Hell between earth and sky Russia-Ukraine war enters second year

One year ago the irreparable and inevitable happened. Russia invaded Ukraine. The richest country lies in ruins. Talking about casualties is getting more and more embarrassing. They are growing every day. Tens of thousands of dead soldiers on both sides. The suffering and deaths of civilians. It feels like a sacrifice. But for the sake of what?

Russian world?

Yes. One may like it or not, but one way or another we are dealing with the empire's desire to regain its former glory. The humiliating defeat in the Cold War logically sparked an inferiority complex in Russian society. The West's assumption that increased prosperity would cushion the pain of the loss has not come true. And that would have been strange. Maslow's famous pyramid, which all Western elites study in university, clearly states that after satisfying basic needs for food, shelter, and companionship, a person strives for the respect of others. The Russian elites, for a number of reasons, have failed to bring imperial competition into the realm of soft power - economics, innovative technology, and culture. They have failed to keep Ukraine by their side with words (and they have hardly tried), so they will have to do it by force. That is the logic of empires. Yes, it is archaic, but it is the logic.

This logic does not cancel the very fact of aggression against a sovereign state and the right of that state to armed resistance against the aggressor.

What is Ukraine?

On the other hand, war is also Ukraine's choice. No, not forced circumstances, but a conscious choice. After its defeat in the war in 2014, Ukraine went ahead with the signing of the Minsk agreements, which envisaged the creation of autonomies in Donbas and Luhansk oblast while preserving territorial integrity. Ukraine took the very bold step of refusing to implement the Minsk agreements (compare with Azerbaijan, which was ready to grant the maximum degree of autonomy to the Karabakh Armenians until autumn 2020. That is, Azerbaijan wanted to save the lives of its soldiers at the cost of a difficult compromise). No one in the Ukrainian government was so naïve as not to understand - war is just around the corner. It is the choice of a sovereign state and this choice has strong reasons.

It must be understood that war against external aggression helps to mould a new Ukrainian nation-state. While remaining formally united, but with pro-Russian autonomies, Ukraine would continue to be an ideologically fragmented political entity. It was this desire to become a united nation that determined the choice of war.

The second factor is firmly linked with the first: the desire to prove that Ukraine is Europe. Don't look for irony in my words. The elites of Ukraine were faced with the question of mental identification and the solution to this question lay through the war (if we compare again with our country, in Azerbaijan the question of self-identification and the corresponding expectation of third countries had no bearing on our choice - the liberation of the occupied territories).

The Ukrainians wanted in every way to demonstrate that they were not the "backwoods" of Europe, but an important part of it, standing as a shield in the way of the expansion of the eastern empire. To prove this thesis, they needed nothing less than to go to war with this empire. In principle, the Ukrainians have coped with the task. They are successfully fighting the empire and forging the nation. In a sense, they have already won. The heroic resistance for a year to an outnumbering enemy is already a moral victory over him.

Around the globe

Meanwhile, all the powers (global and smaller) are flexing their muscles. China wisely bides its time, evidently not wishing for a quick and complete Russian victory as well as for Russia's defeat, while simultaneously squinting carnivorously at a rebellious Taiwan. Germany and Japan, punished by demilitarisation, have been given the go-ahead by the States for a new military build-up. France is holding its breath for with such a course of events, Alsace and Lorraine may very soon turn into German Crimea. The Americans themselves do not seem very comfortable. Today, they have to let the Japanese arm themselves for the sake of restraining China, as well as Russia from the east, but where is the guarantee that tomorrow the "Tora, Tora, Tora" will not sound over San Francisco or Honolulu? There are no guarantees.

The world of guarantees is over. They say that mankind is once again threatened by nuclear war. But is this the most important threat? Has not a human learned to annihilate his own kind en masse without any atom? Sometimes it seems that nuclear weapons are such a media gimmick, a bugaboo to justify the horror that is happening here and now. Did nuclear weapons cause the Holocaust and genocide in Rwanda? Or the extermination of millions of Chinese by the Japanese Imperial Army? The exemplary punishment of Japan with the atom is in everyone's ears, but few will remember that the casualties from the conventional bombing of Tokyo were only an order of magnitude less than those of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Why fear the atomic bomb when hell is already here?

The new world is a world of mobilisation. Not only military but also mental, and spiritual. Which means less fear and more thinking. Often, though, to start thinking, you have to be pretty frightened.