In the south, there are conflicts about sea boundaries and oil and gas resources between the countries in the heart of the Mediterranean. In the West, Brexit continued to be the source of ever new conflicts between France and Great Britain in particular, but also as a wedge into transatlantic cooperation in the United States, Putin saw a weakened superpower after the Afghan humiliation, and a deeply divided nation with a Republican Party that increasingly understood Putin as an ally in a global culture war. A third factor was, of course, that Xi Jinping s China almost gave Putin carte blanche when the two met for a summit ahead of the Beijing Olympics.
Hardly ever since Putin came to power, therefore, have the international political constellations looked so favorable for putting the Great Russian imperialist project into action. What has actually been most surprising in the last week is not that Russia invaded Ukraine or that the invasion has not gone whatsapp mobile number list faster and better, but that the US and the EU have acted so quickly, so forcefully and so collectively. If few predicted the Russian invasion, hardly anyone predicted this. Which way is the war going Much of what is written about the war is naturally about which of the parties you think is likely to emerge victorious from it.
If we are going to propose a very short answer, we can with a fairly large degree of certainty suggest the following the war will ultimately have two clear losers Putin s Russia and Ukraine s civilians. A more elaborate answer requires us to be able to have several thoughts in our heads at the same time. On the one hand, there is no doubt that Putin has lost the war on the narrative so far. Moreover, the Russian ground offensive initially appeared rather half hearted and incompetent, characterized by logistical problems, low fighting morale, and correspondingly large losses of materiel and soldiers.