Leaders pile pressure on Trump as Russia-Ukraine war enters fourth year

Protesters take part in a rally in support of Ukraine on the eve of the third anniversary of Russia's invasion of the country, at the Place de la Republique in Paris on February 23, 2025. [AFP] After February 24, 2025 Ukraine will walk into the fourth year of the ongoing Russian aggression at a critical time in geopolitics. Kyiv still maintains support from larger Europe but has been reeling from statements made by US President Donald Trump, a country that, under Joe Biden, was the bedrock of Ukraine's war effort support. Ukrainian Embassy in Nairobi on Sunday told The Standard that in 2022 alone its forces liberated 40 per cent of its territory temporarily occupied by Russia since 24 February 2022. "In total Russia still temporarily occupied 28 per cent of Ukrainian territory since 2014. In 2023 Ukraine stopped total dominance of Russia in the Black Sea," said an embassy official. As it commemorates the third year since full-scale invasion in February 2022 Ukraine is accusing Russia of war crimes saying its law enforcement agencies launched investigations into 156 635 war crimes and crimes of aggression and established that Russia had killed 14 058 civilians which included 599 children. Russia has also wounded 28,092 civilians including 1,759 children. The United Nations has also documented 376 cases of conflict-related sexual violence committed by Russian troops in Ukraine. Ukrainian Ambassador to Kenya Andii Pravednyk accuses Russia that despite living in modern times it is trying to copy the strategies and tactics of Josef Stalin who ruled nearly one hundred years ago. He says Russia is trying to rewrite history and create imaginary threats to justify its attempts to destroy Ukraine. Pravednyik says despite that "we, Ukrainians, are optimistic, since the unequivocal support of our partners from all around the globe, from Sweden to Japan, from Iceland to Australia, continues and helps us on an everyday basis to save ourselves and the rest of the world from this evil." Support for Ukraine as its war effort enters its fourth year remains unfettered in Europe. The United Kingdom, courtesy of Prime Minister Keir Starmer has sworn to solidly stand with Kyiv.France owing to its fair-minded President Emmanuel Macron is pledging the same support. However, from the nation that has for over 235 years been described as the leader of the free world, the United States, social media posts attributed to President Trump, reveal a state of aloneness for Ukraine - mostly because the US has been the greatest supporter of Ukraine's war effort totaling into billions of dollars. "To date, we have provided $65.9 billion in military assistance since Russia launched its premeditated, unprovoked, and brutal full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022", reads a statement on US State Department website. Trump has however been generous with sarcasm for Ukraine's President Volodomyr Zelensky warning him to quickly move and sign a peace deal with Russia's Vladimir Putin.Associated Press reported last Wednesday that Trump warned Zelensky to "better move fast" to negotiate an end to Russian invasion or risk not having a nation to lead. The rhetoric from Trump toward Ukraine comes amid an escalating back-and-forth between the two presidents and rising tensions between Washington and much of Europe over Trump's approach to settling the biggest conflict on the continent since World War II. The United Kingdom's Independent newspaper's online version reported Prime minister Keir Starmer taking a complete opposite stand to the US leader, by pledging "ironclad support for Ukraine in a call with Zelensky. He said he will make the case for safeguarding Ukraine's sovereignty in talks with Donald Trump next week. Keir reiterated his "commitment to securing a just and enduring peace to bring an end to Russia's illegal war," reported the Independent quoting a No 10 spokesperson. Radio France Internation reported President Emmanuel Macron saying France was entering a "new era" three years after Russia invaded Ukraine and that he planned to tell US President Trump that he could not be weak with Vladimir Putin. Macron also defended Volodymyr Zelensky, the embattled leader of war-torn Ukraine, ahead of a planned visit to the White House to meet Trump. Macron has sought to coordinate a European response to Washington's shock policy shift in US-Russia relations, hosting this week two emergency meetings with leaders of EU and non-EU nations including Germany, Britain, Canada and Norway, RFI reported. Macron said he wanted the French to grasp the magnitude of the threat coming from the Kremlin, calling Russia "an existential threat to Europeans."Meanwhile Ukrainian media have reported that the country's intelligence agency has indicated that Russia is planning to use its propagandists beginning February 24, 2025 to declare victory against Ukraine. The Kyiv Independent, an online newspaper said that after Russia failed to take over Ukraine within days in 2022 and suffered several defeats the same year Kremlin began to push the false claim that Russia was at war