What would an end to the war in Ukraine mean for Indonesia?

In Jakarta’s Cattleya Park, a small statue of Anna, Princess of Kyiv, stands as a symbol of the bond between Indonesia and the Ukrainian people, now fighting for freedom and independence.

The monument, which depicts the 11th-century princess as a teenager holding a Bible, reflects the common values of the two nations, with shared beliefs in the importance of religious faith, nationhood and family. It is a celebration of the 2007 twinning of Jakarta with Kyiv, where civilians have been under attack from Russian missiles since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine a year ago.

With the war having entered its second year on Feb. 24, Ukraine is experiencing a humanitarian tragedy. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has recorded more than 8 million people who have fled Ukraine, while another 1 million have been deported to Russia. Around 1 million Ukrainians are fighting. Behind these huge numbers are fathers, mothers, grandparents and children. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has recorded 18,955 civilian casualties, including at least 8,000 killed, but recognizes that the true figures are much higher.

At least 1,941 women and 406 children have died. They include Liza Dmytriyeva, a 4-year-old girl known to her parents as “Sunny Flower,” killed by shrapnel in Vinnytsia in July while pushing a stroller with her mother in a park.

To explain the scale of the horror facing Ukraine’s multicultural population, a delegation of Ukrainian civil society leaders visited Jakarta in February. Alim Aliev, Deputy Director General of the Ukrainian Institute, noted the plight of Ukraine’s 1 million Muslims, many of whom now live in Russian-controlled territory. “Russia claims to be a friend of Muslims, but the first victims of Russian aggression in Ukraine were the Muslims in Crimea,” he explained. During his visit, he attended the Istiqlal Mosque—the largest in Southeast Asia—and met with representatives of Muhammadiyah, the country’s largest Islamic institution.

Aliev is a member of the Crimean Tatar indigenous Muslim community that once comprised 95% of Crimea’s population but now accounts for only 13% following Russia’s first annexation of Crimea in 1783, Soviet-era purges and Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. “Russia has tried to destroy our identity and cultural heritage,” he said from Kyiv, recalling that Indonesian audiences were surprised when he told them that Russian attacks had destroyed mosques, hospitals and schools, and that the mufti of Ukraine’s Muslims, Sayid Ismagilov, now serves as a medic in Ukraine’s army. “We ask Indonesians to be a powerful voice in the Muslim world regarding the condemnation of Russia’s actions,” he said. “Peace will come for us with the return of all of our territories, including Crimea.”

Ah Maftuchan, an Indonesian civil society leader and Executive Director of Prakarsa, an Indonesian NGO-based think tank, met with Aliev. He noted that Indonesia consistently tops world rankings for its generosity in donations to urgent causes, and predicted that Aliev’s message would be “effective in mobilizing humanitarian support.”

“The truth is that in Ukraine, there is a Muslim community with human rights that need to be protected against violence and Russian aggression,” said Sugeng Bahagijo, former chair of C20 (Civil 20) Indonesia, a civil society forum set up to engage with the G20 summit that Indonesia hosted in November 2022. In March of last year, the global C20 issued a statement calling for “sympathy, support and solidarity for freedom, peace and human rights for Ukrainian citizens.”

On Feb. 24, one year after the full invasion of Ukraine began, Indonesia and 140 other nations voted at the UN General Assembly in favor of Moscow’s immediate withdrawal from the whole of Ukraine. Only seven nations opposed the resolution, which demands an end to the fighting that secures a comprehensive, just and lasting peace on Ukraine’s terms.

Yet some say that the nature of the war and the suffering of its civilians are being distorted by Russian disinformation on Indonesian media channels.

Dino Patti Djalal, a former Indonesian ambassador to the United States, is among those frustrated by a lack of sympathy for Ukraine. “A good deal of Indonesian youth see this as they see a soccer match,” he told a podcast for the Center for Strategic and International Studies last year. “They are detached from what is really happening in Ukraine. The fact that there are 5 million refugees, civilians are being massacred, missiles [are] going into hospitals and apartment buildings—for some reason these things are lost to some of the public in Indonesia.” The nature of the war is “obvious,” he claimed: “One country invading massively another sovereign country; if that is not regarded as wrong, I don’t know what is.”

