By: Brogan Frey
Almost 9 months ago, on February 24th, 2022, the country of Russia invaded its neighbor country, Ukraine, starting a war between the two countries.
For a month or two, this war had captured the attention of the majority of people around the globe, but since then, the war has not been talked about nearly as much, except for in occasional discussions about the U.S. and how much aid it has provided, and how much more it should.
Other than that, the war has pretty much fallen out of the global spotlight, letting daily news and other global issues fall back into their spots at the top of most news sites.
Let’s quickly go over some of the major facts of the war that you may have missed in the past few months.
This war has been called the biggest land war in Europe since World War II, claiming over 32,368 lives to date (according to Ukraine’s Interior Ministry), and the number is almost definitely going to rise until the war comes to an end.
Another hard to believe number is the 7.8 million refugees from the war. (Data accurate as of 11/15/22) This number, although already big, seems even bigger when you know that the population of Ukraine was around 43.8 million before the war, meaning that 1 in every 5.5 Ukrainian residents has at some point left Ukraine as a refugee.
Although the war is still ongoing, nearly 4.5 million Ukrainian refugees have since returned to their home country.
These 2 statistics have been changing constantly since the beginning of the war, but one recent event relating to the war has brought some of the attention back to the warring countries.
According to the New York Times, the country of Poland said that a Russian-made missile was likely to blame for the deaths of two Polish citizens in an explosion near Poland’s border with Ukraine on Tuesday, November 15th.
This is the first time a member of NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) has been directly hit during the 9 month long conflict, at the beginning of which Ukraine was considering joining for the protection from Russia.
It is not known, at the time of this writing, who fired the missile, or where it came from, but it has been described by the Polish Foreign Ministry as “Russian-made.”
Both Russia and Ukraine have used Russian made munitions during the conflict, which is why no one has been quick to assume where it came from.
Although the war has been long-lived and taxing, I believe that we need to pay more attention to it as it has had an impact on millions of lives, and can affect many more if this war turns out to last for months or years longer.
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