SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – Friday marks the one-year anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. What some thought would only take weeks to resolve now seems to have no end in sight.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin may have assumed that taking control of Ukraine would be a simple endeavor, but he couldn’t have been more wrong.
"We understand who Ukraine really is now," said Doug Klain, a non-resident fellow at the Eurasia Center at the Atlantic Council on KCBS Radio's "Ask an Expert" with Eric Thomas. "A year ago, the world underestimated Ukraine."
"Russia thought it was going to roll over the country," he said. "Putin thought he could overthrow the Ukrainian government and conquer Ukraine in just a couple of days."
And the United States government assumed something similar. But a year later, the world has learned how resilient the Ukrainian people are, and how competent their soldiers are.
"Ukraine has had far more wins in this war than Russia has," said Klain. "And Ukraine has liberated more than half of the territory that Russian forces captured."
With the right supplies and adequate support, Ukraine might just be able to win the war by the end of this year.
This isn't the first time someone has tried to conquer Ukraine. Historically, the country is the site of some of the worst battles in the last century alone.
One of the tragedies of this recent war is that people who already survived the invasion by Nazis during WWII have now been killed by Russian forces.
The irony is that Putin first started attacking Ukraine in 2014 by accusing the country of being overrun by Nazis.
"Really all that they were doing was having a Democratic revolution against their pro-Kremlin leader," said Klain. "Since then Putin has called the whole country infested with Nazis."
He's done this in a blatant attempt to justify his war of aggression on the country.
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