This is the War in Ukraine newsletter. Do you want to receive it in your email? Sign up below.
The war between Russia and Ukraine completed a month on Thursday (24), the day on which Western leaders – including US President Joe Biden – met to demonstrate cohesion against the invasion and announce a new package of economic sanctions on the government of Vladimir. Putin.
The fear that the conflict will gain a global dimension with a more incisive response from the powers, however, maintained the tone of moderation of the extraordinary summit of NATO, a military alliance led by the United States, held in Brussels.
The organization was expected to release an action plan in the event that Putin uses weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, chemical or biological). But the entity only repeated that this scenario “would have great consequences”.
Understand: in recent days, NATO and Biden had thickened the speech against Putin, reiterating the risk that Russia will resort to unconventional weapons in the face of difficulty achieving its objectives on Ukrainian territory. Moscow admits the possibility of using these weapons in the event of an “existential threat” to the country, which an eventual NATO advance could represent.
Emmanuel Macron, Olaf Scholz, Boris Johnson and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky himself, who participated virtually, made speeches against Russia.
“To save people and our cities, Ukraine needs unrestricted military aid. Just as Russia uses its entire arsenal against us without restrictions,” he said.
The main announcements of the military alliance were:
-
increase the shipment of lighter weapons, such as anti-tank missiles, to Ukraine;
-
increase support to the country in cybersecurity and against possible chemical, biological and nuclear;
-
reinforce NATO’s Eastern European front with four new battle groups in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia.
In addition, the United States and United Kingdom announced new waves of sanctions:
-
USA: Asset freeze hits around 400 politicians, oligarchs and Russia’s defense industry;
-
United Kingdom: measures affect 59 Russian and six Belarusian people and companies.
The expressions of support from the international community are added to an attempt by Ukraine to show force a few hours before the meeting.
The Ukrainian Navy announced that it had destroyed at least one landing ship of Russian troops, tanks and munitions with a missile attack. The offensive was in Berdiansk, a port 75 km from Mariupol – a city considered strategic by Russia for opening a link between the country and the Crimea region, annexed by Putin in 2014.
Meanwhile, Russia tries to demonstrate a partial victory. A state TV network called Mariupol part of the self-proclaimed People’s Republic of Donetsk, a pro-Russian breakaway region. The attempt to conquer key Ukrainian cities followed this Thursday with the bombing of Kharkiv.
According to the local government, the attack, with long-range weapons, hit a post office near a place where residents were receiving humanitarian aid.
What Folha thinks: “The obvious is speculated: the war is not going well for the Russian president, by the logic according to which he would expect the scare to bring Kiev to its knees, accepting its conditions to disfigure the country and make it a province friendly to Moscow,” says the newspaper in an editorial.
Do not get lost
To help understand where the war is and what its possible consequences are from the current scenario, we talked to Vinicius Rodrigues Vieira, professor of international relations at Faap and FGV.
A month into the war, how close is Putin to achieving his stated goals? Putin declared that his aim was the “denazification” of Ukraine (he does not specify whether that means overthrowing Zelensky, who has the sympathies of some neo-Nazi groups) and demilitarization, a point that is also unclear. In these cases, Putin is a long way from reaching them. Perhaps the closest, which Russia already understands as consummated, would be the seizure of the eastern and southern territories. The recognition of Crimea as Russian territory is something that Ukrainians do not agree with.
What sums up the war in these 30 days is the perception that Ukraine is not as weak as we, analysts, imagined nor is Russia as strong. But Russia is not strong enough to defeat Ukraine nor can Ukraine defeat Russia, but it resists the invasion. This makes the conflict tend to prolong.
How do you assess the performance of NATO, Biden and the European Union? Biden and the European Union live in the prisoner’s dilemma. If they support Ukraine more explicitly, with troops, they trigger World War III — although the conflict already has global consequences. It remained for them to convert the economic dominance of the West into a weapon of war. This dominance, in the short term, hurts Russia. But in the long term, China, which turns a blind eye to what Putin is doing, should explore market opportunities, offering an alternative for Russia to continue trading with the rest of the world through Cips, China’s “Swift”. .
The West has little to do because, before the war, it no longer concentrated military power. It concentrates economic power, but it is not the only relevant actor in the world. Sanctions would only be effective if China cooperated.
What geopolitical rearrangement can we expect from this? Sanctions push Russia permanently into China’s sphere of influence. Perhaps we are at the beginning of a process of fragmentation of the international order, with regional blocs that may increasingly move towards Beijing’s influence, in a scenario in which we may no longer have the dollar as an international currency.
What happened this Thursday (24)
-
US announced plan to host up to 100,000 Ukrainians;
-
Russia Blocks Google News, Says Tool Distributes Fake War Content;
-
Ukraine attacked Russian-occupied port and said it destroyed ship;
-
With Brazil’s vote, the UN Assembly approved the 2nd resolution against invasion.
picture of the day
What to see and hear to stay informed
The direct and side effects of conflict in a video and a podcast.
