrainian SSR, of which Crimea was a part since 1954. In 2014, Russia annexed the peninsula and established two federal subjects there, Republic of Crimea and the federal city of Sevastopol, but the territories are still internationally recognized as being part of Ukraine.
After Crimea, Russia stoked separatism in the eastern Ukrainian Donetsk and Luhansk Russian speaking province and fighting between Ukrainian Government forces and pro-Russian separatist guerrillas started. Since April 2014 Donetsk and its surrounding areas have been one of the major sites of fighting in the ongoing Donbas War, as pro-Russian separatist forces battle against Ukrainian military forces for control of the city and surrounding areas. Throughout the war, the city of Donetsk has been administered by the pro-Russian separatist forces as the center of the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), with outlying territories of the Donetsk region divided between the two sides.
Moscow-backed separatists have controlled the southeastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, known collectively as Donbas, for almost eight years. But Russian President Vladimir Putin recognised them only on Monday, paving the way for the official presence of Russian troops in the rebel-controlled areas that occupy about a third of Donetsk and Luhansk.
The invasion from the north-east, south and south-east swiftly took the cities of Kherson, in the south and Mariupol in the south-east. Bobrovytsya is also under siege. A long 40 km convoy of Russian tanks are moving towards Kyiv last Saturday. Provinces of the north-east Sumy, Kharkiv, Poltava, and south-east like Zaporizhia and Kherson are bearing the brunt of the attack.
Russian is targeting civilian targets and infrastructure by greater use of MLRS, and artillery in suburban areas. The Russian troops are facing unprecedented resistance from Ukrainian troops, and civilians and heavy Russian casualties are reported undermining the logistics of Russian army. Turkish made Bayraktar TB2 drones are making a significant impact in the battlefield targeting transport trains, missile systems and trucks of the invading Russian army.
Trapped in the war zones are 20,000 Indian students who are medical or engineering students in the cities of Kyiv and Sumy. And among them are a sizeable number of students from North East India, flocking to Ukraine for its low cost education. Op Ganga has been launched by GOI and Air India is allowed to fly in the otherwise no-fly zone to evacuate the stranded Indian students.
Nuclear option of Russian: How serious is the threat
The Russian President Vladimir Putin raised his nuclear deterrence forces to “special combat readiness” thus raising the nuclear specter, unprecedented since 1991, the year of formation of Russian Republic.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday that if a third World War were to take place, it would involve nuclear weapons and be destructive, the RIA news agency reported. Ukraine still has Soviet nuclear technologies and the means of delivery of such weapons. The day saw Russia claiming its forces had taken control of the first sizable city on Wednesday, seizing Kherson, in the south, as fighting raged around the country with Russian paratroopers landing in Kharkiv, Ukraine's second largest city.
Ukraine said over 2,000 civilians had died since the start of the hostilities, while its forces had killed 6,000 of Russian troops. Meanwhile Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had urged Russia to stop the bombings, as the civilian death toll touched 2000 and the Russia lost 6000 troops.
Ukrainian second largest city Kharkiv took most of the heavy Russian bombardment, with videos in social media showing buildings billowing smoke and rubble. Western Nations and US are banning Russian flights over their territory, and economic sanctions are enforced more harsher than ever before. Russian banks are barred from SWIFT international payment gateway, as BP, Shell and other Oil majors of West are suspending their Russian operations. Even as the world hold the stick of financial sanctions that led the Russian ruble to plummet by 30 percent, Binance Holdings, the biggest crypto-currency exchange refuted calls to restrict all Russians from using the crypto currency exchange. Chinese are also are unwilling to play ball with the West, as far as tightening the economic noose on Russia. Even if the NATO and US have stayed out of the war in Ukraine, the military aid to former Soviet nations have increased as fighting reaches a critical point in Ukraine. It is seen by Observers that Putin's orders for nuclear forces on combat mode, came less than 24 hours of the economic sanctions imposed by the West.
The Russian advance on Ukraine is slower, crippled by stiff opposition, logistical problems and no major Ukrainian city has fallen yet. But Russian jets will sooner dominate the contested Ukrainian skies, as UK ruled out enforcing no fly zones over Ukraine. Any involvement of NATO or US jets in the conflict will surely take the nuclear threat notches up the escalation ladder and Putin will have every reason to make good his nuclear threat as the conventional ones that pitied half of his total forces against Ukraine.
