SECOND UKRAINIAN WAR: TOWARD AN ENDGAME?

 

(Article based on recent postings on the Linked In platform.)

We seems to be finally going toward an endgame to the military conflict that has been going on between Russia and Ukraine, and that started in February 2022.

That regional war is important in itself, but it is only a part of a much larger conflict, centered on the growing rivalry between the Eurasian powers (China/Russia/Iran) and the United States.

In the context of that rivalry, Ukraine is the Eastern Europe theater of war. Since October 2023, the Middle East have become the second theater of the same armed conflict, opposing directly this time the Israeli-American coalition and Iran.

In 2014, a relatively short First Ukrainian War brought the Russian Federation the oblast of Crimea, and also created two small pro-Russian allied republics in Eastern Ukraine. So far, the much longer Second Ukrainian War brought the Russian Federation the greater parts of four additional Ukrainian oblasts, apart from Crimea.

At this point in time, Moscow is clearly fearing the possibility that the tide might be turning against it, and that the European countries that are now the new core of NATO may succeed in their attempt to roll back Russia out of Ukraine, a territory they now see as their own client-state, at whatever cost in European money and Ukrainian blood.

An all-out attempt by the Russian Federation to counter that European-led effort by a large-scale assault involving North Korea, Iran and, more covertly, China, may thus be in the cards, in the coming weeks, or months, in order to finally capture the whole of the Ukrainian republic, with the view of reconstituting the basic Slavic core of the Soviet Union, and integrate the Ukraine to itself and Belarus, at leasure.

If that effort fail, it is likely that the first two military conflicts to has taken place so far over the fate of Ukraine, that martyred, unfortunate country, victim of a gigantic tug-of-ar by East and West, will eventually be followed by a third one, five years down the road, ten years down the road, or whenever.

The Europeans will hopefully accept that Russia will not gave up about Ukraine, will use their resources to more urgent things, and will choose to concentrate instead on the consolidation of the European Union, and also on the Europeanization of NATO.

Whatever happen in the coming months, years, or decades, Kiev will remain a lot closer to Moscow than to Brussels, London, or Washington.

It is a matter of time and geography.

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7463702793397362690/

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