War in Ukraine: A hellish situation for civilians

As Russia’s Feb. 24, 2022, invasion of Ukraine continued into March, the world has watched an epic humanitarian crisis unfold across the Eastern European nation of 44 million, affecting nearly one of every two people in the country.

“The impact of the war in Ukraine on civilians is reaching terrifying proportions,” United Nations Secretary General António Guterres said on March 14, in pledging more lives aving aid to the country and calling for hostilities to cease.

With most of the focus understandably on Ukraine, it’s harder to gauge the impact of the war and international economic sanctions on civilians in Russia, given the country’s crackdown on almost all nonstate news, social media and antiwar political protest. How much Russians know of the war and how they’re experiencing the sanctions are a growing media curiosity.

To be sure, the war is hell on civilians, and more so right now for Ukrainians under threat of bombardment or of being driven from their homes. However, many Russians could face increasingly grave dangers politically, economically and socially.

Here’s some of what we know is happening to noncombatants in Ukraine, Russia and the region, according to reports by governmental, humanitarian and media organizations:

Killed and injured civilians. The official count of Ukrainian casualties as of March 11 is 1,546, including 564 killed and 982 injured, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), although the UN refugee agency said the real count is likely much higher. Most civilians are targeted in “inexcusable and intolerable” strikes by Russian heavy artillery, multilaunch rocket systems and air attacks, said UN Under Secretary General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs Rosemary A. DiCarlo on March 11.

Flight across borders. As of March 14, 2022, more than 2.8 million people have fled Ukraine, the majority (an estimated 1.72 million people) into neighboring Poland, according to a UNHCR data portal. If the conflict continued, the agency said the number of people leaving Ukraine could top 4 million. Meantime, UNHCR assists Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and other governments sheltering Ukrainians and third-country nationals with coordinated protection and humanitarian support from the UN, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and other partners. (The U.S. Congress passed a bill March 11 that includes $13.6 billion in humanitarian, military and economic assistance to Ukraine.)

Some number of mostly middle-class Russians have fled Russia, many into Turkey, Armenia, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan, according to a March 14 report in RadioFree Europe, but it’s hard to confirm exactly how many have left (https://www.rferl.org/a/russians-flee-fearing-war-fallout/31752961.html). Another report in Meduza, one of the last remaining independent Russian news websites still covering the war in Ukraine, recently published first-person accounts from Russian readers on why they remained (https://meduza.io/en/feature/2022/03/14/we-re-on-the-titanic-and-it-s-just-hit-the-iceberg).

Details: https://data2.unhcr.org/en/situations/ukraine and https://meduza.io/en.

Destruction-driven internal displacement. Another at least 2 million people are internally displaced in Ukraine, as shelling inside the country has damaged or destroyed more than 1,500 residential buildings. At least 210 schools and 34 hospitals have been hit by missiles in what the government said are violations of humanitarian law, according to the UN’s Protection Cluster Ukraine fact sheet dated March 6-9. The World Health Organization has verified 26 attacks on health facilities, health workers and ambulances, including a bombing of a maternity ward on March 9, DiCarlo said. The displacement of children, including unaccompanied minors at risk of human trafficking, is a concern, the fact sheet said.

Details: https://www.humanitarianresponse.info/sites/http://www.humanitarianresponse.info/files/documents/files/2022_protection_cluster_snapshot_6-9_march_eng.pdf

Crackdown on war reporting and dissent. As noted, civilians in Russia are cut off from almost all independent information about the war in Ukraine and can receive more than a decade in prison for voicing dissent about the conflict. On March 4, Russia passed two laws criminalizing independent war reporting — banning the mere description of the conflict as a “war” or “an invasion” — and war protest, according to a March 7 statement by Human Rights Watch (HRW). Those found guilty under either law can be thrown into prison for up to 15 years.

The human rights group said the fear is that Russian law enforcement will impose these laws retroactively, as has been done before, to further intimidate activists wherever they are now.

“If the authorities apply the same approach to the new laws, Russian opposition politicians, activists, and journalists who have already publicly called to end the war, protested, publicized alleged violations by Russian armed forces, or called for sanctions on Russian targets, could be at risk of prosecution,” according to HRW. “Those outside Russia could also be subject to potential extradition attempts.”

Details: https://rly.pt/3IhDHin

Spread of propaganda and/or false information. Civilians around the world are being subjected to propaganda and false information from Russia and, to some degree, Ukraine. In March, the White House said that Russian President Vladimir Putin was spreading misinformation about Ukraine using bioweapons against Russia to justify a chemical weapons attack. The Defense Department said in a statement on March 10 that no evidence exists of Ukraine using such weapons. On March 11, President Joe Biden added: “Russia would pay a severe price if they used chemical weapons.”

Ukraine has also acted in morally dubious ways in trying to sway public opinion against Russia, said Isabelle Khurshudyan, a Moscow correspondent for The Washington Post, in an online question-and-answer session with readers on March 14. “Ukraine has been trotting out Russian prisoners of war in ethically and legally questionable news conferences,” Khurshudyan said, adding that “we can’t fully trust what they say because we don’t know the potential duress that led them to make those statements.”

Details: https://rly.pt/3JhWBHt and https://rly.pt/3JmNGo0

Learn more

State Department Ukraine page: https://www.state.gov/latest-ukraine-updates

UNHCR: https://www.unhcr.org/en-us