with NATO. Western partners have been providing Ukraine with weapons since the beginning of the all-out war but have not sent troops to Ukraine, fearing escalation, reported the paper.The General Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces reported in its daily update on February 21, 2025 that Moscow had lost 864,860 troops in Ukraine since February 2022 including 1,280 casualties. According to Ukraine's intelligence agency, Russia now aims to sow despair among Ukrainians, destabilize the situation in the country, and discredit Ukraine among its allies.Russian intelligence services plan to spread the narrative that "Ukraine has been betrayed" by the West and the U.S. Kyiv Independent reported yesterday.Threat to world peace as African conflicts borrow from the Russian example. Russia has consistently rejected calls for de-escalation or peace talks, contributing to a prolonged and destructive conflict. This resistance to compromise not only undermines peace efforts in Ukraine but also poses broader challenges to global peace and stability, including Africa's security landscape. Despite calls from various international bodies, including the African Union (AU), for peace negotiations, Russia has shown little interest in ceasefires or dialogue. Russia's insistence on territorial gains, along with its refusal to exchange land taken by each side in the war or acknowledge Ukraine's sovereignty, is prolonging the war. Russia's demands for peace amount to calls for Ukraine's capitulation. It consistently demands territorial concessions, Ukrainian neutrality The war presents a continued challenge to African diplomacy, polarising Africa. Professed 'non-aligned states,' including Southern African Development Cooperation (SADC) members, claim neutrality despite varied attitudes: Zambia and Democratic Republic of Congo for example, have supported UN resolutions condemning the invasion, while South Africa has faced accusations of supporting Russia. Russia's war has directly impacted Africans, not least because it pursues similar expansionism in Africa to support its war economy. This is carried out by the Wagner Group (renamed Africa Corps) - which exploits African resources and recruits African fighters to support the war economy - and through diplomatic efforts to increase its military presence.Russia's policy in Africa is one of expansionism: propping up unpopular and violent autocratic regimes in exchange for exploitation of their mineral wealth, supporting proxy forces implicated in human rights abuses such as in CAR, and expanding its official military presence. Russia recently confirmed a deal to build a Red Sea naval base in war-torn Sudan, 11 demonstrating its desire to expand military presence in Africa. At the same time, Russia shows a disregard for the Sudanese people, vetoing a UN resolution aimed at protecting Sudanese civilians affected by the ongoing conflict. This comes as Russia also attempts to maintain a military presence in Syria, where for a decade it supported an Al-Assad regime implicated in hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths and war crimes. The Wagner Group, a Russian state-backed private military company, has been linked to war crimes in Ukraine, including the killing of civilians. Its activities in Africa have been similarly linked to human rights abuses and destabilisation, including in Libya, Libya, Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Sudan. In Central African Republic (CAR), the ruling elite 'regrets' inviting Wagner to the country as it has come with increased human rights abuses and targeting of civilians. Wagner's lucrative activities - protection and resource extraction - directly support Russia's war economy: gold and timber in CAR and extraction in Mali and Sudan, for example, fund the Russian state. Wagner has also been linked to the recruitment of African mercenaries - including in CAR - who are promised lucrative contracts to fight in Ukraine. Some of this recruitment is deceptive or coercive: African students in Russia are threatened with the removal of their visas unless they agree to join the military. This fits into a wider pattern of Russian recruitment of vulnerable individuals for its war effort: Young African women have been deceitfully recruited to manufacture drones at the Alabuga Special Economic Zone in Russia's Tatarstan. Promised scholarship and career opportunities, they subsequently found themselves making suicide drones used to target civilians in Ukraine. In 2024, 2,000 Nepali men were recruited to fight in Ukraine. Forced to pay thousands of dollars to travel, they were sent into battle to die ahead of Russian fighters. Some who tried to escape were beaten by Russian soldiers, and at least 21 have died. Moscow has said nothing about repatriating the dead. Russian proxies have also coercively recruited young African men to fight and die in Ukraine. Zambian 23-year-old Lemekhani Nyirenda and Tanzanian 37-year-old Nemes Tarimo were both imprisoned in Russia on flimsy drugs charges, offered release if they fought for Wagner, and died fighting in Ukraine.

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