Introduction

On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a large-scale invasion of Ukraine. Russian dictator Vladimir Putin expected a three-day campaign to topple the Ukrainian government and establish military control over the neigh-boring country. Instead, the attack ushered in a brutal and costly war on multiple fronts that is still ongoing two years after the invasion. The scale of destruction has far surpassed that of the war Russia had already been waging against Ukraine in that country’s south-eastern Donets’k and Luhans’k regions since 2014. So has the loss of life. Ukrainian soldiers have died defending their country on the battlefield; civilians have been murdered by indiscriminate and deliberate Russian missile attacks on residential areas and in massacres and forced disappearances on occupied territory. The casualties suffered by Russia’s own military have significantly exceeded those of any other campaign Russian soldiers have been involved in since the Second World War. ¹