Russo-Ukrainian War Update

*Disclaimer* All events are prior to 11/9/2022

It has been over 250 days since the Russo-Ukrainian War started in February of this year after Russian forces invaded Ukraine. As of November 3rd, there have been about 38,000 deaths, over 53,600 injured, and 14 million people displaced. All of this was the outcome of a statement made by Russian President Vladimir Putin in which he claimed that the invasion was to “demilitarize and denazify” the country of Ukraine.

Since the war has begun, Ukraine has gone from not wanting to be involved in NATO to sending a request to join the alliance while at the same time slowly turning the tides and pushing Russian forces out. At the same time, Russia is slowly starting to lose resources and people that are willing to fight for their President.

In the past months, there has been a threat made by Russia in which the country claims to be ready to start using nuclear weapons and “dirty bombs.” If Russia is to go through with this threat and make it a reality, President Biden has made it clear that the United States will become physically involved in the war, saying the US is closer to “armageddon” than it ever has been even during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. If the US enters the war, then so will all of NATO, causing World War 3.

Along with the topic of the world possibly approaching WW3, in the last two months, a Russian strike hit the German Embassy stationed in Ukraine. Luckily, due to the war, the building has been practically abandoned for the time being. Although, under Article 5 of NATO, it states that if an embassy of a NATO country is attacked, “each and every other member of the Alliance will consider this act of violence as an armed attack against all members and will take the actions it deems necessary to assist the Ally attacked”, meaning Germany had the ability to bring all of NATO into the war, which would have most likely caused World War 3 as well. Luckily, they did not come to that decision and are instead supplying Ukrainians with more aid than before.

Kate Flugge, a World History teacher at Central, hopes for an overall Ukrainian victory. Mrs. Flugge believes that in the future of the war “…democratic countries around the world will continue to aid Ukraine in their fight against Russia for the foreseeable future, as it is very much a fight for democracy against authoritarianism”, though this all depends on how much the war escalates. On the basis of whether Russia will declare nuclear warfare, Mrs. Flugge says she does not believe President Putin will declare it “although he certainly seems comfortable threatening it – the risks to his own country and people are just too great.”

Most recently, Russian forces have been told to retreat from the key southern city of Kherson. This could either be a setback for Vladimir Putin or it could be a trap for Ukrainian forces. Nobody is certain as of November 10th, 2022.

Though people have started to talk less and less about the war, it continues to become more intense as days go by. After talking to five sophomore students who attend Central High none of them had even known about the German Embassy and the possibility of that being the spark of an all out war across the world.