By Elena Gold

The Ukrainian human losses in the war that Russia wages against Ukraine for nearly 11 years are horrendous.

It’s not only the Ukrainian soldiers who died defending their homeland.

It’s not only the Ukrainian civilians who had to rise and take arms, and become soldiers.

It’s not only the peaceful Ukrainians whom Russia has been bombing in their homes daily for 955 days since February 24, 2022.

It’s not only the Ukrainian civilians, arrested by Russians in the occupied territories, who were tortured and killed for being “unreliable” — some of them for simply speaking Ukrainian.

It’s not only tens of thousands of Ukrainian kids kidnapped by Russians and taken to Russia.

It’s not only 10 million of Ukrainian women, kids, and elderly who had to flee from advancing Russian forces and become refugees — with millions of Ukrainians in other countries, who may never return to Ukraine.

It’s not only thousands of kids, women, men who lost limbs or became incapacitated because Russia came to steal the Ukrainian land.

It’s also millions of unborn kids because falling pregnant during the war doesn’t feel like an ideal environment to raise kids.

It’s tens of thousands of Ukrainians who died because of power cuts, from hunger and dehydration in basements, where they were hiding from Russian shelling, because of lack of medications and medical assistance, because their hearts just couldn’t cope with this horror.

It’s also hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians from the occupied territories, who were forcibly conscripted by Russia and thrown to fight against other Ukrainians, which is another Russian war crime. Russia is conscripting in the newly occupied territories of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions right now — and has been conscripting in Crimea since 2014.

It’s hard to comprehend the scale of human losses by Ukraine because of the Russian aggression.

And these human losses won’t stop if Ukraine gives up the occupied territories to Russia. These losses will continue, only this Russian genocide will become silent.

Occupation is not peace.

There won’t be lasting peace for Ukraine — or for Europe — if Russia is allowed to continue “biting off” pieces of Ukraine.

The only way these Ukrainian losses will end is when Russia is forced to leave Ukraine and withdraw to 1991 borders.

Featured photo: flags on Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) in the central square of Kyiv, the capital Ukraine. Each flag is for a fallen soldier.