Guerra de agressão da Rússia contra a Ucrânia: relatório sobre cinco semanas da carnificina - Stephen Collinson and Shelby Rose (CNN)

 

April 1, 2022     Stephen Collinson and Shelby Rose

The war in Ukraine — a status report  It's been five weeks since Russia invaded Ukraine, unleashing a shocking and brutal war that has already fundamentally changed European security, US politics, the global economy and made Russia and its leader, President Vladimir Putin, an international pariah.    The Kremlin has targeted civilians in atrocities that are already being labeled war crimes, and a staggering 4 million people have fled across Ukraine's borders into Eastern Europe.    Now, there are signs that the war is reaching a turning point — but not one that will bring peace any time soon. US officials believe that after encountering heroic Ukrainian resistance and failing in his objective to capture Kyiv and topple the government of President Volodymyr Zelensky, Putin is now pivoting to concentrate military power in eastern Ukrainian regions.    The Russian leader says it's not time for a ceasefire, a position that means the conflict could drag into a war of attrition.    Here is a look back at where the world has come in the war, the state of battle now, and what is likely to happen next.

Putin speaks with other Russian government officials about Western sanctions on Thursday.

Russia insisted for weeks as it massed more than 100,000 troops on Ukraine's borders that it had no plans to invade. But then it did. In a speech dripping with historical fantasies and conspiracy theories, Putin ominously announced that he was unleashing the war to "demilitarize and de-Nazify" the country. He argued that Ukraine had no right to exist as an independent entity.    And he warned outside nations who might be tempted to intervene that they would "face consequences that you never have had before in your history." His words were interpreted in the West as a threat to use nuclear weapons. More than 30 years after the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the specter of Armageddon was again stalking the world.

A massive accumulation of Russian tanks and howitzers in the Novooskolsky district in Belgorod oblast on February 23. (Twitter/@marqs_)

Soon, Russian tanks were rolling into Ukraine — some from Belarus, another nation that is now back in Putin's greater Russia orbit. Most outside military analysts expected that the outmanned and outgunned Ukrainian armed forces would soon be steamrollered by the larger Russian army. Zelensky told foreign leaders that he fully expected to be killed.   But something unexpected happened. Ukrainians, fighting for independence, freedom and their hopes of one day moving toward the West, put up massive resistance. Regular people took up arms to defend their cities. It soon became clear that the Russian army was not as mighty as had been assumed. Supply and logistical issues emerged, which, along with fierce battles against Ukrainian forces, slowed the advance of the invading army.

Kyiv is bombed at night on February 27.

But the slowed Russian advance, while it might have saved Ukraine, prompted Putin's forces to change tactics. Russian rockets, artillery and missiles slammed into civilian areas. It was a kind of brutalist warfare that Putin had employed in the fight against separatists in Chechnya and in Syria. The bombardments — targeting hospitals, apartment blocks, and a theater where people were sheltering from air raids — prompted President Joe Biden to declare that the Russian leader was a "war criminal" and a "butcher."

Drone footage shot on March 13 captures fighting in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol.(Reuters/AZOV)

Some Ukrainian cities, like the southern port of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov, have endured days of Russian onslaughts that have destroyed street after street.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addresses MPs in the British House of Commons via videolink on March 2.

Before the war, many outsiders viewed Zelensky, a former comic actor, as out of his depth. But cometh the hour, cometh the man. The President emerged as a national hero, channeling the courage of his compatriots and shaming the rest of the world to come to Ukraine's aid. He launched a series of speeches from under-fire Kyiv to global legislatures. To British MPs, he made comparisons to their island nation's lonely stand against Nazism in 1940, invoking one of then-Prime Minister Winston Churchill's most famous speeches. "We will continue fighting for our land, whatever the cost," Zelensky said. "We will fight in the forests, on the shores, in the streets." When he spoke to the US Congress, Zelensky argued that Ukraine was experiencing its own version of Pearl Harbor and 9/11.

People wait in ATM lines in St. Petersburg on February 27, three days after Russia invaded Ukraine.

Going into the war, Putin cannot have expected the kind of united Western front that emerged. Soon the most punishing regime of sanctions ever devised was sealing Russia's economy off from the rest of the world. The country lost the ability to raise funds on foreign markets. Oligarchs who have profited from Putin's rule saw their huge yachts and executive jets seized and their foreign properties confiscated.    One big gap remains, however, in the sanctions — much of Europe remains dependent on foreign oil and gas and so far has been reluctant to close the spigot on the most important part of the Russian economy.

Ukrainian officials claimed their military defeated a Russian tank regiment outside the capital of Kyiv. Videos released by Ukraine Defense Intelligence on March 10 appeared to show a number of tanks on fire or destroyed. (Ukrainian Defense Intelligence)

As well as the sanctions regime, the West resolved to send a stream of defensive weapons into Ukraine. Powerful anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles enabled Ukrainian forces to halt the Russian advance outside Kyiv and recalled the proxy war fought by the US in the 1980s, which helped force the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida (left), US President Joe Biden (second from left) and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (right) speak next to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg (center), European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen (third from right) and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (second from right) before a G7 leaders' photograph during a NATO summit at the alliance's headquarters in Brussels on March 24.

And the international front against Putin held — although the US is leaning on China, which made a "no limits" friendship pact with Russia just before the invasion, not to offer Moscow a way around the sanctions. In one of the most staggering moves, Germany, which, because of its militaristic past had long resisted building up its armed forces, announced a huge increase in defense spending under new Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Five weeks into the war, it is now clear that for as long as Putin is in power, the West and the Kremlin will be locked in a coda to the Cold War.

A view of damage after shelling in the pro-Russian separatist-controlled city of Donetsk, in eastern Ukraine on March 30.

After failing to capture Kyiv, Russian forces now appear to be regrouping in order to concentrate the mission on eastern regions of Ukraine. The move could presage an attempt to split the county in two and to give Russia a route to Crimea, which it seized in 2014, and a path through Ukraine to the Black Sea. More civilian misery is certain. Ukraine and Russia could be locked in fighting for months if not years. And the relationship between Putin and the rest of the world is sure to remain deeply estranged.

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