11 February 2023 01:03 am Views - 475
The never-ending war in Ukraine -like the now concluded war in Afghanistan- continues. Just days ago in a surprise to the UK Volodmyer Zelenskiy, president of Ukraine in a speech to the House of Commons called on British parliamentarians to supply him with British jet fighters.
Former British premier Boris Johnson, called on premier Rishi Sunak to provide Ukraine “...the extra equipment it needed to defeat (Russian president) Putin and bring peace to Ukraine...”
According to Johnson “the best single use of the 100 Typhoon planes in the UK’s possession is to deploy them now for the protection of Ukraine”, adding, “the faster we do it the better”
In a way it reminded us of a claim made by a Tamil militant leader, who during the course of Sri Lanka’s ethnic war, once said, around two-hundred-and-fifty Tamil youth armed with sub-machine guns could overpower the Sri Lankan armed forces!
O tempora, O mores.
These are human lives we are talking about. Training a single pilot to handle an advanced fighter jet like the ‘Typhoon’ takes anywhere around five years.
Zelenskiy counters his pilots already had two-and-a-half years training. What he has failed to realize is the training Ukraine pilots have is on outdated aircraft. Not planes armed with modern weapon systems way beyond the knowledge of Ukrainian pilots trained on outdated Soviet era aircraft.
Around 570 Eurofighter Typhoons have been built so far with a single fighter costing of $117 million.
Though promising to standby Ukraine in its fight to drive out Russian forces in that country, the UK government said on Wednesday it would offer advanced training for Ukraine pilots.
Britain stopped short of offering Kyiv its request for Typhoon and F-35 fighter jets saying it would require years of training.
The United States too, has so far also rejected any deliveries of F-16 warplanes to Ukraine.
To date the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has verified a total of 7,155 civilian deaths during the war in Ukraine as of February 5, 2023. Of them, 438 were children. Furthermore, 11,662 people were reported to have been injured. The OHCHR has specified however, that the real numbers could be much higher. While the BBC quoting a senior US General on 10 November 2022, said around 100,000 Russian and 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or injured in the war in Ukraine.
The report added between 15 and 30 million refugees have been created since Russia launched its invasion on 24 February last year.
In August 2022 a study from Kyiv School of Economics estimated the war has left 3.5 million people homeless. The war has damaged or destroyed 105,200 cars, 43,700 agricultural machines, 764 kindergartens, 1,991 shops and 634 cultural facilities.
Ukraine’s defence ministry according to a ‘Forbes’ report estimated the war had damaged at least 140,000 residential buildings and damages to transportation infrastructure, including roads and airports, meanwhile, amounted to $31.6 billion.
Researchers estimated infrastructure damages would cost $185 billion to repair!
Ukraine has in fact, been laid waste.
Today (10 Feb 2023) retired US Admiral Mike Mullen, the US top military leader during parts of the Obama and Bush administration has urged Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other top diplomats to figure out a way to get Putin and Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskiy to talk. “[A]s is typical in any war, it has got to end and usually there are negotiations associated with that...”
Sadly this is not happening. Ukraine’s president keeps calling for more and more weapons. No mention of bringing the conflict to an end via negotiations.
Even more sadly, neither NATO leaders nor the US president who know that there can be no battle-field victory, continue pouring weapons into Ukraine which cannot help that country bring the war to a successful conclusion.
The devastation in Ukraine is now beginning to look very much like that of Afghanistan.
Since the US and its allies fled Afghanistan, the country still remains a devastated ruin.
Unless steps are taken to speedily bring the Russo-Ukraine conflict to an end via a process of negotiation, sad though it is -the same fate awaits the Ukrainian people.