A further threat to the Ukrainian people forced to live in the cold due to lack of electricity
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(Yoichi Masuzoe: scholar of international politics)
The year 2023 has got off to a bleak start as fighting continues on New Year’s Day in Ukraine. This year’s topic is the war in Ukraine.
The spread of the new coronavirus will also have a major impact on the global economy. However, as soon as the Xi Jinping administration changed the zero-corona policy, the infection spread to China, increasing the risk of creating new mutant strains.
It’s the beginning of a difficult year.
Ukraine in battle
On New Year’s Day, a Russian troop barracks in Makyivka, near the capital of the Donetsk region, was attacked by the Ukrainian army’s highly mobile missile artillery, the Hymers, killing and wounding dozens of soldiers. Russia’s Defense Ministry puts the death toll at 89, but the real number is believed to be higher.
The casualties include many mobilized soldiers, but if the number of casualties among Russian soldiers increases in this way, it is possible that anti-war movements in the country will expand. In December 1979 Soviet forces invaded Afghanistan. Despite heavy sacrifices, he didn’t give results and in February 1989, ten years later, he was retired.
The great pressure to withdraw came from the voices of Russian mothers whose sons had been killed on the battlefield. How many victims and how long will it take for these voices to rise again and gain great political power?
The Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, which is said to have killed 15,000 and injured 50,000, was a prelude to the collapse of the Soviet Union. This time in Ukraine, the number of killed and wounded Russian soldiers seems to have already vastly exceeded that.
On January 5, Putin ordered a 36-hour ceasefire starting at noon on January 6, the Russian Orthodox Christmas Day. The move comes in response to Patriarch Kirill’s call for a Christmas truce, but the Ukrainian side dismisses the ceasefire proposal as hypocrisy.
