One month in, there's no end in sight for the war in Ukraine
Ukraine’s darkening spiral of atrocity has led to tens of thousands of dead, millions of refugees, pummelled cities, a humiliated Russian army and a suffering global economy
The biggest war in Europe since World War Two has, after a month, killed tens of thousands of people and displaced millions, with no end yet in sight and the danger of escalation constantly looming.
The Russian army was unable to seize control of Ukraine with a lightning offensive in the first week of the war, and shifted strategy to the levelling of cities in an effort to break the Ukrainian people’s spirit.
Russian forces have surrounded the cities of Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Mariupol and the capital, Kiev, and pounded them with artillery, airstrikes and missiles in the past three weeks. Only one major city, Kherson, has fallen. Civilian targets including hospitals, churches and housing have been indiscriminately hit, leading US president Joe Biden to call Russian president Vladimir Putin a “war criminal”.
The UN says more than 3.6 million Ukrainians are now refugees in Europe. A further 6.5 million are displaced within Ukraine. Millions more are living in half-destroyed cities without food, water or electricity. Many thousands of civilians are thought to have died.
Ukraine says it has killed 14,000 Russian soldiers, and destroyed many hundreds of tanks, armoured vehicles, artillery pieces and aircraft. Even conservative US estimates speak of at least 7,000 Russian dead. Financial and export sanctions never before placed on a $1.5tr economy promise to put Russia into deep recession this year. The World Bank warns the country is now in “default territory”. Biden travels to Europe on Wednesday with new sanctions proposals, including kicking Russia out of the G20.
Putin has said he will doggedly pursue his strategic goal – the neutralisation of Ukraine - regardless of cost.
“We thought the world’s economic interdependence had made this war too stupid to be waged; it turns out we humans are that stupid,” former US diplomat Brady Kiesling tells Al Jazeera.
“Our response now, naturally, is to make the European and US economies less blackmailable by foreign autocrats,” he says, referring to Europe’s plan to dispense with two thirds of Russian gas imports by the end of the year, and a US ban on Russian oil imports.
The war and sanctions have upended the global post-Covid economic recovery. The International Monetary Fund says it will downwardly revise its 4.4% growth forecast for the year next month.
“It is clear that this crisis is denting growth momentum and exacerbating inflationary pressures,” wrote Paschal Donohoe, who heads the informal group of euro area finance ministers, on 21 March. “There will also be impacts related to the displacement of Ukrainian people seeking safety in the EU. The cost of these impacts are set to be high.”
Ukraine has created a new European geopolitical reality. EU leaders are meeting on Thursday to discuss financial aid to member states to offset soaring energy costs for farmers, businesses and households, as Europe hunts for alternative suppliers of coal, oil and gas.
The war has also raised defence budgets. Germany announced a 100bn euro one-off expenditure on its armed forces, equal to more than two years’ worth of defence spending. France, too, said it will increase military spending in response to the invasion of Ukraine. Sweden says it will almost double its defence budget to two percent of GDP “as soon as possible”, with public opinion backing NATO membership for the first time. Finland, already spending two percent of GDP, is upping defence spending.
NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg says the alliance will double the forces on its eastern flank by placing four additional battle groups in Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Hungary.
Some see a silver lining for Europe. EU leaders moved towards creating an independent defence capability in their Versailles Declaration on March 11, by agreeing to “increase substantially defence expenditures… with defence capabilities developed in a collaborative way within the European Union.”
Bank of Greece governor Yiannis Stournaras believes this crisis will further European integration, as the 2008 global financial crisis brought closer banking union and the 2020 Covid crisis created Europe’s first common debt instrument.
“It is more likely that we will see significant steps towards further integration across critical sectors, such as defence, energy and fiscal policy,” he told fellow bankers on 21 March.
Others believe that energy decoupling from Russia and increased military deterrence will not change the thinking of a nuclear-armed former superpower. “A war of aggression like the one Russia unleashed on Ukraine requires a serious response,” says Prof. Kostas A. Lavdas, who teaches European studies at the University of Piraeus, but he believes sanctions are only a start.
