In a recent UN Resolution, Nepal has once again stands firmly with Ukraine voting against Russian invasion in United Nations. As the war in Ukraine reaches its first anniversary, the Ukrainian government and the country’s armed forces have helped Ukrainians hold off the Russian onslaught. As Nepal has little to offer, what it can do is moral support and solidarity with Ukraine in UN.

When Russia invaded, many analysts expected Ukrainian resistance to crumble in days. But for a year, the Ukrainian military has faced down a much larger force, rolling back the Russians’ initial gains in Kharkiv and Kherson, holding the line in the hotly contested Donbas region.

In the process the Ukrainians have inflicted stunning losses on the Russian army, and laid bare the outmoded tactics, stale leadership and brittle morale of a force more impressive on parade than on the battlefield.

By contrast, Ukrainian units have proved nimble and adaptive, harnessing drone technology, decentralized command and smart operational planning to exploit their enemy’s systemic weaknesses.

And few would have bet that one year into this war, the vintage Ukrainian air force would still be flying. Perhaps one of the most impressive examples of Ukrainian agility came on the first day of the invasion, when a large Russian helicopter assault force seized an airfield on the outskirts of the capital Kyiv, threatening to turn it into a decisive bridge for the invading force to surge further reinforcements.

Although the first year of this conflict has thrown up plenty of surprises, the next few weeks seem likely to bring a still more intense Russian assault at various points along the meandering front line from Kharkiv to Zaporizhzhia – to fulfill the Kremlin’s stated goal of seizing the rest of Luhansk and Donetsk regions.

Some Western officials expect the Russian air force – largely missing in action so far – to become a more important component of the Russian battle plan. “We do know that Russia has a substantial number of aircraft in its inventory and a lot of capability left,” US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said last week.

Faint cracks emerge in the facade of Putin's rule, one year after Ukraine invasion If past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior, Putin will double down. Perhaps there will be an (undeclared) second mobilization, a redoubling of missile attacks aimed at paralyzing Ukrainian infrastructure, even efforts to disperse the conflict.

It is possible, perhaps even likely, that after a burst of fury this spring the conflict will settle into a violent stasis, with little ground changing hands amid relentless attrition and high casualties.

Even after a year, the nation continues to resist the invasion, though at great cost. As a report in the Associated Press put it, “so far, Putin’s gamble in invading his smaller and weaker neighbour seems to have backfired spectacularly and created the biggest threat to his more than the two-decade-long rule”. His invasion of Ukraine has suffered several stalemates and setbacks.

In 2021, Putin laid the foundation for the invasion with a 5,000-word essay in which he questioned Ukraine’s legitimacy as a nation.

That was only the latest chapter in a long obsession with the country and a determination to correct what he believes was a historical mistake of letting it slip from Moscow’s orbit. He reached three centuries back, to Peter the Great, to support his quest to reconquer rightful Russian territory.

While the war has caused over tens of thousands of deaths on both the Russian and Ukrainian sides, the latter under the leadership of the intrepid Volodymyr Zelensky has managed to liberate a sizable portion of the territory that had been forcefully annexed by Russia.

The war nevertheless seems far from over as Putin seems determined to make Ukraine crumble. How long will the Ukrainian sunflower seeds hold up?

With the moral support from the world community, Ukraine reaches its first anniversary. Ukraine puts “unexpectedly fierce, determined and creative resistance in the face of a full scale Russian invasion.

With reports from various news agencies