It has been almost a year now since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, sowing death and destruction across the country. The toll of the war is grim: thousands of Ukrainian civilians dead, tens of thousands of soldiers on both sides killed, millions displaced, whole Ukrainian towns and villages razed to the ground.
Faraan: As we move into the second year, both sides are preparing large-scale offensives, with tens of thousands of new recruits and new sophisticated hardware being sent to the front line. A wide range of scenarios that are viable to a different extent may unfold this year. The only thing we can predict with a high degree of confidence is that we are going to see a bloodbath on a larger scale than last year.
In their public rhetoric, both Russia and Ukraine sound confident in their victory, but they seem to define it in different terms. The government in Kyiv has made it clear that its goal is the liberation of all Ukrainian territories Russia currently occupies, including the Crimean Peninsula. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky himself has said in a November interview for a Czech TV channel that once the Ukrainian army achieves victory, he will vacation in Crimea.
Some Ukrainian officials have gone even further, spelling out the goal of breaking the Russian Federation up. Earlier this month, the chief of Ukraine’s National Security Council, Oleksiy Danilov, wrote in an op-ed published in the Ukrainian news outlet Ukrainska Pravda that Russia should be “de-colonised”, its statehood in the current form undone, and the independence movements of various peoples within its borders encouraged.
The Ukrainian army has been able to liberate some areas, but much of the territory occupied in the last 12 months remains under Russian control. Mobilisation is going on across the country, and the Ukrainian army is getting new training and weapons from the West.
