Мир 🇺🇦🕊

365 days of war in Ukraine has resulted in the unnecessary deaths of more than 200,000 Russian soldiers and more than 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers (source: Grid News). According to the United Nations, at least 8,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed. However, 8,000 is an underestimation, as only those identified have been accounted for. Reliable sources have estimated the civilian death toll to be closer to 100,000.

According to Reuters, approximately 14 million people are displaced (as of 02/23/2023). In the earlier months of the war, Ukrainians were seen fleeing the war on foot. Near the end of 2022, wives and children were forced to cry goodbye to their husbands and fathers at the train station, not knowing whether they’ll ever be reunited again. More recently, Ukrainians are seeking asylum in neighboring European countries (such as Russia, Poland, Germany, and the Czech Republic), to seek peace and a new life. But the war is still very much alive.

The image that hasn’t left my mind is one that was published on 03/07/2022, on the front page of the New York Times. American journalist Lynsey Addario snapped a photo showing the lifeless bodies of a Ukrainian family, on the side of the road, hit by Russian mortar fire while trying to flee. At first, I was in utter shock. Nothing was blurred out. This was the first time I had ever seen real dead bodies, let alone through a camera lens. I felt numb. Freedom of the press was at its peak during humanity’s worst crisis in recent history - exposing 4 corpses in broad daylight in a war-torn country on a completely deserted street that could’ve been bustling with Ukrainians going about their day. All this because one tsarist chose war over peace. Seeing the photo flashed me right back to the news segment I heard on TV about a week or so before, where a reporter talked about how a fallen soldier was beyond recognition. It was double-proof that the war was/is killing people - both civilians and soldiers for that matter.

"Peace, like war, can succeed only where there is a will to enforce it, and where there is available power to enforce it." - Franklin D. Roosevelt.