“Further cornering a dangerous autocrat who controls nuclear weapons is not the way forward,” he tells Al Jazeera. “Providing a smart way out for both parties is the real challenge. Serious work begins after the end of the war. We need to understand why deterrence failed (because it did)… and ensure that this time we change course where change is needed.”
That way out is elusive. Ukraine and Russia signalled they might be nearing an agreement on March 16. Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said “neutral status is now being seriously discussed along, of course, with security guarantees. There are absolutely specific formulations which in my view are close to agreement.”
But talks are dragging on, a reflection of the difficulty Ukraine faces in giving up aspects of its self-determination – such as joining Western clubs EU and NATO – and parts of its sovereign territory, including the Donbas and Crimea, which Russia claims.
As Russia digs in and Europe, the United States, Canada and Britain raise the cost of Russia’s war, the world is also becoming increasingly polarised between a Western bloc of liberal democracies and others, like China, who do not condemn the Russian attack on Ukraine, making decisions in multilateral bodies such as the UN difficult to reach.
As Europe’s first war involving a nuclear power rages on, the world appears to be becoming a more dangerous place.
Timeline: A month of war in Ukraine
February 21 – March 22
Since February 21, when Russian president Vladimir Putin recognised Ukraine’s eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk as independent republics, he has staged the biggest war on a European state since World War Two.
In just a month, this savage conflict, fought in the streets and suburbs of Ukraine’s besieged cities, has displaced 10 million Ukrainians and is estimated to have claimed the lives of tens of thousands on both sides.
Russia has been hammered with the severest sanctions ever placed on a $1.5tr economy, including asset freezes and export bans. These have darkened the growth prospects of the global economy, which had just begun to recover from the Covid recession.
The main events, day by day, are as follows:
February 21: Russian president Vladimir Putin orders troops into the regions of Luhansk and Donetsk, and recognises them as independent states.
February 22: The Russian parliament authorises Putin to use military force. The US suspends the diplomatic process and sanctions two Kremlin-controlled banks.
Germany halts certification of the Nordstream II gas pipeline.
February 23: The EU freezes the assets of 351 Duma members who authorised force.
February 24: Russia launches a full-scale assault on Ukraine. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy orders a general mobilisation.
Following more US banking sanctions, Moscow’s stock exchange plummets by an unprecedented 45%.
February 26: The EU bars selected Russian banks from the Swift interbank transaction system, cutting them off from the global financial system.
February 27: The EU bans Russian civilian aircraft from EU airspace. State-owned media Russia Today, Sputnik and their subsidiaries are banned from EU airwaves and the internet.
Russian troops press towards Kiev, Kharkiv and Kherson. Ukrainians enlist.
February 28: Ukraine applies to join the EU. Russia and Ukraine start ceasefire talks. The Russian rouble tumbles 30%, forcing Putin to impose capital controls. The EU bans transactions with Russia’s central bank, and approves a 500 million euro support package for the Ukrainian military – the first time the EU provides leathal equipment to a third country.
March 1: A 65km-long Russian convoy heads for Kiev. Pressure increases on Kharkiv and Mariupol in the east, and Kherson in the south. Human Rights Watch reports that Russians are using cluster bombs against civilians. The US closes its skies to Russian aircraft.
March 2: Russian tanks enter Kherson, the first and only major city to fall. Russian forces surround Mariupol. A million refugees leave Ukraine.
March 3: The International Criminal Court’s top prosecutor sends an advance team to investigate possible war crimes.
March 4: Putin blocks Twitter, Facebook, VoA, the BBC and Deutsche Welle among others in Russia. He signs a law punishing ‘fake news’ with 15 years in prison.
March 5: US secretary of state Antony Blinken meets his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba on the Polish-Ukrainian border.
US urges its citizens to leave Russia immediately.
Aeroflot, Russia’s biggest state-owned airline, says it will cease all international flights.
March 7: Brent crude briefly reaches $139.13 a barrel.
