Rusia

Putin’s genocidal war on Ukraine may have less to do with empire and far more to do with profits.

Enormous profits.

There has been considerable commentary about Putin’s war motives, from a belief that Ukraine is little more than an insurgent province of Mother Russia to a fear that Ukraine is becoming a satellite of Western democracies. But those motives miss the fact that Putin rules by allowing oligarchs to enrich themselves and — by extension — himself. And like any criminal, he is going where the money is and there is much money buried in the ground of Ukraine.

It is too soon to predict how Russia’s brutal, unjustified war against Ukraine will end. But for now, it is clear that the Russian military has shockingly underperformed in the first phase of the war, whereas the Ukrainian military has punched far above its weight. Other revisionist powers contemplating aggression will be looking closely at Russia’s failings to avoid making the same mistakes, and the countries they threaten will be looking to Ukraine’s example for insight into how to fend off a larger, better-equipped adversary.

As Russia continues to wage its war in Ukraine, several Western leaders have openly hinted at their wish to see Russian president Vladimir Putin go. US president Joe Biden declared on 26 March that Putin “cannot remain in power”, while UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s spokesperson said on 1 March that the sanctions on Russia “are to bring down the Putin regime.” Yet while their ambition to see the end of Putin’s regime is understandable, there is no guarantee that what comes after will be any better.

Just as the world appeared to be on its way out of the health crisis caused by the pandemic, with societies returning to normalcy, the Russian invasion of Ukraine dashed all hopes of the world getting better again (and lately, COVID-19 has been resurging as well). This war is set to have devastating worldwide consequences, adding a new layer of turmoil to what the world has been through for the last two years. The pandemic and associated problems made Russia’s invasion of Ukraine possible in the first place. Would Putin have carried out this invasion back in 2019 or 2018, when world’s leaders weren’t drowning in problems that compromised their ability to respond in a unified manner?

As a Ukrainian living in Germany, Anna Vlasiuk has spent countless hours on the phone to make sure her family in north-western Ukraine was safe. Then one day, the war came to her local grocery shop.

“I went to the supermarket and there was a sign saying, ‘No sunflower oil in our store, due to the war in Ukraine,’ the 32-year-old human rights worker told IWPR. She added that her father, a farmer in the region of Rivne near the Polish and Belarus border, had been warning her that it was just a matter of time until the Russian invasion would hit the tables of millions in Ukraine and around the world.

During the first three months of the Russo-Ukrainian War, Ukraine’s ability to defeat Russia on the battlefield has astonished the watching world and led to mounting speculation that Vladimir Putin’s invasion will end in defeat.

At the same time, the situation at sea remains significantly more favorable for the Kremlin and demands urgent international attention. Russia’s blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports is strangling the country’s economy and also threatening to spark a global food security crisis by preventing Ukrainian agricultural exports from reaching international markets. Unless this issue is addressed, it will cause famine around the world in the coming months.

Less than two months after synchronizing with the European electricity grid, Ukraine has begun landmark commercial energy exports to neighboring Moldova in a move that is likely to further dent Russia’s grip over the region. Ukraine’s state-owned hydro producer Ukrhydroenergo has booked between 80-150MW per hour of transmission capacity to Moldova and the first imports by the Moldovan state-owned wholesaler Energocom started on May 12.