Irish Examiner view: No sign of an end to Putin’s aggression

Anniversary of invasion

Russian President Vladimir Putin gives his annual state of the nation address in Moscow, Russia on Tuesday. Picture: Dmitry Astakhov, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP

It is now one year since Russia invaded Ukraine and began a war that rages still in the eastern reaches of Europe. 

That war has revived images reminiscent of the 1940s — lines of forlorn refugees tramping slowly away from the battle lines, each of them carrying a bundle or two on the journey.

The war has enlightened us in some ways. 

Sadly, names such as Mariupol, Kharkiv, and Kherson have become familiar as they join a terrible list of cities shattered by conflict, though the suffering inflicted on Ukrainians by the invading forces is a litany of rape and murder that would have been familiar in previous centuries.

We have learned a good deal about both the stubbornness of the Ukrainian population and the calibre of the Russian armed forces.

Within hours of news breaking of the invasion, we were told that the Russian forces would soon overwhelm whatever token opposition could be mounted against them; it soon became clear that the invaders would not have matters their own way as Ukraine mobilised and threw back the Russian advance.

Even in Ireland we have learned about the force of Ukrainian opposition by proxy; early on in the war there were heart-rending scenes at Irish airports as Ukrainians living here left their families behind to return home and take up arms against the invaders.

Inevitably, we have also learned unexpected truths — the intricate details of Germany’s arms deals with Poland, the complicated status of Russian client states such as Belarus, even the extent of Boris Johnson’s self-aggrandisement in trying to depict himself as the European flagbearer in support for Ukraine.

Though it is called for in this newspaper’s pages today, there is, sadly, no obvious sign of a peace deal on the horizon. This war will last for some time to come, though the calls for peace will intensify. 

That means accommodating more Ukrainian refugees in Ireland as they flee death and destruction at home, and not giving heed to Vladimir Putin’s useful idiots and fellow travellers here.

If any country understands what it means to resist a larger aggressor’s false claims of entitlement, it’s Ireland.

Slava Ukraini.