Putin's interpretation of Descartes: I war, therefore I exist

Moscow and Beijing found themselves on the same path with the same goal: to end, as Sergey Lavrov defined it, the five-century dominance of the West over the world. For this goal, Moscow and Beijing are ready to put all others from the economic and global sphere at stake.

Two years since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it can be said that Moscow is winning the war in a tactical sense and losing in a strategic context. Russia is winning on the ground because it has occupied and annexed a fifth of Ukraine's territory. Also, at this moment, it has much less problems with filling the formations on the front and has much more artillery ammunition than the Ukrainians. Thanks to these advantages, in the last few months, the Russians moved the front line by a few kilometers and conquered Bakhmut and Avdeyevka in the Donetsk region.

However, one cannot talk about the victory of Russia for the simple reason that Putin's regime did not realize even close to the set goals. Moreover, he did not even manage to capture all the territories where Russophone Ukrainians were the majority, including the two largest Russophone cities, Kharkiv and Odesa.

Strategically, Russia is essentially losing the war. Even if it emerges as a winner from the conflict with Ukraine, it will be a victim of its success, because China will benefit the most from the new distribution of forces, at the expense of Russia.

In the event of a long-term freeze on the conflict, Russia will gain NATO on its borders in a continuous line from the North Pole through the Baltic to the Dnieper and the Black Sea. Paradoxically, if it loses the war, there is a small chance that Russia will become a state and cease to be an empire. Although, there are many proponents of the idea that Russia can survive only as an empire, that is, that this is at the core of its existence. If it is not an empire, Russia has no meaning.

Thus, Moscow attacked Kiev in order to prevent the expansion of the North Atlantic Alliance, and the opposite happened - Finland and Sweden joined NATO, and Ukraine became a protégé of the Alliance and a future member. From the blitzkrieg of Russian forces that was supposed to last two to four weeks with the establishment of a puppet regime in Kiev, according to the Kremlin's plans, we arrived at a war of attrition.

At the same time, Russia paid for economic and energy separation from the West, by falling into the hands, or rather into the claws, of the "Chinese dragon". In Beijing, they are quite sure that Russia is on the path of no return to becoming a Chinese neocolony. The longer the war goes on, the more obvious it will become. The Kremlin is also aware of this fact.

Russian diplomats in charge of maintaining relations with Western countries repeat the rhetorical question like a mantra in private conversations: "Do you really want China to come to your eastern borders of NATO?" It is a hidden threat that China would benefit the most from the collapse of the Russian Federation, and Europe would be the first collateral damage of that tectonic geopolitical disturbance.

And the West, that is, the USA and the EU, made a series of wrong assessments and moves, from the degree of resistance of the Russian economy to sanctions, to the position of China, India and a good part of the so-called Global South. In Washington and Brussels, they believed that Beijing would use its position and influence Russia, since China's economic and generally global interests did not suit a conflict with the potential to upset economic and trade balances, including the geostrategic Chinese project "One Road, One Belt". ”, that is, “New Silk Road”.

The West was under the delusion that regional and great powers conduct politics respecting economic parameters with the aim of achieving prosperity. They underestimated nationalism, imperialism and hegemony as the driving fuel, not only in Russia and China, but also in Turkey and the Persian Gulf. It sounds anachronistic for a good part of EU and US citizens, but in the mentioned countries the value system is quite different, so much so that it inevitably leads to a new bloc division of the planet.

In this context, Moscow and Beijing found themselves on the same path with the same goal: to end, as Sergei Lavrov defined it, the five-century domination of the West over the world. For this goal, Moscow and Beijing are ready to put all others from the economic and global sphere at stake. It is no coincidence that Russian propaganda increasingly uses the term "planetary majority", insinuating that the West is in the minority, that is, that anyone who is not part of the West belongs to the "anti-Western" majority.

It is naive to think that residents of Novosibirsk, Tomsk, Yekaterinburg or Samara think like citizens of Western European EU members. In Russia, conditionally speaking, people do not live on the idea of ​​a rule of law or prosperity according to Western parameters, but on a strong sentiment of imperialism, nationalism and belonging to something that is great in their eyes. Putin did not create today's Russia, but Russia with its imperial, metaphorically speaking, DNA gave birth to Putin.

The defense of Ukraine for Europe has a preventive function. If Moscow emerges victorious in the conflict with Kiev, it will pave the way for a new war in the Baltic republics and for the territorial connection of the Russian exclave on the Baltic Sea, Kaliningrad, with the Russian Federation. The Suwalki line, between Poland, Lithuania, Belarus and Kaliningrad, is one of the three most flammable places on the planet, that is, the point where the third world war could really break out. Russia will not attack Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania frontally, it will use the compact and numerous Russian national minority in those countries to sow the seeds of civil war in order to obtain "legitimacy" for intervention in the protection of the Russian people, directly or indirectly.

In the medium and long term, even if Russia abandons its plans in the Baltic region, it will not be easy to redefine the relationship between the EU and Russia. It will take decades for relations to return to where they were before the start of the Russian invasion, or more precisely, before the seizure of Crimea in 2014. A very strong anti-Russian bloc has formed in Europe, starting from Lapland and reaching all the way to the Black Sea. All countries that are under direct threat from Russia, from the Nordic countries, the Baltic republics to Poland and Romania, will not agree to the return of the "business as usual" approach with the Russian Federation. Even Germany will not return to Brant's "Ostpolitik" in the near future, unless the Alternative for Germany comes to power, which would probably be the end of Europe as we knew it.

In general, it will be much easier to establish and restore relations between America and Russia. Global powers are more prone to compromises and reversals when they have a more important goal in front of them. In American eyes, China remains enemy number 1, and if necessary, Washington will unapologetically make a pact with Moscow to defeat Beijing.

Finally, there are a couple of categorical imperatives: Russia is the aggressor, Ukraine is the victim. If, hypothetically, the Kremlin decided tomorrow to stop the invasion and withdraw the army, the war would end on the same day, but there would be a revolution in Russia and Putin would be overthrown. If Ukraine stops fighting, it signs its end. That's why Kiev and Putin's regime do not have a plan B following the modified Cartesian maxim: I make war, therefore I exist. However, experience teaches us that states are more resilient and last longer than regimes and individuals. Moreover, there is progress in history of resurrected states, and no one has been resurrected since Jesus Christ (for believing people).