Kendra Coulter, Associate Professor of Labour Studies at Brock University, had a piece recently published in The Conversation about the ways animals and their caregivers are affected by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

She writes:

“A little girl huddles in a bunker, stroking her dog.

From amid the rubble, blood-stained and shell-shocked people emerge, clutching their pets.

A man fleeing a bombed apartment building carries a cat and a goldfish. Some people refuse to leave Ukraine without their animals.

War exposes many truths, the brutal and the valiant. The war in Ukraine is powerfully and painfully magnifying the interconnectedness of human and animal lives, and, mercifully, our unrelenting commitment to acting with love, even in the face of lethal danger.

Domesticated animals are affected by almost every human decision and those involving violence most of all, whether they’re hidden in factory farms or captured by the lenses of photographers and broadcast globally. 

Animals are always affected by war. Millions of horses and donkeys were taken from the farms of poor people to the carnage-filled fronts of the First World War and pigeons were strapped with messages.

Even to this day, military working dogs are either celebrated as heroes or unceremoniously euthanized.”

Continue reading the full article on The Conversation website.