War in Ukraine affects other countries

The war in Ukraine seems to have taken a new step. That became obvious when the Crimea bridge was damaged so badly that a part of it collapsed, and therefore it also became clear that Zelenskiy´s troops have started to prepare an attack to return back the peninsula occupied by Russians in 2014.

Right now it looks like the Ukrainian plan would be first to cut off the maintenance connections of the Russian army and attack the defender´s forces only thereafter. That sounds like a reasonable plan, but we should not forget the highly imaginative skills of the leaders of the Ukrainian army - and therefore the attack on the bridge could have been conducted "just" to regroup the Russian troops elsewhere and thereafter to strike to weak points of the defense opened by the process.

* * *

At the same time, the number of refugees have appeared to Finland from both Ukraine and Russia. Although one could imagine that the two groups escaping Vladimir Putin´s actions would understand each others well, the immigration officials decided to accommodate the two nationalities separately.  

The decision was probably reasonable, because Ukrainians are mostly women and children, whereas Russians are largely young men trying to escape from military service in Ukraine. Even though there has not been violence between the two nationalities, the decision was made due to fears of Ukrainians. 

In my opinion, making the decision before any real problems appeared was excellent as there is no reason to expose Ukrainians to any unnecessary fears - not even to ones with a very low probability. And after all, situations where men and women are isolated from normal life are prone to sexual harassment even though that would not have anything to do with the ongoing war. 

* * *

Finally, it seems that Finland will obtain a high number of new inhabitants due to the war. According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, one third of Ukrainians are willing to stay in Finland even after the war. If so, they should be integrated into the working life, which is not expected to be even nearly as difficult as it has been for people who arrived in 2015 and thereafter. 

No numbers are available (to my knowledge) for the willingness of Russian young men to stay permanently in Finland. Anyway, also they would probably be a useful working force, but at the same time their presence would form a risk to the country.

That is because Russia is eager to use Russian minorities as an excuse to put pressure on its neighboring countries - even if they disagree. And definitely, the relatively big share of Russians working in Finland disagree with Putin´s actions in Ukraine: a total of 64 percent of them consider Putin´s "special operation" unjustified, and less than one fifth support it. 

Taken this all together, it seems that Ukraine is strongly dominating the war in Ukraine, but despite that, it affects strongly other countries like Finland via the flow of refugees. When the war at some day ends, it will be very interesting to see, which of those effects will be long lasting.

Previous thoughts on the same topic:
Putin is in a political and military impasse
The main consequence of Putin´s attack to Ukraine
Vakartšuk of the Okean Elzy: Finnish history inspires Ukrainians