A recent news article on theguardian.com says that according to the New York Times, US officials have said that the number of battlefield casualties in Ukraine is approaching nearly 500,000. Russia’s military casualties are approaching 300,000, the officials claimed, with as many as 120,000 killed in action. On the other hand, Ukraine was said to have close to 70,000 killed and 100,000-120,000 wounded.
These are only estimates, which can vary wildly, given the lack of confirmed information and the continuous information warfare that is being waged by both parties, but that is still a humongous number of dead people, all because the crazy Vladimir Putin decided it would be a good idea to invade a neighboring country. The guy who is responsible for those 500,000 casualties, or close to 200,000 deaths, can’t even call his act a war, but tries to make it sound less deadly by insisting that it is still a “special military operation”.
The war in Ukraine is one of the world events I have been following closely, which would be pretty obvious if you go through my YouTube history and algorithm, and even if I see videos of tank battles and artillery and drone strikes almost every day, for more than 500 days now, reading the total estimates of how many people have been killed by the war is still quite sobering.
500,000 casualties. That’s about the population of Bacolod City. Imagine an entire urban city of only severely wounded or dead people. That’s what Vladimir Putin is responsible for and despite the carnage, continues to pursue, and the world can only watch in horror. The richer countries may send weapons and ammunition that can allow Ukraine to stop the invading Russians through the deliverance of even more death and destruction, which is unfortunately the only language Putin’s Russia understands.
The worst thing about the war in Russia is that there is nothing we can do but watch in horror and hope that the Ukrainians somehow beat the living shit out of the invaders. The way it’s set up, the United Nations is practically useless, and no matter how wrong Putin is, no coalition of nations can be formed to stop his war because of Russia’s nuclear arsenal and the threat of mutually assured destruction if other nations “interfere” in his war that has generated 500,000 casualties in less than 2 years.
At this point we can only hope that Putin somehow changes his mind and backs away, or is removed from power. Because if not, this deadly and totally unnecessary war can and will drag on for years and years, killing scores more of Russians and Ukrainians in the most efficient ways possible, thanks to modern technologies like drones and AI, along with brute force methods of the Russians like mass assaults into meat grinders and laying copious amounts of mines all over the Ukrainian land that they are occupying by deadly force and massive casualties.
In an ideal world, this war of Putin could and should be stopped by the collective and righteous might of the rest of the civilized world. There would be no need for more killing and war, if only the Russians would withdraw back to their borders. But the wounded pride of their great leader, who thought it would be a cakewalk to invade another country, is keeping this from happening, so we will have to watch with horror as daily reports of the war normalize the deaths and destruction that is being wrought upon those humans who should be co-existing as neighbors.
The war in Ukraine gives us an idea of what it would be like if two nations somehow descend into all-out military hostilities. It was something we couldn’t imagine before, even as our fishing and navy boats are being harassed by China, even as that same country sends military hardware deep into the territory of Taiwan, where all it takes it one crazy leader for an entire region to descend into the hell that Ukrainians are defending with their lives as compliant Russians throw their bodies into the meat grinder.
We don’t know how we can stop the same thing from happening here, but it is something our government has to work doubly hard to prevent and at the same time prepare for, as we don’t know if Xi Jinping could be struck by the same hubris that made Putin think war is a viable option. Hopefully, the slaughter and destruction that we are seeing in Ukraine is making those expansionist authoritarian leaders think twice about starting any stupid wars.
However, if they and their military minds are taking note of Russia’s mistakes and Ukraine’s defensive tactics in order to use the learning to launch their own war, our government should be doing the same, and at the same time doing more to build alliances and shore up defenses that will hopefully discourage any aggressor from going to war against a government that is expected to turn and run like how Putin thought the Ukrainians would.
I never thought we would be witnessing war in my lifetime. But now that we are here, we should be making sure that such a terrible thing doesn’t and cannot come to our shores.*