Ukrainian refugees number 1.7mn.
March 8: Civilians flee the town of Sumy after the Ukraine war’s first safe corridor is agreed with Russia.
The US rejects a Polish offer to transfer Soviet-era MiG-29 fighter aircraft to Ukraine’s air force, to avoid NATO involvement.
The European Commission unveils REPowerEU, a plan to reduce dependence on Russian natural gas by two thirds by the end of the year.
The US imposes a ban on Russian crude oil imports, bringing the rise in oil prices since the Russian invasion to 30%.
Ukrainian refugees soar past the two million mark.
March 9: Russian air strikes target a maternity hospital in Mariupol, killing three. Russia says the hospital was housing “radicals”.
Streams of refugees flee bloody battles in Kiev’s northwestern suburbs Irpin and Vorzel. ,
The International Monetary Fund’s executive board approves $1.4bn in emergency financing for Ukraine.
March 10: Russian forces bomb a safe corridor, preventing humanitarian supplies from reaching Mariupol.
Two million refugees have departed Ukraine.
US Congress approves $13.6bn in spending for refugee and military aid.
March 11: Russians kidnap the mayor of Melitopol.
Putin approves the deployment of up to 16,000 irregular fighters from Syria.
Ukrainian refugees number more than 2.5 million. Another two million are internally displaced, says the UNHCR.
The European Union issues the Versailles Declaration, moving in the direction of a European defence capability.
March 12: In Mariupol, an AP crew films a Russian tank shelling an apartment building and an AP reporter is among medical workers targeted by Russian sniper fire. Russian forces pillage a humanitarian convoy trying to relieve the city’s residents.
March 13: Russia broadens its targets westward, firing 30 cruise missiles at a military training base in Yavoriv, 25km from the Polish border. Most are intercepted, but those that get through kill 35 people and wound 134.
March 14: Chechen warlord and Putin loyalist Ramzan Kadirov says Chechens have joined Moscow’s fight against Ukraine.
The US warns China it will not tolerate any form of alleviation of Russia from sanctions, as national security advisor Jake Sullivan meets Chinese foreign policy chief Yang Jiechi for talks.
The first 160 cars manage to leave Mariupol, as Russians block an aid convoy to the city.
March 15: The Czech, Polish and Slovenian prime ministers ride a train to Kiev.
20,000 civilians manage to flee Mariupol. Ukrainian refugees pass the three million mark.
Zelenskyy tells European officials he doesn’t believe NATO membership is a prospect for Ukraine, signalling possible grounds for agreement with Moscow.
March 16: Russian and Ukrainian negotiators say they are discussing neutrality for Ukraine in return for security guarantees and departure of Russian troops.
Russian president Vladimir Putin likens domestic opponents of the war to “gnats” who weaken the country. He speaks of a “natural and necessary self-purification of society” that will “strengthen the country”, suggesting that purges may be on the way.
March 18: Ukraine says it has rescued 130 people from the rubble of Mariupol’s municipal theatre, bombed two days earlier. A thousand more may be trapped beneath. Five thousand civilians are evacuated from the city, bringing the number of evacuees to 35,000. Mariupol’s mayor tells the BBC the fighting has reached the city centre, and Ukrainian officials say the port city has lost access to the sea, as Russia says it is “tightening the noose” around it. The Mariupol city council estimates 2,500 people have died from Russian bombardment
Six missiles are fired from the Black Sea at the western city of Lviv. Two are intercepted but four strike an aircraft repair hangar, killing one person.
US president Joe Biden warns Chinese president Xi Jinping of “consequences” should China offer Russia “material support”.
March 20: Russian airstrikes destroy an art school in the city where some 400 civilians are sheltering.
March 21: Ukraine rejects a Russian offer to allow civilians and military personnel safe passage from Mariupol if it surrenders.
The UN says Ukrainian refugees now number 3.4 million, and those internally displaced 6.5 million.
March 22: Biden says Putin’s constant claims that Ukraine has chemical and biological weapons are a “clear sign he is considering using both of those.”