The Russo-Ukrainian War completed a decade in February 2024. The war started when, following Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity, Russia occupied and annexed Crimea from Ukraine and supported pro-Russian separatists who began fighting the Ukrainian military in the Donbas region. Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and occupied more Ukrainian territory. The war is the biggest conflict in Europe since World War II. Highlights of this dragging conflict are:

1. Global Order has restricted the concepts of total independence and sovereignty, particularly for the countries with weak national power. In the current power equation, the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council: The U.S. China, Russia, France, and the U.K., in that order, have greater room for manoeuvre.
2. The Russia–Ukraine War was a function of power politics involving Russia, NATO, and the EU, with China in its traditional watchful waiting role.
3. NATO and the EU’s interests in confronting Russia merged under the Biden administration. Trump wants to retain the U.S. as the global hegemon but is not prepared to continue bankrolling NATO. He wants European members to increase their share of defence expenditure.
4. The Ukraine War has degenerated into slogging matches that favour Russia.
5. The art and science of warfare require tacticians to rewrite the rules of military engagement(sic).

What are Russia’s stakes in Ukraine? The history of Russia began with the state of Kyivan Rus, which was centred in Kyiv. The term “Russia” may have originated from the Viking settlers known as the Rus.  Even when Russia started expanding in the 9^th Century, till the establishment of the Soviet Union in 1917, it was virtually a landlocked country except for its window on the Black Sea. Russia has ports in the Pacific and Arctic oceans, but they remain frozen for most of the year except Vladivostok in the Pacific.

Russia grabbed Vladivostok from China between 1858 and 1860. Crimea was part of the Crimean Khanate from 1441 until it was annexed by the Russian Empire in 1783 by a decree of Catherine the Great.  The Ukrainian fortress of Odesa was stormed by the Russians in 1789 and the territory ceded to Russia in 1792.  The Ukrainian coastline on the Black Sea, including the port of Odesa and the Crimean Peninsula, is as important to Russia as the Panama Canal is to the US. In the 20^th Century, the truncated Russia again faced the challenge to control its vital ground on the Black Sea. This time, the threat emanated from NATO.

The leadership under Gorbachev consented to the dissolution of the Soviet Empire because the Russian supremacists, led by intellectuals like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov (both of them Nobel laureates) were at the vanguard of a movement that considered the non-Slavic races a burden. They particularly wanted to shed away the dead wood of the Central Asian republics and create a loose federation of Slavic states.

The unravelling of the Soviet Union was a hasty attempt that sent shockwaves throughout. The world is still smarting from the tremors caused by the breakup of the Soviet Union because Russia still hoped to maintain influence over most of the former Soviet republics. As an afterthought to justify the reintegration of its former republics, Russia coined the term “the near-abroad”. Aid from the Russian government to Russian separatists in the Dniester region of Moldova and intervention in the Tajik civil war were illustrative of Moscow’s attempt to maintain influence in these areas. In addition, the Russian government was prepared to use other means of exerting influence, such as economic pressure on Ukraine and the threat of separatism in Georgia, to attain its ends.

As the Soviet Union disintegrated, Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine signed the Belavezha Accords on 8 December 1991, declaring that the Union had effectively ceased to exist and proclaimed the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in its place. On 21 December, the Alma-Ata Protocol was signed to admit the Central Asian states into CIS. The Central Asians had insisted on joining the commonwealth. The Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) elected not to participate. Georgia withdrew its membership in 2008 following Russian military intervention.

In February and March 2014, Russia invaded the Crimean Peninsula, part of Ukraine, and then annexed it. This happened in the relative power vacuum following Ukraine’s “Orange Revolution”. It marked the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian War. Ukraine left CIS in 2018. On 24 February 2022, Russia again invaded Ukraine in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War. The Russian invasion was the largest and deadliest conflict in Europe since World War II. Following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Moldova also voiced its intention to withdraw from the CIS institutional framework.

Let us dive into Trump’s mind and interpret his train of thought. Despite his unequivocal support of Israel and dislike for Arabs and Muslims in general, Trump steered the Abraham Accords on Arab–Israeli normalization signed between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and between Israel and Bahrain on September 15, 2020.

During his last tenure, Trump castigated Pakistan’s government for promoting terrorism. He was very harsh in parroting the Indian slander of labelling Pakistan as the epicentre of global terrorism. Soon thereafter, he cut a deal in which Pakistan would facilitate the withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan, his earlier stance notwithstanding.

On 8 August 2017, President Trump threatened to unleash “fire and fury” against North Korea if it endangered the United States, as tensions with the isolated and impoverished nuclear-armed state escalated into perhaps the most serious foreign policy challenge yet of his administration. In July 2019, Trump was the first sitting U.S. president to enter North Korea. Before crossing into North Korea, Kim told Trump in Korean, “It’s good to see you again” and “I never expected to meet you at this place” Kim shook hands with Trump. Trump said it was “my honour” to enter North Korea. During the visit, Trump tried to persuade Kim to denuclearize North Korea. Whether or not North Korea denuclearizes, its threat to South Korea will not be as intense as it was during the Cold War.

Trump is known for his belligerent rhetoric on China. But while his policy on economic competition is clear, his stance on security issues including   Taiwan and guarantees to US military allies like the Philippines is unclear. We should not, however, compare the post-Cold War alignments with the rivalry between the U.S. and the erstwhile Soviet Union. The world is no longer divided into two camps based on opposing ideologies. Ideological states have been replaced by “identity states”. It is not a matter of fight to death for either of the contestants. In many areas, the U.S.  and China complement each other. While China blows hot and cold in the Pacific, it is careful about overplaying its hand.

Ukraine, backed by the EU, is desperately fighting for its existence. The Russia-Ukraine War has reached a dead end while the stakeholders- Russia, Ukraine, and the West, look towards Trump to help resolve the dispute. Like his earlier bluffs, Trump’s harsh stance against Ukraine is aimed at getting concessions from both parties, bringing them to the bargaining table, and harassing Zelensky into surrendering rare earth minerals worth $500 billion to the U.S.