Mediaboss Marketing

When Viktor F. Yanukovych, the pro-Russian former president, fled Ukraine for Russia in February 2014 amid violent anti-government protests, few imagined that his departure could lead to this. Within a month, Russia had annexed Crimea and was supporting operatives in Ukraine who led mercenary fighters and separatists, and used conventional Russian weapons like the antiaircraft vehicle that investigators believe destroyed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17. Ukraine fought back in June of 2014, routing the Russian-supported separatists. Desperate to stave off humiliation, Russia counterattacked, deploying conventional armored and mechanized forces and stopping Ukraines Army at Ilovaisk and Debaltseve. Since then, the two sides have faced off along an ad hoc border stretching hundreds of kilometers around the cities of Luhansk and Donetsk.

An estimated 100,000 soldiers and volunteers are dug into sporadic trench lines, desultory garrisons and improvised fighting positions that run along both sides of the conflict so called because neither government has declared war. Many Ukrainians hoped that a Hillary Clinton victory in last years American election would lead to vigorous Western intervention. Donald Trumps election was mostly met with sorrow and pessimism in Ukraine: His statements during the campaign led Ukrainians to believe that he sympathized with Russian imperial and territorial ambitions. Moscow has been quietly building up conventional military capabilities near Ukraine, perhaps to finally incorporate the breakaway Donbas republics into Russia. President Trump has yet to produce any feasible long-term solutions beyond sending Ukraine modest financial aid a variation on President Barack Obamas policy.

That tacit approval of the status quo has allowed the conflict to grow in strength and intensity. Early in the year, Russian-led separatists initiated the largest series of cease-fire violations since early 2015. By mid-March, Ukraines government supported a contentious and costly border blockade.

The winter of 2016-17 was hard, made worse by the conflict. A Russian-born woman in her late 70s who, like most people I spoke with here, asked that her name not be used because of fears of reprisal lives in an apartment with a concrete floor and walls that bleed warmth. Some winter nights, the temperature hit minus 19 Celsius (minus 2 Fahrenheit) colder, in fact, with the harsh winds that blow unimpeded across the plains. She said there had not been gas heat available since 2014. In winter, she uses electric space heaters that cost as much as $100 per month to run, though her monthly pension is only about $35.

I do extra jobs to make enough money to live, she said in an interview earlier this year. I sweep the school grounds and grow vegetables. She has kept a jug of water by her window ever since shrapnel from a rocket caused a rug to catch fire.

Many of those who remain in the war zone are elderly, frail, destitute or too stubborn to move. One woman in her late 80s lives in the battle-torn town of Avdiivka. Her apartment walls are scarred by bullets and shrapnel, and the wallpaper in the living room is black with soot; a stray rocket set her balcony on fire in 2014. She has been reduced to depending on the charity of strangers.

This war is worse than the last one, she told me last year, referring to World War II, in which she served for the Soviet Union. After the hardship of my younger years, I never thought I would see war again, especially as an old woman.

All told, the conflict has displaced between two million and three and a half million people. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, at least 1.6 million Ukrainians moved west toward Ukraines capital, Kiev as a result of the fighting. Russia says that 2.6 million Ukrainians moved east. In its report ending March 12, the refugee agency also estimated that from mid-April 2014 to mid-March 2017, at least 9,940 people have been killed and 23,455 wounded.

Border towns like Avdiivka and Marinka hold on, barely. Other places between the lines have it even worse. When I visited Opytne in August 2016, its population was 13, a fraction of what it was before the war, according to residents. Many buildings were abandoned. One smelled like a slaughterhouse. Former municipal buildings had holes in their floors and ceilings. Festive murals of village life were chipped and faded. Centrifuges rusted in a former agricultural lab while birds nested among rotting books and technical manuals in a former library. The few civilians I encountered during that trip lounged outside while an old woman cooked over an open wood fire.

With the not-war in eastern Ukraine now in its fourth year, President Trump has failed to accomplish even the most modest improvement on President Obamas dismal record managing Russias intrusion on Ukrainian territory. While Americas president is distracted by the special counsels investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, President Vladimir Putin weighs Russias options in Ukraine. The ongoing violence, combined with a recent spate of assassinations and assassination attempts in Ukraine, does not bode well for regional stability. If Russia invades, it could precipitate a broader European conflict, and the 800,000 Ukrainian civilians gritting their teeth in the silence between artillery barrages could become eight million.

Adrian Bonenberger, a member of the Truman National Security Projects Defense Council, is the author of Afghan Post, a memoir.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter, and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.

A version of this op-ed appears in print on June 21, 2017, on Page A14 of the National edition with the headline: The war no one notices in Ukraine.

Read the rest here:
The War No One Notices in Ukraine - New York Times