Djalal said the invasion also demands attention because of its impact on inflation, commodity prices, supply chains, energy security and food security, pointing out that “those are the things that will affect the world economy.” The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s annual food price index rose by 14.3% last year, leaving 222 million people facing acute food insecurity. In February, Nature published a study of household energy costs in 116 countries, identifying a “massive economic shock” as bills increased by between 63% and 113%, depending on the type of fuel consumed.

Yuddy Chrisnandi, Indonesian ambassador to Ukraine from 2017 to 2021, is another who would like to see his country do more to bring the war to an end and help a people under attack. On New Year’s Eve, he tweeted that, while the world was celebrating, “Russia today bombarded Ukrainian civilian settlements including the city of Kyiv,” and that a missile exploded close to the Indonesian embassy. In another tweet, he asked: “What can the Government of Indonesia do to stop Russia’s atrocities killing non-combatants in Ukraine?”

Yet pro-Russian narratives and memes, blaming NATO for starting the war and Ukraine for continuing it, feature prominently on Indonesian social media feeds, especially on TikTok, Twitter and Instagram, found Radityo Dharmaputra, a researcher at Airlangga University. “It seems hard to understand,” he wrote, “given Indonesian governments and society have historically supported victims of aggression and conflict, be it in Palestine, Myanmar or Iraq.”

Speaking from Surabaya, he says that Russia spent many years polishing its image in Indonesia as “a good friend of Islam.” After the invasion, “new accounts started to emerge promoting Russian views even more intensely,” says Dharmaputra, who studied in Estonia. “From my perspective, Ukraine should be supported, but the post-Soviet space is not well understood here, especially the perspective of smaller countries in the region, such as Ukraine. Russia is never seen as an imperialist power.”

Part of the popular admiration for Russia is based on President Vladimir Putin’s aura as a strong leader. But Putin’s credibility has been called into question by the failures of his military campaign. “It has been a disaster for Russia,” says Mike Martin, of the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. “It has been proven that their military is a bit of a paper tiger. Ever since the initial four days, Russia has been retreating,” he says, referring to the withdrawal of Russian forces from Kyiv, Kharkiv and Kherson.

Paul De Grauwe, a Belgian economist, argues that “from an economic point of view, Russia is actually a small country,” with a GDP similar to that of Belgium and the Netherlands combined, and that“it does not have the resources to engage in a long and protracted conventional war.” De Grauwe says that Moscow’s commitment to the war will weaken its future economic growth and that its battlefield shortcomings will damage its sales of military hardware: “Now that they have shown how bad their equipment is, who wants to buy from the Russians these days?”

The State of Southeast Asia 2023 Survey by the Singapore-based ASEAN Studies Centre found that the war in Ukraine remains an important issue among policy influencers in Indonesia, with 61.2% declaring themselves “very concerned” by the invasion—a higher proportion than most countries in the region. The most serious consequence of the war was seen as the economic hardship brought by increased energy and food prices (73.6%), followed by the erosion of trust in the rules-based international order caused by a violation of sovereignty (20.7%).

Some see the war as an opportunity for Indonesia—chair of ASEAN in 2023—to further enhance its reputation as a regional and international leader. Hendra Manurung, of the Department of International Relations at Padjadjaran University, says that helping to bring peace in Ukraine would create a “great legacy” for President Joko Widodo and would bring “more foreign investment and economic growth” to Indonesia.

President Widodo’s historic visit to Ukraine in June 2022, the first by an Asian leader since the start of the conflict, was widely admired. Vasyl Hamianin, Ukraine’s Ambassador to Indonesia, praises the trip as “a great and brave decision.” Hamianin adds that with the full-scale invasion having entered its second year, all countries have an ongoing role to play. “This is a global-scale situation and all the players in the world are involved, either by doing something or by not doing anything,” he says. “Because not doing anything is also a position.”Ukraine is clear that only a total Russian withdrawal from its territory will bring a just peace—and at the UN, 141 sovereign nations agree.