The war in Ukraine began with the failure of Russian troops to seize Kyiv, as Russia chose regional targets, Ukraine lacked the necessary weapons, and Western support for the war effort was faced. I can see.Rising gas prices and galloping inflation
On the 108th day of President Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked war, Russia could not approach victory, driven by his belief that Ukraine was an unfairly robbed territory of the Russian Empire. However, his army appeared to be making slow, systematic and bloody progress towards control of eastern Ukraine.
On Saturday, Ukraine’s agile president, Volodymyr Zelensky, promised victory again. “We are definitely going to win this war that Russia has begun,” he told a conference in Singapore in a video appearance. “It is the battlefield of Ukraine that determines the future rules of this world.”
Still, it began to decline as the early fierce war of the war, the Ukrainian vulnerable, stopped the deceptive and incompetent invaders, and Mr Putin’s indiscriminate bombardment united the West with anger. Instead, there is an evolving war that has become an increasingly long slogan for analysts, putting more and more pressure on governments and economies in Western countries and other countries around the world.
The slog is not as obvious as in the East Donbus region of Ukraine. Despite an urgent plea to the West for heavier weapons, Ukrainian troops appear to lack what is needed to confront the use of Russian cannons for scorched earth operations in towns and villages. Ukraine has suppressed Russia in the major provincial city of Severodonetsk, the full picture of which is not yet known, but it kills at least 100 people a day, suffers great losses and desperately more. Needs weapons and ammunition.
Russia also appears to be making progress in establishing control of the occupied towns, including the leveled port of the Black Sea in Mariupol. It aims to convince and force the rest to have a future for what Putin considers to be his restored empire. Citizens of cities like Kherson and Melitopol face tough choices. If they want to work, they must first get a Russian passport.
Propaganda, which compares Putin with Russia’s first emperor Peter the Great, is ringing from Mariupol’s car what the mayor’s adviser, Petro Andrew Schenko, called a “pseudo-historical” onslaught.
Putin’s own comparisons are important to the heart of the Russian president. He has repeatedly argued that Ukraine is not a real nation and its true identity is Russia. But his aggression has solidified and energized Ukraine’s national identity in ways never imagined before.
Russia has its own challenges, especially in southern Ukraine, where the capital of Kherson, which was occupied early in the war, is still in conflict. Attacks by former Ukrainian soldiers and civilians have increased in recent weeks. Russia’s defeat in the war is not yet known, but it has certainly reached tens of thousands and is a potential source of anger at Putin, who is becoming more dictatorial over Russia.
If Russia’s economy shows amazing resilience, it has been hit hard by Western sanctions. Brain drain will impair growth over the years. Mr Putin’s Pariah state in the west does not seem to change.
But elsewhere, in Africa and Asia, assistance to the West, and assistance to Ukraine, is more subtle. In many countries, there is little difference between Mr Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and the United States’ invasion of Iraq in 2003. Otherwise it seems unlikely to be persuaded.
More generally, many developing countries have resentment against what is considered American rule, which has been considered a hangover since the 20th century. In this context, a strong partnership between China and Russia is seen as a beneficial challenge to the Western-dominated world system, rather than the hostility and anxiety it causes in the West.
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III visited Asia to warn of the possibility of China’s invasion of Taiwan and sought to strengthen its support for the ardent Western support for Ukraine’s invasion of Russia.
“It happens when the great powers decide that the desires of their empire are more important than the rights of their peaceful neighbors,” he said. “And it’s a preview of a world of turmoil and potential turmoil that none of us want to live in.”
At a security summit in Singapore, Austin said Russia’s aggression was “what happens when oppressors trample the rules that protect us all.” He said after Mr Zelensky expressed his concern in his nightly speech that world attention could move away from Ukraine.
Russia-Ukraine War: Significant progress
With inflation not seen in the United States and the United Kingdom for 40 years, financial markets plunging, interest rates rising and food shortages imminent, a drift of focus on more pressing domestic concerns from the long war is inevitable. maybe. War is not the result of all these developments, but it exacerbates most of them — and the end is invisible.
The combination of high inflation and recession, which many economists consider plausible, is reminiscent of the 1970s, when the first oil crisis devastated the world economy. In a midterm election in the United States just a few months away, President Biden and the Democrats may not be able to afford a campaign season dominated by talk of $ 5 a gallon of gasoline and nearly double-digit inflation.
Still, the elements of a long war are clear enough. There are no signs of Russia’s readiness for territorial compromise. At the same time, Ukraine’s resistance is still strong enough that the formal transfer of territory is almost unimaginable. As a result, far from Mr Putin’s apparent initial conviction that Russian troops would take a walk in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, the deadlock became severe and a warm welcome was received.
Some of the roots of the war are in Ukraine’s strategic decision to approach the European Union of 27 countries and leave Moscow. Mr Putin could not accept this change and is now being strengthened in Ukraine by a brutal conflict with Russian military methods.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen met with Zelensky at a support show in Kieu on Saturday. The European Union is considering giving Ukraine a formal status as a candidate for EU accession at the summit meeting on June 23 and 24. In Paris, there was talk that President Emmanuel Macron could visit Ukraine after the meeting.
Since Ukraine, Macron, who has been in regular talks with Putin since the start of the war in February, has been strongly criticized for avoiding Russia’s “humiliation” in order to keep diplomatic channels open. .. A French presidential bureaucrat recalled it on Saturday and said: We hope that Ukraine’s territorial integrity will be restored. “
After the Russian massacre in Bucha and Mariupol near Kyiv, the chances of successful diplomacy appear to be farther than ever. It’s not even clear what the word “victory” means to either side.