By: Leon Cui
The Russia-Ukraine war has transformed from what was expected to be a quick wipe-out to being the bloodiest war in Europe since the World War II.
The war has cost Ukraine a great deal of people, money, and land. 18% of Ukraine’s land is occupied, and 3.7 million Ukrainians have left the country as refugees.
Ukraine has a limited coastline, and Russia has controlled most of its ports. The city of Kherson was occupied by Russia then retaken in November of 2022, but in June of 2023 Russia broke a dam in the city and caused major flooding. Even with that, Russia has blockaded the coastline, and hidden water bombs. Although the United Kingdom is planning to guard Ukrainian ships, they will need Turkey to approve the plan.
This action of Russia will not only affect Ukraine’s economy. Ukraine is one of the biggest producers of food, producing twice as much food as Russia before the war. The blockade has prevented the export of grain, which has caused a shortage in many countries that rely on Ukrainian grain for their food.
Russia is one of the largest producers of oil and natural gas, but the West has tried to stop trading with Russia. Germany needs Russia for its natural gas and oil, as although Norway and the Netherlands are pumping oil and natural gas at full speed, it is still not enough to fuel Germany. This is forcing Germany to buy expensive and overpriced oil and natural gas from Russia. Germany’s oil prices have skyrocketed since the war. Just 2 months into the war, Germany already spent billions of euros on oil and natural gas, which is not sustainable, although this is the consequence of Germany failing to develop an alternative energy strategy.
Russia has been selling oil to China via the Siberia pipeline, and they are even planning to build a new pipeline to directly fuel the hungry Chinese industries.
After the war started, the European Union banned their airlines from flying into Russia, which had major impacts on European airlines’ ability to compete. If a flight from Oslo to Beijing were flown by a European airline, for example, it would be much slower than if Air China flew this flight. This also true for Russia since Putin has banned their airlines to fly over NATO territory.