Ukraine has endured mightily in the war with Russia. Recently, Kyiv reported battlefield casualties of 43,000 killed and 376,000 wounded.
Civilian deaths numbered 12,000. The government estimates that cost of recovery and reconstruction of property damages at $524 billion.
Displaced Ukrainians climbed to 8 million.
Appalling by any measure, the conflict is but the latest bloodstained trauma to immerse Ukraine. Much of her historic suffering was inflicted by Russia and the Soviet Union, to which Ukraine belonged until 1991. It then severed ties with Russia upon collapse of her communist regime.
Ukraine is the second largest country in Europe, after Russia.
Wikipedia puts the 2022 population at 41 million. Demographics describes a highly literate and advanced nation — culturally and economically. As one of the world’s largest wheat exporters, Ukraine became the “bread basket of Europe.” Many Americans say: “The Ukrainians look just like us.”
Ukraine became part of the Soviet Union December 30, 1922. By 1926 the population stood at 29 million. When Joseph Stalin died in 1953 the nation had lost almost half its people to famine, war, and mass killings.
Beginning in 1932-33 Ukraine felt the lash of Stalin’s rule: his plan for collectivized agriculture. When Ukraine farmers resisted, they were either shot or deported to work camps in Russia’s notorious gulag. Shipments of food and seeds were deliberately withheld causing famine and starvation. Known today as the Holodomor, an estimated 3.9 million people perished out of a population of 30 million.
Stalin is often quoted for declaring: “The death of one man is a tragedy; The death of a million is a statistic.”
There followed more tribulations. Intent upon stamping out all dissent, Stalin’s purges of the 1930s in Moscow also dipped deep into Ukraine.
Thinkers, writers, theatre directors — the intelligentsia — were either rounded up and murdered or imprisoned. Some remained in prison until the Soviet Union faltered and failed.
Commented Oletsandra Marvii, founder of a group investigating Russia’s crimes: “The Nazi war criminals ended up on trial at Nuremberg. Those who conducted the purges and ran the Soviet Gulag were neither prosecuted nor sentenced. Theirs was total impunity.”
Enormous misfortune struck Ukraine during World War II. When Nazi Germany launched its Russian invasion in June 1941, Ukraine became the site of horrendous warfare. The government estimates 10 million Ukrainians were killed. The Germans either slaughtered or deported one and half million Jews, almost the entire Jewish population.
Evidence of Nazi atrocities are still being uncovered.
Over one million Ukrainian soldiers are believed to have died fighting the Germans. In more than 28,000 cities, towns, and villages, property damages were extensive.
For Ukraine’s tortured history, Vladamir Putin and the Kremlin deny any and all responsibility. In the occupied territory, the Russians are busy erecting monuments to the criminals and their crimes.
Retributions, therefore, are unlikely. Notwithstanding, the West must hope that in some fashion and before it’s too late the gods of peace and prosperity will redeem Ukraine’s misery and her grief.
