The gods of war wanted the anniversary of the first six months of the bloody conflict in Ukraine, which takes place this Wednesday (24), to coincide with what should have been the celebration of Kiev’s 31 years as the capital of an independent state.
As in 1991, Ukrainians are at the center of an event with worldwide repercussions. That year, its separation from the Soviet Union was the final blow to Mikhail Gorbachev’s pretensions to keep the crumbling communist empire together under Russian rule.
The American victory in the Cold War was accompanied by extraordinary events: the collapse of the Japanese economic miracle, the beginning of China’s rise to the position of global challenger to Washington, the signing of the treaty that structured the European Union and the expulsion of Saddam Hussein from Iraq, gestating 21st century jihadism.
The “new world order”, proclaimed in a speech by President George Bush Sr., has since evolved to find a new inflection point again in the Ukrainian camps. Vladimir Putin’s invasion is far from an apparent end, but he seems determined to deliver on his promise to patch up “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century”.
Usually analysts quote only the first part of the Russian’s sentence, uttered 17 years ago about the end of the Soviet Union. The idea of ​​restoring the communist regime has always been denied by Putin; the recomposition of borders that give it strategic depth and domestic discourse is in full swing.
The key, however, is in the second part of the speech. “For the Russian people, it was a real tragedy. Tens of millions of our compatriots found themselves beyond the limits of Russian territory,” she said. Jump from there to the war in Georgia in 2008, the annexation of Crimea and the civil war in Donbass six years later.
That alone does not, however, explain the enormous geopolitical risk Putin took in waging a World War II-style conflict, relying more on brute force than modern tactics. So far, he has effectively dodged the effect of heavy Western sanctions, which isolated Russians from the world.
That said, the vaunted coup of disaffected elites, or the military hardliners, did not show up. Putin, today, maintains total control over the political fabric of his country, curbing dissent.
One of the factors for this is precisely the side effect of sanctions: they feed Putin’s idea of ​​a Russia under attack, not by chance a cornerstone of his political persona, which mixed a cult of Soviet resistance to the Germans with nationalist and religious elements. orthodox. The accusation of Nazism leveled at Kiev is far from casual.
Not that there are no economic impacts, as the International Monetary Fund’s forecast of a 6% drop in GDP this year suggests, but the presumed hecatomb did not materialize. The problem is the long term, with a lack of access to sensitive Western technologies and the closure of the European energy market, vital for Russia in the case of gas.
Putin tells here, like Napoleon and Stalin before him against enemies, with General Winter, now in continental version. The cold that is slowly approaching in Europe could further break the popular patience with the support of governments for the war, as there are still no viable alternatives to satisfactorily replace Russian gas.
This leads to the tantalizing conclusion that the war may have its days numbered, which is illusory for the time being as NATO (Western military alliance) at this point cannot afford further humiliation before the Russians. The club showed strength and expanded, announcing the entry of Finland and Sweden, contrary to one of the strategic desires of the Kremlin.
But, in practice, it could not prevent the invasion and the continuation of the conflict. There is strong military support for Kiev, which has helped the resistance hold back Russian troops who arrived in the capital in the early days of the war. The US alone has already given over $10 billion worth of weapons to the government of Volodymyr Zelensky, more than double its entire annual defense budget in 2021.
This is all starting to be questioned in Europe, and it remains to be seen how an American Congress commanded by Republicans close to former President Donald Trump will react to the progress of the crisis.
There is also the reality on the battlefield, which is already in its third great phase. She appears static, but sees the more traditional Russian tactic of attrition slowly gaining in the east of the country. In the south, the promised Ukrainian counteroffensive has so far been limited to disrupting Russian supply lines.
Both sides buy time in the end. Putin reinforces his positions in the south and advances in the east, while Zelensky plays with more symbolic than effective blows: attacks on Russian positions in Crimea, which seems to have bought for free the accusation of having killed the daughter of ultranationalist Aleksandr Dugin.
At the center of this back-and-forth is the Zaporijia nuclear power plant, occupied by Russians but operated by Ukrainians. Both sides accuse each other of fighting dangerous battles around the complex, risking a new Chernobyl, to keep ghosts from the past. An eventual ceasefire may be the issue, but the fact remains that no one knows where Putin will end up.
The human cost is priceless. The dead are in the uncertain tens of thousands, and about a third of the Ukrainian population has had to leave their homes, often out of the country. The horrors of Mariupol, scene of the most brutal siege thus far, have become cautionary tales about the nature of war.
Just like 31 years ago, external factors are accumulating in the turmoil in Eastern Europe. The conflict is already part of Cold War 2.0 between China and the US, with Beijing firmly on the side of Moscow, seeking to understand if there is room for a new world order like Putin and Xi Jinping sell.
The crisis around Taiwan, exacerbated by Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the island claimed by Xi, has heightened the sense of interconnectedness between the challenges to the West.
It’s a fact, as Russian bomber flights near Japan and NATO’s new doctrine remind us, but the idea of ​​a global escalation of the conflict comes up against China’s economic difficulties, which theoretically cannot afford to fight its biggest. business partners. The Third World War is more present than ever, but for now it is a shadow.
But the pieces move, suggesting new, overlapping blocks of power. India’s opportunism in being an ally of the US in the anti-China Quad group and one of the escape valves of the Russian economy at the same time shows the complexity of the gears of a world redesign that has no clear contours, but is ongoing.
