One month in, Ukraine still fighting Russia fiercely

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine is nearly a month old. Thousands are dead or wounded. Millions are now refugees.

The Ukrainians, united in their fight, are refusing to give into Russia. The Russian military told Ukraine to essentially abandon the city of Mariupol by dawn on Monday morning, a demand to which the Ukrainians did not submit.

After a month of fighting, the two sides are now in what some experts call a stalemate. In military terms, a stalemate doesn’t mean the fighting stops. Rather, both sides will likely inflict heavy losses but neither will gain much of an advantage.

President Joe Biden will travel to Brussels, Belgium this week to meet with NATO leaders. They’ll likely discuss further sanctions against Russian and humanitarian aid for Ukrainians, but some in Washington D.C. are hoping the talks include punishment for Putin.

“I think it’s very important that Putin not reap any rewards at all for this aggression,” Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) said while appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press. “I think territorial gains would be a reward for [Putin]. I think that we cannot be in a situation where the security and the peace that has been guaranteed, really since 1945 on the continent of Europe certainly, that suddenly now powers believe that by the kind of onslaught that you’ve seen, the kind of war crimes, the kind of brutality you’ve seen Putin unleash, that they can gain from that.”

Some of the latest evidence of Putin’s onslaught and war crimes against civilians came out early Monday morning. Video circulating online showed a mall in Kyiv getting destroyed by a Russian missile attack. At least eight people were confirmed dead in the attack.

In addition to the thousands of deaths across Ukraine, a report from the UN showed Putin’s war already caused more than $100 billion in infrastructure damage in Ukraine.