IN PREVIOUS articles, I’ve written that Russia has already won the war and that those parts of Eastern Ukraine it has occupied are effectively part of it now.
The war is now effectively turned into a stalemate and any further escalation from both sides could potentially trigger NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) escalation. So it makes sense for Russian President Vladimir Putin to consolidate his meager winnings and sit down for a ceasefire.
Other analysts may disagree with my assessment, arguing instead that a peace at this point may lead to Putin’s political demise, but I just don’t see how the military situation on the ground can change.
And yet Russia refuses to de-escalate the conflict. Instead, it has begun sending probing drone flights into NATO territories, a kind of gray-zone tactic exercised by Chinese ships in the West Philippine Sea.
The big question behind all this: what does Russia hope to gain? The longer the war continues, the heavier the toll will be on the Russian economy.
From a national self-interest point of view, it does not make sense for Russia not to accept an armistice. At the very least, a ceasefire will allow them to rearm and repair if their goal extends beyond Eastern Ukraine.
But what if the war is not being drawn out by Russian national self-interest, but by the insistence of Russia’s ally, China?
It’s no mystery that the Ukraine war is diverting American attention from the Pacific, which the United States considers a higher priority than Eastern Europe. This makes sense from a purely geopolitical perspective, but there’s one problem for Russia and China. The longer the war continues, the more soldiers and military assets it loses to the grinder, the more Eastern European countries, like Poland, are arming.
If China is using Russia to divert American attention then it’s a resource that it is using up and with diminishing returns.
And that’s not all. By helping Russia, China forces the West closer together, despite the populist/globalist split.
In short, if China is treating Ukraine like a proxy conflict then it’s strategy is to use Russia to buy for time, as it prepares for the inevitable showdown in Asia./PN
