On February 24, 2022, Russia’s president Putin declared the start of a military invasion of Ukraine. From the way the media talks about the situation, it seems completely unexpected. However, in an interview with The Strand, Marta Perehinets—the First Year Representative of the Ukrainian Students’ Club (USC) at UofT—reminds us: “Our community is not living in a new and sudden fight between Ukraine and Russia. This recent invasion is simply the straw breaking the camel’s back.”
This conflict is the climax of events that started back in 2014. Taking advantage of a power vacuum created by the ousting of pro-Russia president Viktor Yanukovych, Putin invaded Crimea and backed pro-Russia separatists in the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk—the same regions that were recognised as independent republics by Russia on February 21, 2022. Because of this, Ukraine’s relations with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) immediately increased. This eastward expansion of NATO has been used by Putin as a pretext for this war. However, this war is not about possible threats; rather, it concerns Putin’s own imperialist agenda. He appears to want to establish a buffer zone “resembling the power Moscow wielded in Soviet days” as written by Bilefsky, Perez-Pena, and Nagourney in the New York Times.
Putin justifies the invasion by calling into question Ukraine’s sovereignty, stating that “Russians and Ukrainians are one people.” Hundreds of years of history say otherwise, as Ukraine has developed its own culture and traditions that cannot be agglomerated with Russia’s. Perehinets recalls stories of her parents, how they “grew up in a regime where Ukrainian culture, and the very existence of Ukraine, was forcibly banned and actively erased.” Her parents’ lives in such a “horrific environment prompted an incredibly patriotic Ukrainian identity that was instilled in my sister and myself, for which I am forever grateful.”
Now, Russian troops are advancing towards Kyiv, which has been bombed consistently for the past few days. Talks between the two countries have been inconclusive, with no cease-fire apparent in the near future. Canada and other countries are removing Russian banks from the SWIFT payment network, as well as implementing sanctions and sending weapons to Ukraine. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), more than 2.6 million people have been displaced since the beginning of the conflict [as of March 13, 2022]. The Ukrainian community in Canada, says the USC, is putting its differences aside and is coming “together by the thousands to support [its] country.” UofT has been supportive of Ukrainian students in granting them extensions; however, USC also calls for more empathy from some staff members.
Perehinets’s words make clear the sense of injustice: “It’s safe to say that we’re angry as a community—angry that this is happening again and again, not only to us.” Many in the Ukranian community feel that the current international response is not enough: “I don’t think the international community will have done enough until they close Ukraine’s sky from Russian bombs. They won’t have done enough if Putin isn’t in jail or in hell.”
“Ukraine has been crying for help for 8 years,” says Perehinets. “It’s time for the world to listen.”
