As of now, the Ukraine war is about the defeat of the other side, not about a resolution through accommodation of each other’s concerns and fears. So, it is likely to go on
AS the war in Ukraine reaches its one year mark on February 24, there is no indication that its endgame is anywhere near. US President Joe Biden is due to speak in Warsaw, a telling location for the anniversary event, and is likely to send a message to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. The same day Putin is set to give his own speech in Moscow.
A year ago, the world watched in horror as Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine and headed towards the capital Kyiv. Moscow expected a rapid conquest, and installation of a pro-Russian regime. It didn’t happen. Ukraine, armed to the teeth with NATO weapons, has succeeded in stalling the Russian advance, though there is no evidence that Moscow has lost the upper hand in the campaign. Russia has maintained the tempo of its military campaign, having controlled a vast swath of land towards east of Ukraine including Donbass and Crimea, captured earlier. In recent months, Ukraine has also been able to reverse some of Kremlin’s military gains. Ukraine has reportedly liberated around 54 percent of the territory Russia seized since 24 February 2022.
But this hardly means that Russia is losing the war. The war has been grinding on over the last year. The mighty Russian army has struggled to score victories and seems still a long way off from capturing Kyiv – and with every passing month, such a prospect looks less likely. Russian military campaign has not been a shock and awe type of blitzkrieg unleashed by the US in Iraq and also in Afghanistan leading to the collapse of those countries’ governments within the first month itself.
The war’s bigger challenge for the existing world order is still very much intact. Russia has thrown down the gauntlet at the west. And this is not the first time Russia has done it. A few years ago, Russia’s intervention in Crimea had brought back memories of the geo-politics of the cold war. Russia’s increasing defiance of the West and China’s inexorable rise have confronted the US and the EU with a new existential crisis. It is also altering global geopolitics and awakening the rest of the world to the reality of a declining US power. This is clear from how the nations and regional groupings have been balancing their relations with the US and China-Russia axis.
Over the last year, Gulf Arab states have strengthened their ties with China and Russia. In doing so, Arabs have defied US pressure to choose sides. The relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia has soured after OPEC+ chose to decrease output despite the US urging an increase to offset current inflation. Arab defiance of the US is yet another stark example of how geopolitics is shaping up following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Even though the US-led western coalition against Russia is holding up well, the rest of the world is increasingly asserting its autonomy in its response to the war.
India too has refused to choose sides. The country has found itself in a tough situation trying to straddle its alliance with the US and its longstanding relationship with Russia. And so far it has been successful in pursuing a tight balancing act. While New Delhi has gone along with the West as far as the illegitimacy of the war, it has refused to abandon Russia. The West has found it difficult to countenance this assertion on the part of India but has played along as New Delhi is critical to its policy of containment of China.
The situation, meanwhile, is becoming fraught. Russian troops already control swathes of Ukrainian territory to the east. One of its aims has been to dislodge the current Ukrainian government and install a Russia-friendly dispensation. Russia’s objectives are unlikely to stop there. It also wants guarantees from NATO to stop its eastward expansion but the latter is loath to do so for reasons that could jeopardize its global military dominance. This makes the situation very complicated and not amenable to an early solution. More so, with both sides caught in a dead-end. Neither is willing to blink as the geopolitical stakes are too high.
The war is rooted in Russia’s legitimate fears of being encircled by the west and the NATO military bases reaching its doorstep. Many of the Eastern European countries that were once members of the USSR-led Warsaw Pact have become a part of NATO, heightening Russia’s insecurity. And when Biden would deliver his speech in Warsaw on the war’s anniversary, he would only deepen Russia’s sense of siege. Poland, whose capital Warsaw is, was also once a member of the Warsaw pact against the West. The country is now a key US ally and fulcrum of vast efforts to arm Ukraine. As of now, the war is about the defeat of the other side, not about a resolution through accommodation of each other’s concerns and fears. So, it is likely to go on.
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