Angela May Obias Mary Ann Gasque

BEED Gen-1B Purposive Communication

Make a stand on war between Russia and Ukraine.

On February 24, 2022, Russia commenced a full-scale military invasion of Ukraine,

conducting attacks that have caused civilian deaths and injuries, and damage to civilian
buildings, including hospitals, schools, and homes. There have been indiscriminate attacks in
violation of the laws of war, some of which may amount to war crimes. By the end of the first
week of hostilities, over a million people in Ukraine had fled their homes, many seeking refuge
outside Ukraine. In Russia, censorship reached new heights as authorities blocked access to
multiple independent media sites on the basis of their publications about the war, and major
independent outlets closed. Thousands of anti-war protesters across Russia were arbitrarily
detained during the first week of the war. The European Union and its member states should
do everything they can to ensure safe passage and fair treatment for all civilians fleeing
Ukraine.
Russia initially took a “shock and awe approach,” says Mark Cancian, a senior security adviser at
the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. The aim
was to overwhelm Ukrainian forces and prompt a change of government that would be friendly
to Moscow. This involved widespread airstrikes in key cities to “soften up targets,” Cancian
says, followed by large-scale infantry attacks along four main axes towards the capital Kyiv in
the north, the second largest city Kharkiv in the northeast, the Donbas region in the east, and
the areas above Crimea, which Russian annexed in 2014, in the south. Russia has deep cultural,
economic, and political bonds with Ukraine, and in many ways Ukraine is central to Russia’s
identity and vision for itself in the world.
But with Ukrainian success, including President Vlodomyr Zelensky refusing to flee the capital,
this approach failed. Russian troops retreated in early April from Kyiv and have now turned
their attention to eastern and southern regions particularly the Donbas, home to two
breakaway states that have been under pro-Russian separatist control since 2014. With Russia
having expended most of its long-range missiles, the conflict has become “a slow grinding war
of attrition” on the frontlines, with either side advancing or retreating “inch by inch,”