Despite repeated calls for Russia to stand down from President Biden and other world leaders, in the early morning of February 24, the citizens of Ukraine awoke to bombs falling in multiple locations including Mariupol and the capital, Kyiv.
It is estimated that 644 Ukrainian citizens were injured during the initial attacks, and another 198 were killed.
MCCC student Oleksii Mykhalchuk, who is from Kyiv said that a large-scale invasion of the country was not expected. He said that since 2014 there has been ongoing pressure from the Russians, but that they only started getting worried about a full invasion in “January, after the new year.”
So, what does Putin want? Officially the Russian President says, “The purpose of this operation is to protect people who, for eight years now, have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kyiv regime. To this end, we will seek to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine, as well as bring to trial those who perpetrated numerous bloody crimes against civilians, including against citizens of the Russian Federation.”
He has also said that he didn’t want Ukraine to be allowed to join NATO, the group of countries formed after World War II that agreed to work together and support one another if any of them were attacked.
Mykhalchuk says the real reason is “[after the fall of the Soviet Union] Ukraine was always moving towards the Western countries in NATO and the EU, and I guess Russia didn’t like that. So now they are trying to hold us near them.”
Countries around the world, including the US, are imposing economic sanctions on Russia which have had a serious financial impact on the country’s economy, but Putin’s Army is moving forward, heading toward Kyiv.
It’s not clear what Putin’s end game might be. Are we looking at nuclear war or worse? After all, Putin has 6,257 nuclear warheads at his disposal according to the Nuclear Threat Initiative.
Videos are circulating on social media of normal Ukrainians throwing Molotov cocktails at armored vehicles and troop carriers in an effort to disable or destroy them. There are diagrams in Ukrainian telling people where to throw these improvised devices in order to inflict maximum damage.
Mykhalchuk’s father and younger brother are still in Ukraine. His brother is having trouble with the current situation.
His father’s response is different. He says, “Whenever you call my father right now, he’ll be like, ‘oh, we are fine.’ Like, nothing is happening. Because even though the Ukrainian civilians are at war, they were already mentally prepared for this. They think of it as their civic duty to help.”
Although Mykhalchuk says his professors have been accommodating given his current situation, he says, “I am freaking out. In Ukraine, life stopped; so everyone and everything is focused on the war. Here I have exams, I have classes, I have to do my stuff. But for me life stopped like it did for all of Ukraine. It’s hard for me.”
