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MOSCOW – More than 18 months after former President Viktor Yanukovych was driven from power (and into exile), the crisis in Ukraine is at a stalemate. Crimea has been reabsorbed by Russia (in what many consider an annexation); much of eastern Ukraine is held by pro-Russia rebels; and relations between the West and Russia are more tense than at any time.
The current crisis in Russia-West relations is commonly blamed on Russia’s actions in Crimea, Donbass and Ukraine in general. But its roots go much deeper. And it may have much more serious consequences in the long term. The situation may not only evolve into a full-blown armed clash, the probability of which I hope is declining, political confrontation or truncated economic ties.
The year 2015 is a year of many jubilees – 70 years since the Great Victory and the end of the Second World War; 25 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent unification of Germany; and 40 years since the signing of the Helsinki Final Act and the subsequent creation of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
I have already written before that having emerged from the Cold War, Europe lost the post-war peace. The continent is on the verge of strategic degradation that may either become a caricature of military-political division into opposing blocs or a time of disquieting uncertainty. The military-political conflict over Ukraine can escalate as well.
Having won the Cold War (perhaps largely due to the courage of the Russian people who threw off a communist dictatorship and were prepared to take risks), Europe seems to be losing the peace.
A new center of economic development will emerge in Central Eurasia The long-term deterioration of relations with the West, hopefully less dramatic in the future than now, and the need for restructuring foreign economic relations, largely malformed during the years of disintegration and chaotic attempts to restore them, make the partial economic turn to the East all the more necessary.
Factors that helped it achieve this are the will, the unification of the majority of people and elites, brilliant diplomacy, and the ability for strategic foresight.
In the winter of 2014, two months before the events in Crimea, when it was already clear that the confrontation with the West was getting increasingly tense, I read again Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace.
The victory of Donald Trump reinforced international tendencies, which had been obvious for Russians and which had been guiding Russian behavior for last few years. Among them – deglobalization led by forces, which previously created it, but started to retreat from it, when they saw that it benefits others equally or more.

News

Sergey Karaganov and John Mearsheimer: Is Ukraine a threat to Russia?
S. Karaganov for LBC: Russia Will ‘Crush The Will Of European Elites’
S. Karaganov for BBC News: ‘Best Possible Outcome Is Ukraine’s Total Capitulation’
Horizons Debate | The Eagle Meets the Bear | IAN BREMMER & SERGEY KARAGANOV
Report “Russia’s Policy Towards World MajorityReport” was introduced on TASS News Agency press conference on December 27, 2023
S.Karaganov for “Going Underground” on RT

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