As much as it is intended to present the war in Ukraine as a technological conflict, with drones, precision devices to destroy enemy targets, algorithms generated by artificial intelligence to guide projectiles launched from tanks, mobile loaded of information... the truth is that the human tragedy of those who suffer is hidden by insufficient information.
We follow the war through social networks without reliable information and subject to the propaganda of governments and generals of both sides. We have seen the Russians destroy entire buildings in cities in the Donbass and reports speak of one or two dead and several injured. The human factor is absent and we only know the magnitude of the disaster from the testimonies of the wounded, relatives, deserters or photographs of improvised cemeteries in lands strewn with graves.
There are no modern wars, they are all very old, due to the use of destructive weapons that apparently cause no harm to those who use them. Nor are the plans of the general staff fulfilled because every conflict involves improvisations and unexpected setbacks.
The war in Ukraine has settled on destruction and death, human attrition, the struggle to conquer a city or to stop the advance of the enemy as happened at Verdun and the Somme in the Great War of 1914 Bakhmut, that picture of devastation of razed and burned neighborhoods, is the sinister image of war of all time. No matter how modern weapons are they are always used to kill others. The film Oppenheimer shows the moral dilemma between the advancement of science and the manufacture of weapons that will one day reap the lives of other people.
The Russian and Ukrainian dead number in the thousands, according to the most conservative estimates. The Wall Street Journal ventured to estimate more than twenty thousand Ukrainians mutilated by war actions since the beginning of the invasion. No one dares to give the fateful report of the number of Russian victims.
Putin engineered a swift operation to invade Ukraine to impose a government subservient to the Kremlin and was met with unexpected resistance from a people who send their children to their deaths to defend sovereignty and freedom. Zelenski has shown unexpected courage and leadership by militarily standing up to an invader who has shown no respect for the lives of Russians, let alone Ukrainians.
Historian Margaret MacMillan, the most recognized specialist in the Great War, draws the mood of the German and French staffs who sent thousands of soldiers to die at Verdun because they did not dare to consider an armistice or a halt to the fire That war of attrition is reproduced more than a century later with the stalemate of two armies advancing or retreating a few kilometers on the Ukrainian front with great difficulty and with many casualties.
Putin is sending hostile signals to NATO with military fighter flights penetrating Danish or British airspace, a provocation that may expand the conflict to an unknown global destructive scale. The United States and Europe continue to supply Ukraine with weapons to resist an unjustified invasion that amounts to annexation.
The Ukrainian counter-offensive is being slow and running into unexpected difficulties. All wars are won or lost in hand-to-hand combat and in the occupation of disputed territory. Zelenski has just dismissed all the managers of the Ukrainian recruitment centers, accusing them of corruption. Fear is sometimes more powerful than patriotism. Who will tire first of the destruction caused by this barbarism? An armistice does not seem possible for now.
The moment is more dramatic than it might seem. Not only because the war makes basic food more expensive for hundreds of millions of people who received grain from Ukraine and energy from Russia, but because the positions are as rigid as they are uncompromising. It is Putin who has invaded Ukraine and who has caused the misfortunes that we only know about in part. Ukraine defends itself and the West supports it. If Putin gets his way, the future of Europe will be in danger. The longer the conflict lasts, the greater the risk of a war that alters or destroys the relative stability of Western democracies.
