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A view shows graves of killed Ukrainian defenders, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, at a cemetery in Kharkiv, Ukraine January 31, 2023.
Hard Numbers … after a year of war in Ukraine
300,000: Human losses on both sides of the conflict are mounting (and disputed), but there have been a whopping 300,000 military and civilian deaths on both sides, according to high-end estimates.
2.1 & 0.3: Russia’s economy contracted by just 2.1% last year, far less than predicted, due to continued sales of its discounted crude oil and adaptability. The IMF predicts a 0.3% growth rate for Russia this year thanks to high export prices.
51,000 vs. 40,600: Having seized roughly 51,000 square miles of Ukrainian land by late March last year, Russia has since lost roughly one-fifth of that. The Kremlin now controls about 40,600 square miles (17% of Ukraine), entirely in the south and east.
18 & 60: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has decimated the country economically, with roughly 60% of Ukrainians now living below the poverty line, compared to 18% before the war.
35 & 139 billion: Ukraine’s GDP has diminished by 35%, and Russian targeted attacks are slamming the country’s infrastructure, having caused US$139 billion worth of damage (so far). Well over a third of the country is now dependent on humanitarian aid to live.
Up to 1 million: A reported 8,087,952 Ukrainian refugees are now spread across Europe, with close to 5 million seeking temporary asylum. Millions more are displaced within Ukraine. An estimated 500,000 to 1 million Russians have fled their homeland, driven by economic unrest, politics, and military mobilization.
From Russia’s bombs to Poland’s 'war on women'
More than two million Ukrainians, mostly women and children, have sought refuge in Poland since the Russian onslaught began on February 24.
Poland, historically hostile to migrants, has been praised for welcoming fleeing Ukrainians with open arms. But many Ukrainian women who’ve reached Poland, though now safe from Russian cluster bombs, are finding themselves trapped in a country with scarce access to contraception and abortion. Having escaped Russia’s war of conquest, they now find themselves navigating Poland’s war against women.
It’s never been easy to access surgical abortions or abortion pills in Poland, a culturally conservative country where the Catholic Church yields enormous influence over social life. But last year, the country’s highest court ruled – at the behest of the conservative government led by the populist Law and Justice party – that abortions can only be performed in cases of rape or incest, or in (subjective) situations where the mother’s life is at risk. Chiefly, it ruled that abortions for fetal abnormalities violate the country’s constitution.
“The situation for Polish women is extremely difficult. Before the ruling, 99% of abortions were performed because of fetal abnormalities,” says Krystyna Kacpura, a well-known women’s rights advocate in Poland and director of the Federation for Women and Family Planning.
Kacpura, who had to pause our conversation several times because her phone kept buzzing – “Women are calling me from the hospital, I have to answer” – says that “women in difficult pregnancies have been suffering awfully during the last two years” since the government has made abortion illegal in all but very few circumstances.
These limited services can still be very hard for Polish women to access, says Hillary Margolis, a senior researcher from the Women's Rights Division at Human Rights Watch. Accessing emergency contraception is difficult because it’s only available with a prescription, she notes. Meanwhile, additional pressures “like stigma and taboos, and the way that healthcare providers might act towards people seeking these services” can also deter women and girls from seeking the care they might need or want.
Polish women and girls have managed to navigate these restrictions thanks in large part to a network of women’s rights NGOs and advocacy groups that have facilitated access to abortion pills, which can be safely used during the first trimester, according to the World Health Organization. These groups also help women further along in their pregnancies leave the country to get abortions abroad, often in the Netherlands, where the procedure is legal up until 24 weeks.
It was precisely this work that landed Justyna Wydrzyńska, co-founder of pro-abortion rights organization Abortion Dream Team, in legal purgatory. In the first case of its kind in Europe, Wydrzyńska, a 47-year-old doula and mother of three from the town of Przasnysz, 60 miles north of Warsaw, is being charged with illegally aiding an abortion and faces three years behind bars.
So what landed her in this perilous position? A terrified woman called her at the office, she says. The woman was in her first trimester of pregnancy and didn’t want to carry to term the child of her abusive partner.
“I empathized with her because I know what home violence means,” Wydrzyńska said.
She took matters into her own hands and sent the woman an abortion pill at home, which was then intercepted by the abusive partner who called the police. The cops eventually tracked down the source: Wydrzyńska. She now faces an additional charge of illegally selling medications. “It’s bullshit,” she says, “I didn’t take any money from this person. I just sent it for free.”
The Ukrainian women who have arrived in droves in recent weeks aren’t accustomed to such intense restrictions. In Ukraine, abortion is legal up to 12 weeks gestation.
“Women and girls coming from Ukraine are not accustomed to the very significant restrictions on reproductive healthcare and reproductive rights that are found in Poland,” Margolis said. There’s a lot of “fear and anxiety” amongst Ukrainian women that they won’t be able to access the healthcare they will need.
Despite her personal predicament, Wydrzyńska is committed to the cause, particularly as more and more Ukrainian refugees appeal for help.
“Ninety-nine people [Ukrainians] contacted us from March 1 asking about abortion and the day after pill,” she says. Meanwhile, Polish families who have taken in Ukrainian refugees are also calling Wydrzyńska and her colleagues, asking about abortion pills for women raped by Russian soldiers.
