Anxious Ukrainians await Putin’s next move
People hold replicas of Kalashnikov rifles as they take part in a military drill of the Ukrainian Territorial Defence Forces, the military reserve of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, outside Kyiv on February 19, 2022.
Sergei Supinsky | AFP | Getty Images
Millions of Ukrainians saw their lives plunged into uncertainty as troops rolled into eastern Ukraine in the early hours of Tuesday morning, following orders from Russian President Vladimir Putin. The headline-dominating news followed Moscow’s recognition of two breakaway republics run by pro-Russian militias.
For markets, fears of a Russian invasion — that have been voiced by Western leaders for weeks but mocked by Moscow as “propaganda” — triggered a sell-off. But for Ukrainians themselves, across the country of 44 million, the consequences are much more personal.
“I’m really scared,” Olga Pereverzeva, an accountant living in eastern Ukraine, told CNBC in the hours after Putin’s order to send in troops.
Her home in Mariupol is on the frontier of the conflict in the separatist areas of Donetsk and Luhansk, just 30 miles away from the Russian border. The city of half a million people was briefly captured by Russia-backed separatists in 2014, and has seen substantial violence since.
“Mariupol is so close to the border,” she said. “We need a miracle to save us.”
Eight years of war
For months, Russia has been amassing heavy weaponry and troops — now numbering upwards of 150,000 — near the Ukrainian border and carrying out military drills, all the while insisting it had no plans to invade its neighbor. But the conflict between the two countries — underpinned by Putin’s conviction that Ukraine belongs to Russia — has been going on for years.
“My country for eight years has been living in a state of constant readiness for the defense. Eight years of war,” Svetlana Roiz, a family therapist living in Kiev, said via Facebook Monday night. “What Russia is now pulling Ukraine and the world into is scary.”
The United Nations estimated in 2019 that 13,000 people have died in the conflict; the number is likely to be even higher now.
Roiz says she is working on ways to keep herself and her children calm, and will be sending money to her country’s armed forces. “Ukraine has long stopped avoiding reality. I am determined to act,” she said. “Who is next in our country?”
Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and has backed pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine since then, leading to prolonged lower-level fighting between Ukrainian troops and separatists.
While NATO member states like the U.S. have sent weapons and advisors to Ukraine and provided its military forces with training, because Ukraine isn’t a NATO member, it does not benefit from the organization’s mutual defense treaty — meaning it is essentially on its own against Russia, whose military is far larger.
Moscow, meanwhile, has laid out its security demands for de-escalation, including a guarantee that Ukraine will never be allowed to join…
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