Costly Endeavor: War in Ukraine takes exacting toll in ways that defy the imagination

By Tom Kirvan

As history has taught us, war is costly and its reverberating effects can last for decades, causing death and destruction that goes far beyond the battlefields.

In economic terms, the cost of rebuilding war-torn Ukraine is projected to top more than $400 billion over the next 10 years, according to a recent report from the World Bank. Even more staggering, a German agency estimates that the war has cost the global economy more than $1.6 trillion since Russia unleashed its invasion nearly a year-and-a-half ago.

Those figures, of course, are heading upward with each passing day but don’t begin to address the human toll that the war has taken on Ukrainians worldwide – those residing in the nation of 40 million people, those who have taken refuge in neighboring countries, and those who have lived elsewhere for years and yet will forever embrace their ancestral homeland.