A prudent regard for the tragic, unexpected turns history can take would urge leadership in Washington, Moscow, and Beijing to weigh carefully the trajectory they are on and how seriously they want to test moving in another direction.
Despite the West’s containment strategy, Moscow is deepening its convergence with China and maintaining strong ties with India.
The next iteration of Russia’s quadrennial Vostok exercise has just begun in its far east region, involving more than 50,000 troops, 140 aircraft and 60 warships. Vostok (which means “east” in Russian) is one of four exercises Russia routinely conducts every four years, the others being Zapad (west) Tsentr (center), and Kavkaz (south), the directions corresponding to the locations of the drills within the country.
The return of a two-bloc world that plays by the rules of realpolitik means that the West will need to dial back its efforts to expand the liberal order, instead returning to a strategy of patient containment aimed at preserving geopolitical stability and avoiding great power war.
Europe has been reeling under an energy crisis for the last few months. Amidst the war in Ukraine, which has seen both the European Union and Russia seek to wean themselves away from their mutual energy dependencies, the most pressing issue for Europe today appears to stave-off an energy blackout. While measures such as regulating energy consumption can only a short-term measure to overcome the shortages, the key challenge will be in finding viable long-term substitutes.
As soon as I landed in Rome, I discovered that I was no longer able to access any Russian media whatsoever. Unfortunately, threats by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, that Europe should sever all links with “Russia’s propaganda machine” were taken seriously by the Italian government.
Why the Continent Is Caught Between Russia and the West
As Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine enters its seventh month, many African countries have yet to show strong support for Kyiv, to the chagrin of Western leaders. In the early days of the conflict, after 17 African countries declined to back a UN resolution condemning Russia, several European diplomats assigned to African capitals made a grand show of browbeating African leaders for not taking a stand against the invasion. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, in particular, was the target of some strikingly undiplomatic tweets, with Riina Kionka, at the time the EU’s ambassador to Pretoria, writing that “we were puzzled because [South Africa] sees itself and is seen by the world as a country championing human rights.”
The system was brought back to Russia to strengthen its defence, according to al-Souria Net.
An Israeli space intelligence firm said Russia had reshipped the advanced S-300 air defence system from Syria to Moscow as its invasion of Ukraine continued.
Lavrov and his Iranian counterpart affirmed the necessity to find a political solution to the crisis in Syria, according to SANA.
Moscow’s Struggle to Sustain Its War in Ukraine
In April, just weeks after he launched the invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin maintained that the West could never strangle Russia’s economy. The barrage of American and European sanctions had not succeeded and would not succeed in bringing his country to its knees. “We can already confidently say that this policy toward Russia has failed,” he told his officials. “The strategy of an economic blitzkrieg has failed.”
With the end of the bipolar order, classical geopolitical theories as the main basis of the foreign policy of the powers during the Cold War seem to have declined in importance. The Ukraine crisis showed that these theories are still a suitable tool for analyzing the competition of great powers in different regions of the world, especially the reason why the West supports the war in Ukraine, as well as Moscow’s motivations and roadmap in Eurasia to push NATO back and create strategic balance.