Millions lose their homes, as war shatters lives

While the death toll of the bloody war raging in Ukraine is growing by the day, the number of those who have lost half their lives – their homes and belongings included – has also increased. Those who fled to the West find it difficult to fit in, and those who were forced to stay must live out their days in terror and fear. Meanwhile, the West appears to be receiving an ever-increasing spate of criticism for deepening the war with its weapons deliveries.

WORLD POLITICS FEBRUARY 26. 2023 16:36

„Europe is now being colonised by the United States”

The West is making a huge mistake by supplying Ukraine with arms, as if it were feeding a monster, Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel told Die Welt in a recent interview. „Now the Germans are supplying tanks again. Obviously, they haven’t learnt anything,” the Argentinian activist told the paper, adding that he sees Berlin heading towards a new dependency from Washington.

„In reality, Europe has lost its independence, its autonomy. Europe is now colonised by the United States. It is losing its identity and control over its own decisions,”

warns the Nobel Prize laureate. Mr Esquivel sharply criticised Germany’s chancellor for eventually deciding to allow countries to send tanks to Ukraine and for the state itself taking a role in the deliveries. The Argentinian activist, however, sees Ukraine’s president as the culprit responsible for the ongoing armed conflict.

„Sending tanks to support a Nazi friend like Zelensky is dangerous. You are feeding a monster,” he said, arguing that Zelensky is not defending his homeland, but sacrificing his own people to the interests of NATO and the United States.

The European Union also appears to be preparing to further deepen the war, with leading EU officials repeatedly saying that the EU should set up a joint procurement system for purchasing ammunition so that member states can help Ukraine in a unified manner, as V4NA recently reported in an earlier article.

War destroys tens of thousands of homes, shatters lives

Initially, people in the West had no sense of just how much destruction, anguish and horror a war can cause, but today a growing number of people believe that peace talks, preceded by an immediate ceasefire, are needed as soon as possible. There are massive demonstrations in some countries, with many taking to the streets to call on Western powers to stop the arms deliveries to Ukraine, as that will only deepen the conflict. Many are frightened that, as a result, the fighting will likely spread to other European countries, ushering in a new world wa

The scale of destruction a war can cause is clearly evidenced by photos and videos showing residential areas that have been bombed and nearly razed to the ground. Weapons do not discriminate: Russian and Ukrainian shells and missiles both threaten the lives of civilians. Since the outbreak of the war, millions of people have lost their homes that were hit by a stray or diverted missile, but targeted missile strikes are also common.

The video below shows one of the shocking consequences of the war, as hundreds of people lose their homes in an instant.

The next video shows what tanks are capable of doing to residential buildings.

As a consequence of war, people’s lives change forever

The people who used to live in these residential buildings with their families are now either fighting on the front line, or have already died fighting. Many have fled to other cities, and a good number of people have left the entire country to seek refuge in a western state.

„We have friends left in Kherson. There’s shelling every day, and the houses of our neighbours have been partially destroyed.[…] Every evening before going to sleep, I remember the streets and buildings of my hometown,”

a young woman told the New York magazine. She fled to France on her own and was later joined by her mother who managed to leave Ukraine after several attempts.

Those who are still living in the war-ravaged country have remained there because they are men of military age and thus not allowed to leave the country, or because they have nowhere to go.

„I’m just so sad that the soldiers are wasting their time, their brains, their lives on this sh*t. And I am, too. I turned 30 a few days ago, and this war stole a year of my life,”

a young Ukrainian man told the magazine. Another young man, who remained in Ukraine, said the past one year has caused him a mental breakdown, forcing him to quit his job.

„About a month ago, I started taking medication for anxiety and depression, and now I’m under supervision from a psychiatrist,”

he said.

The threat of war threat has spread beyond Ukraine

For some time now, the threat of war has gone beyond Ukraine, with more and more European countries voicing concerns that the fighting may spread to other states. In Sweden, the church has recently instructed parishes to increase their burial capacities and preparedness for times fraught with war and crisis.

In other words, individual parishes are required to make arrangements for burying a larger number of dead in line with the instruction without receiving additional resources.

The Church of Sweden is an integral part of civil defence regarding the tasks related to the burial of the deceased. The country’s laws regulating burials stipulate that parishes, deemed the principal authority in charge of funeral services, must take measures to be able to manage a sudden spike in burials even during a state of emergency, when demand grows exponentially. It is worth noting that Sweden took no such preliminary measures during the coronavirus pandemic, when the disease took the lives of hundreds, sometimes even thousands of people each and every day.

WORLD POLITICS

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despair, europe, russia, ukraine, war