Kacpura has even trained and hired one refugee – who worked as a gynecologist back in Ukraine – to help bridge cultural and language barriers. Having learned the law of the land, the doctor now commands the hotline several times a week, providing medical consults for infections and sore breasts, as well as connecting Ukrainian women and girls with the services they need.
As Russian troops have withdrawn in recent weeks from Kyiv and surrounding areas, the extent of the Kremlin's atrocities has been laid bare. Access to these areas by human rights groups and foreign governments has indeed confirmed what was long suspected: that Russia has been using sexual assault as a weapon of war in Ukraine. Bucha, a suburb of the capital, has emerged as a symbol of this deprivation.
“We got information from activists and volunteers who traveled to Ukraine that women who were raped in Bucha are afraid to come to Poland because of Polish laws,” Wydrzyńska said. They know that “it’s almost impossible to have abortions in Poland on legal grounds,” so many are choosing to stay in war-torn Ukraine and try their luck there.
I asked Ms. Kacpura, whose voice is hoarse from hours spent debriefing with vulnerable women, what motivates her to do this sort of work, which is becoming increasingly difficult – and dangerous.
“I will work on this issue until every woman in Poland has access to reproductive rights. We always say our umbrella is ready,” she says, referring to the symbol of mass protests in 2016 – known as the Black Protests – where 90,000 black-clad Poles demonstrated against “the death” of their reproductive rights. “Who else will help these women?”
Ukrainians in Berlin and Kyiv tell their stories
Hour after hour, day after day, trains from the East arrive at Berlin's main station, each carrying hundreds of refugees from the war in Ukraine.
Since Russia's invasion began three weeks ago, close to 3 million Ukrainians have fled, in the largest displacement of Europeans since the Balkan wars of the 1990s. And so far, more than 120,000 of them have made their way here, to Germany.
The refugees are overwhelmingly women and children, since all Ukrainian men between the ages of 18 and 60 are required to stay behind to fight the Russians.
So far, the German government and people have rolled out the red carpet. Loudspeakers at the station broadcast welcome messages in Ukrainian, while dozens of local volunteers have turned up to help comfort and orient the refugees as they arrive -- dazed, grateful, and apprehensive.
"Our main purpose is to let people know that they’re welcome here," said Matilda, 26, a German citizen volunteer who declined to give her last name. She and her colleagues guide the arrivals to essential services like bathrooms and food and rest areas, while handing out toys to the many children who have arrived on the trains as well.
One of the first things that the Ukrainian refugees must do upon arrival is get Covid shots. Even before the war, barely one in five Ukrainians was vaccinated, due to a combination of botched vaccine procurement by President Volodymyr Zelensky's government, and traditionally high vaccine hesitancy in the country more broadly.
To get the jabs, recent arrivals lined up at the Ukrainian embassy in Berlin, where some of them shared harrowing stories of escape from the war.
"We walked for 7 hours with a pregnant woman who was 5 months pregnant," one woman who preferred to remain anonymous told us, holding back tears. "After she stayed in Poland in a hospital she said “I can’t feel my child.” It’s crazy."
The refugees in Berlin are relieved to be safe, but they also worry about their relatives back home. "Our men are strong, our army is strong," said one woman, "but they need help. Please close the sky."
Meanwhile, speaking to us from a makeshift bomb shelter in the Kyiv metro, Ukrainian journalist Kristina Berdynskykh told us that while she had debated leaving too, she decided to stay to tell the story of Ukrainians' resistance to the Russian assault.
As the modern European city she once knew was transformed overnight into a depopulated warren of barricades, sandbags, and Czech hedgehogs, she says, "I felt how strongly Kyiv would fight for itself, and I want to be here so that as a journalist I can tell that story. I believe that Kyiv, and all of Ukraine, will win – and I want to be in Kyiv when that happens."
With Vladimir Putin's armies stepping up their attempts to besiege and conquer the Ukrainian capital, she had a warning. "If they enter the city," she said, "it would be a huge battle, a sea of blood, a sea of death. Kyiv won’t surrender, the people won’t flee, they will defend it until the end."
Ukrainian soldiers take positions at the military airbase Vasylkiv in the Kyiv region.
What We’re Watching: Day six in Ukraine
Russian and Ukrainian representatives met for “talks” in Belarus on Monday, but they left little hope for a swift resolution to the crisis. They also made only vague plans to continue negotiations soon.
Simultaneously, Russia ramped up its assault, shelling residential areas in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, where at least 11 civilians were killed, and intensifying the air and ground attack on Kyiv. While Russian troops have faced tough pushback from Ukrainians, a nearly 40-mile-long convoy of Russian arms is reportedly en route to the capital, which the Pentagon now says Moscow is close to encircling. British intelligence warned that Russia is upping its use of artillery in several cities, which could increase civilian casualties.
In Russia, meanwhile, people are already feeling the burn of international pariah status. The ruble crashed 30% against the dollar on Monday, and Russia’s stock market remained closed as the West imposed sanctions against the Russian Central Bank and other big lenders. Several cities in Russia saw mass bank runs as people feared losing access to their savings.
The dreaded refugee crisis is fast becoming a reality. Half a million Ukrainians have already fled, with most going to neighboring Poland, as well as Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, and Moldova. These countries have rolled out the red carpet for Ukrainians but have reportedly been stopping Africans also trying to flee.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, for his part, appears increasingly agitated by how things are going in Ukraine, and some analysts warn that he appears to be recalibrating his military strategy, meaning things could soon get worse.