Feb. 24 marks one year since the full-scale escalation of Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, which really started in 2014 with the annexation of Crimea. This war has become even more brutal in recent weeks, with Vladimir Putin now targeting Ukraine’s entire energy infrastructure.
Putin’s attempt to bring pain and suffering directly to Ukraine’s civilian population is part of a diabolical hope that denying heat and electricity to the Ukrainian people in winter will force them to stop resisting and make them plead with Ukraine’s government to stop fighting against Russia’s invasion and just let Putin keep whatever Ukrainian land he has already taken. However, a poll from October showed that 86% of Ukrainian people support fighting against Russia, no matter what the cost.
A look back at the past year shows just how instrumental U.S. and NATO aid has been in fighting back Russia’s aggression.
Western NATO-based training of Ukraine’s military and supply of hundreds of hand-held anti-tank Javelins and anti-aircraft Stingers along with Turkish drones helped decimate Russian forces in northern Ukraine last spring, forcing Putin into a humiliating withdrawal from all of northern Ukraine. Then by last summer with the West finally supplying Ukraine with roughly 200 modern howitzers and two dozen HIMARS precision missile systems, Ukraine was able to not only halt Russia’s offensive in Eastern Ukraine, but Ukrainian forces were able to liberate large portions of northeastern and southwestern portions of Ukraine.
In all, thanks to the initial military help from the U.S. and other allies, Ukraine has been able to push Russia back and liberate 54% of the land that Russia initially took in the first month of the war, according to The New York Times. Russia is estimated to have lost nearly 200,000 troops (killed or injured), several thousand tanks and armored vehicles, and over 500 jets and attack helicopters.
Putin’s response has been to mobilize 300,000 new soldiers, and albeit poorly trained, Russia has proven able to use them in suicidal human wave attacks to slowly reconquer small portions of land in eastern Ukraine as the initial supply of Western heavy weapons and ammunition provided to Ukraine has run dangerously low.
So now, it is more important than ever to help Ukraine to take back the other 46% of its land. For those who question why the U.S. should help Ukraine, if the humanitarian aspect of stopping a mass genocidal attack on one of Europe’s largest countries isn’t reason enough, there is also the fact that the U.S. made a security agreement with Ukraine in 1994, that if Ukraine got rid of their entire Soviet inherited nuclear arsenal, then the U.S. would guarantee Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty.
Many experts interpreted this 1994 Budapest Memorandum as also meaning direct U.S. military intervention in case of invasion, but Ukraine is not asking for U.S. soldiers to come to Ukraine. Ukraine leaders say that they are willing to do all the fighting and dying, to rid their country of the Russian invaders. All Ukraine asks of the U.S. is to simply provide the necessary heavy weapons, a fraction of NATO’s stockpile, to do the job.
Let’s live up to our side of the bargain and help Ukraine finish what we promised them we would do back in 1994.
Vasyl Newmerzhycky is a deputy director of the Utah Ukrainian Community, a nonprofit organization that helps organize the Ukrainian community in the region, helps with assisting newly arrived Ukrainians, hosts various cultural events, and as of the past year, has organized events in support of Ukraine’s ongoing struggle in its war for freedom and independence.