With no end in sight, Ukraine marked six months of bloody fighting in the country on Wednesday, as the ramifications of Moscow's invasion continue to reverberate across both Japan and the wider Indo-Pacific region.
For half a year, Europe’s largest military conflict since World War II has raged in Ukraine after Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of its neighbor. More than 5,500 Ukraine civilians have been killed and 7,890 injured, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said Monday — though the actual numbers are believed to be far higher. According to the military’s top brass, nearly 9,000 members of the Ukrainian armed forces have been killed since the start of the war.
Moscow, meanwhile, has kept the number of its own casualties a closely guarded secret, but U.S. intelligence puts the figure at around 15,000 Russian soldier deaths and three times that number wounded — a toll equal to the total number of Soviet dead during Moscow's 1979 to 1989 occupation of Afghanistan.
The fateful decision by Russian President Vladimir Putin to follow through on his threats of invasion — not to mention his nuclear saber-rattling — have dramatically reshaped the already tense security environment in Asia.
Concerned that others, such as China, could take a page from its erstwhile partner Russia, Japan has been — surprisingly, say some analysts — among the most outspoken countries in criticizing the war. Tokyo has joined partners and like-minded nations in slapping tough sanctions on Moscow, while also opening its doors to a limited number of Ukrainian refugees and sending much-needed defense supplies such as bulletproof vests and drones to the war-torn country.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida gathered key ministers and officials to confirm that their positions remain aligned on Ukraine in the wake of an Aug. 10 Cabinet reshuffle.
“Russia's aggression against Ukraine is an act that has shaken the very foundation of the international order and must not be tolerated,” new Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada told reporters Tuesday, warning that similar unilateral attempts to change the status quo by force “could also occur in the Indo-Pacific.”
Kishida has repeatedly voiced concern that “Ukraine today may be East Asia tomorrow” — a scenario that was seared into the minds of many Japanese after China’s massive military drills earlier this month, which Beijing said were a response to U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan.
In what some experts believe was a deliberate attempt to deter Tokyo from intervening in any conflict over Taiwan, China lobbed five ballistic missiles into waters near Japan’s far-flung southwestern islands as part of those military exercises. The move came as more Japanese officials — and a growing proportion of the general public — now view a Taiwan emergency as an emergency for Tokyo, as well.
According to an NHK survey released shortly after the missiles landed near Okinawa Prefecture, 82% of respondents said the Chinese show of force would “greatly affect" or "somewhat affect” Japan’s security environment.
Even before the Chinese missile launches, Kishida was pursuing his own brand of deterrence, telling Group of Seven leaders in late June that the international community needed "to ensure that other countries do not draw the wrong lessons from the situation in Ukraine.” Those remarks were widely seen as a thinly veiled message to China over its own growing assertiveness.
More tellingly, Kishida's response to the Ukraine war has gone beyond mere words, with the prime minister tasking top security and defense officials to “drastically strengthen” his country’s defense capabilities within five years.
This boost is expected to include a record hike to the country’s defense budget and potentially the acquisition of so-called counterstrike capabilities that allow Japan to hit enemy bases and command nodes — all part of a larger, dramatic shift in the country’s defense policy.
Meanwhile, more than 8,000 kilometers away in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital marked not only six months of war, but also 31 years since the country broke free from the Soviet Union. In the run-up to the country's Independence Day, residents of Kyiv had already defiantly celebrated by displaying the burned-out carcasses of Russian tanks and armored vehicles — war trophies of a sort — in the capital’s central district.
Yet despite soaring death tolls and acts of defiance — which have helped rally international support for Kyiv and condemnation of Moscow — there appears to be no sign that the war will abate any time soon.
Indeed, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy vowed in an Independence Day address Wednesday that his country would fight Russia's invasion "until the end" and would not make "any concession or compromise."
"What for us is the end of the war?" he said in an emotional video address. "We used to say: peace. Now we say: victory."
Information from Reuters and AFP-Jiji added
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