![Slava! An Update on Ukraine](https://weberwarriornews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Ukraine.jpeg)
For the past 20 months, Ukraine has been the battleground of the largest war on European soil since World War Two. The Russian Ministry of Defence (MOD), and the Ukrainian Armed Forces of Ukraine (ЗСУ, ZSU) have been slugging it out in a fierce experiment of truly modern war.
In 1991, as the Soviet Union was collapsing, both the Russian Federation and Ukraine declared independence from the dissolving superpower. In 1994, the Budapest Memorandum was concluded, forcing Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan to return the nuclear Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles left in the three former SSRs to Russia, in return for a promise that the United States, United Kingdom and Russia would not take offensive action against the three republics. Russia violated the Budapest Memorandum in Feb. 2014 when Russian troops annexed Crimea, a peninsula in southern Ukraine and supported the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and the Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR).
These aggressive actions started the War in Donbass, forcing Ukraine to modernize its military, and modernize quickly. A streamlined logistics network, clarified military chain of command and Ukraine began to refit and improve its Soviet-era equipment. Soviet T-72 Tanks, T-62s, T-55s and Su-27 jet fighters saw major improvements, many of these Ukrainian upgrades outclassing their Russian counterparts.
Then, on Feb. 24 2022, Russian troops again crossed the border into Ukraine, under a “Special Military Operation” from the Kremlin.
More than a year after the initial Russian assault, on May 3, 2023, Russia claimed that two Ukrainian drones had attacked the Kremlin, in an attempt to assassinate the Russian dictator, Vladimir Putin. Ukraine’s government, under President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, fervently denied the accusations. Russia continued the claim that the drones were Ukrainian, until the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) stated that it was “extremely unlikely that two drones could have penetrated multiple layers of air defense and detonated or been shot down just over the heart of the Kremlin in a way that provided spectacular imagery caught nicely on camera.”
Two days later, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner paramilitary group, announced that he would pull his troops out of the Ukrainian town of Bakhmut on 10. May, due to a shortage of ammo. Prigozhin would blame the Russian military for this shortage, further escalating the growing divide between the Wagner PMC and the Russian MoD. However, Prighozhin would reverse the order on May 7, claiming that his forces had been granted the appropriate equipment.
May 11 The Ukrainian army broke through the Russian defenses north of Bakhmut, a major upset in the mostly static battle there. Prighozhin claimed that Russian troops had abandoned his flank, aiding in the Ukrainian attack, a claim that the Russian MoD fervently denied.
Since May 11, The frontlines have largely remained a stalemate, but the home fronts have been ablaze with activity. Prigozhin and the Wagner PMC launched a coup d’etat against Vladimir Putin in late June, which failed and resulted in Prighozhin’s exile into Belarus, under the negotiations of Belarusian president Aleksandr Lukashenko. Two months after his coup attempt, Prigozhin was shot down in a helicopter over Russian airspace.
But how have the recent and distant events in Ukraine influenced Weber?
Several students, all of whom asked to remain anonymous, answered some questions about the conflict in Ukraine. The first student stated their first reaction upon hearing of the start of the war in Mid-February 2022. “Is the United States going to War?” Which was a great question at the time, as there were wide-spread fears of a third world war on the horizon at the time.
According to a student, it’s been several months since they’ve gotten any updates from Ukraine, a truly horrifying fact considering that war is still raging in the European nation. But the fact that an update from Ukraine hasn’t been covered in a major way in months, is a reflection of the lack of awareness, or the lack of care, about the Eastern European country.
The events in Ukraine since 1991 have influenced Europe, and the World, heavily. From the frigid ice of Alaska to the deserts of Australia, Ukraine has altered the world irrevocably. NATO is more united at the moment than it has been in 20 years. Russia has been humiliated, Wagner has been all but dissolved in Europe and both the Republic of Finland and the Kingdom of Sweden have been accepted into the alliance. Japan has tightened its claims upon the Kuril Islands, an island chain that the archipelago nation claims. For a mere moment, the war in Ukraine united nearly the entire planet, from east to west, north to south the world united in solidarity with the Slavic nation.
For a mere moment, the war in Ukraine united nearly the entire planet.