If there was ever a case where law would capitulate to power, this was it. To top it off, Russia held one of the permanent five seats on the United Nations Security Council, which gave it a veto over any enforcement actions that the U.N. Perhaps most important, Russia possessed the largest nuclear arsenal on the planet, and it was clear that no state, not even the United States, was prepared to engage it in open warfare as a result. Overall, it spent roughly ten times the amount on its military annually. Russia’s military far exceeded Ukraine’s: It had nearly five times the number of active military personnel, almost five times the number of armored fighting vehicles, and ten times the number of aircraft. Many believed that Ukraine had little hope to hold out in the face of a full-out assault by its much larger, better-armed neighbor. On February 24, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the largest ground war in Europe since the end of World War II. Cast your minds back to just over a year ago.

Conflict in ukraine 2020