Thread by @vtchakarova

Not all realists share #Mearsheimer views on Russia's war against Ukraine. I am positioned in the #realpolitik corner while using #geopolitics and #geoeconomics as the main pillars of #foresight.This is my assessment since Dec 2021 (see pinned tweet) on Russia's plan.
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There won't be any peace negotiations no matter how often Germany & France (small-size countries in Europe have no geopolitical weight) call Putin. Once Russia establishes control over Donbas & reaches its war goals in the this phase, Moscow will unilaterally declare ceasefire.

Preventing Russia from winning in this critical phase of the war requires the heavy weapons deliveries to Ukraine to sustain the Russian attacks. If Ukraine has to give up on territories in Donbas for the sake of Western appeasement, this won't stop the war. On the opposite.

If Russia achieves victory in the 2nd phase of the war & declares unilaterally ceasefire, which will be welcomed by France and Germany, this would mean not only defeat for Ukraine but freezing the conflict until Moscow replenish forces and strikes back in other parts of Ukraine.

In the meantime, Russia will play for time using pressure on Western decision makers because of skyrocketing energy and food prices amid the upcoming winter. Russia has linked critical commodities (energy, fertilizers, food) exports to the lifting of the Western sanctions.

For Ukraine, the choices remain between a war and complete subjugation in the long run. For Russia, however, the choices were between short war (it failed in the first phase of the war) and long war (the current scenario). While the West presents the choices between war & peace.

Moscow seeks to build and consolidate its “sphere of influence” based on a union between Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, which would help it become a major player with significant power projection and new role in the European security architecture.

If President Vladimir Putin manages to subjugate Ukraine, this would fulfil Russia’s geopolitical ambitions to revive a post-imperial state as a great power with a significantly improved position in global politics.

Russia’s geostrategic approach pursues a vertical (north-south) extension of its geopolitical & geoeconomic interests, encompassing the Arctic Ocean & Barents Sea, spanning its “near abroad” in Eastern Europe & South Caucasus, & reaching into Eurasia, West Asia, & North Africa.

Russia is slowly but surely shifting its centre of gravity from an interdependence with Western Europe to Eurasia, South Asia (India, Pakistan, Afghanistan), & even the Indo-Pacific region. Thus, Moscow seeks to use the geopolitical window of opportunity amid growing bifurcation.

For this reason, Putin is eager to close the chapter on the “sphere of influence” in Eastern Europe by reshaping the European security architecture once and for all, to turn his attention to the above-mentioned geopolitical and geoeconomic areas in the long run.

Against this geopolitical background, Russia is striving to become an indispensable power, without which neither the US nor China will be able to win the systemic competition against each other in the long run. None of them wants to see Russia as a partner in the rival's bloc.

Russia has seized the opportunity to successively build a new modus vivendi of systemic coordination with China in relevant key areas of shared geopolitical and geoeconomic interests, since 2014 under sustained US pressure and ongoing Western sanctions.

In fact, Russian President Putin would have not launched full-scale war against Ukraine if he had not relied on this strategic modus vivendi of systemic coordination with China established and deepened since 2014. This was largely overlooked as a factor in Europe. (#Dragonbear)

The Russian narrative on launching the war against Ukraine to prevent NATO expansion collapsed with the application by Sweden and Finland for membership. Ukraine was invaded by Russia not because it was unilaterally striving to join NATO but because it wasn't NATO member.

Ukraine’s subjugation is not the final goal of Putin’s plans. If he’s successful with the war on Ukraine, he’ll annex further parts of the country & create a geopolitical Union with Ukraine, Belarus, Transnistria & two republics in Georgia to impose a new European security order.

Thirty years period of post-Cold War European Security Architecture is gone as one of the most important pillars of the global order. Russia seeks to capitalize on the bifurcation of the Global System with two major blocs (US vs China) competing over the fate of internat. order.

The Dragonbear (China+Russia) is a tactical asymmetrical modus vivendi but Russia as a junior partner of China could fully reshape the European Security Architecture while keeping the West’s attention away from China’s rise in the Indo-Pacific if Moscow is successful in Ukraine.

Putin is trying to capitalise on the current geopolitical context. He pursues a three-dimensional approach: 1) a war against Ukraine, which threatens the country’s very existence as a sovereign state, & Russia’s new geopolitical project of a union state with Belarus & Ukraine;

2) against the European Union, which, despite the most severe sanctions against Moscow, is not a real military counterweight to Russia’s actions in Ukraine and is thus rendered geopolitically irrelevant; and finally,

3) against China and the US, in that Moscow is significantly raising the heft of its future participation in the systemic rivalry between the two countries.

If the period between the 1st & 2nd World War was only an interruption, the same is also true for the period between the First & Second Cold War. Indeed, Russia’s war is the manifestation of the beginning of the Second Cold War, which is evolving around these important trends:

1) the bifurcation of the global system; 2) the ongoing systemic competition between the US and China in all strategic areas, influenced by a mutual decoupling of the leading socioeconomic networks; 3) increasing tensions between the two Asian giants, China and India;

4) a possible US withdrawal from West Asia due to growing energy self-sufficiency &, in the long term, from Europe due to a shifting focus towards #IndoPacific; & 5) fluid, ad-hoc geopolitical constellations between regional powers, navigating btw US & China to avoid taking sides

Putin has intentionally deepened & built up the #DragonBear modus vivendi and tricked Xi into the "no limits"joint declaration to secure China's backing when launching a full-scale war against Ukraine. He also deliberately wanted to trigger a Cold War 2.0 between US and China.

France & Germany are still status quo powers on the old continent, while Russia has torpedoed the European security order from the last thirty years as Moscow strives for a new geopolitical equilibrium based on the global concert of powers between the Angloshpere vs #DragonBear.