As we approach the fourth anniversary of Russia’s bloody full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin thinks he has found the key to breaking Ukraine’s resilience: turning its cities into frozen death traps. Every night, dark swarms of missiles and deadly drones take off towards Ukrainian cities, big and small, with one purpose: to freeze millions of civilians, young and old, whose only fault is that they do not want to be part of Russia. Civilians are not collateral damage.
They are the targets. Russia’s leading politicians and experts speak openly about the need for the annihilation of Ukrainian cities as punishment for refusing to submit and as the key to finally occupying all 24 of Ukraine’s provinces (instead of one, as of now). After the Russian army failed to break Ukraine militarily for about four years, they hope to win by breaking the spirit of its civilians.
Amid the South African summer, it is hard to comprehend what it means to be without power and heat during an Eastern European winter in a modern city. It means bomb shelters filled with children shivering, despite wearing their warmest clothes. It means older people lying in the dark under five blankets on the 15th floor of their flats, as the lift no longer works and they have no one to help them.
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It means children with special needs screaming when a Russian drone hits a neighbouring building and their exhausted mothers can do nothing but hug them and cry into their pillows. It means existing with -20°C outside your home and barely 10°C inside. It means — if things go according to Russia’s plan — large cities becoming frozen cemeteries for millions.
This is what Russia is trying to do, with the whole world watching live, between football broadcasts and another Netflix series: causing civilian collapse and, at the very least, the exodus of millions. At worst, it seeks to make Ukraine — the largest country fully situated in Europe — unliveable for generations to come, as Russia has done to hundreds of cities and villages in Ukraine’s east that it vowed to “liberate”. Some say: Why don’t Ukraine and Russia find a compromise, get along — after all, you are “cousins”, millions of people living next to one another, with the same looks and the same first and last names.
First of all, it is hard to “get along” if you want to live and the other side wants you to die. What is the “compromise” between life and death, freedom and slavery? For reference, in South Africa’s case, what would the compromise between freedom and apartheid be?
Half freedom and half apartheid? Being free for half a day and then walking on the assigned side of the pavement for the rest of it? Freedom is not something people compromise on.
And if they do, it means only one thing: their will is broken. Ukraine is not.
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