Ukraine refugee crisis and the main difference from other refugee inflows.
In recent days we have witnessed a sad situation where women and children from Ukraine are crossing the borders of the European Union and Moldova to escape the hell of war. Particularly striking while looking at these images is the fact that they are not the same images as those from the flows from Syria and Afghanistan, i.e. young men or families with all its members or even unaccompanied minors…
Young people and people up to 60 years old, with state encouragement but also with will and a high sense of patriotism, stayed behind to guard their own Thermopylae, while another 60,000 men crossed the border, leaving the comfort and peace of other countries they lived in, coming to a war zone to protect the continuity of Ukrainian culture and democracy.
Reading, studying history, it seems that almost always after a pandemic, comes war. This development is happening to change the power dynamics in the world. In reality, this time it is not the engagement between Russia and the West, but between the US and China. The main concern is who will take first place in the world market and who will come second. Among other things, this justifies India’s entry more and more actively into the marathon over the crisis in Ukraine. It is increasingly understood that even though the war began with rockets, for a few inches of land and a shattered ego, its real goal is worldwide economic domination.
In that sense, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reminds me of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990. The Gulf War (August 2, 1990 – February 28, 1991) was a war between an international coalition of at least 31 nations led by the United States and authorized by the United Nations against Iraq to liberate Kuwait. The war began with the invasion of Iraq on August 2, 1990, on the grounds that Kuwait was drilling for oil at an inclination and thus “stealing” Iraqi oil. Immediately after the invasion, economic sanctions were imposed by the UN and finally hostilities began after January 15, 1991, which resulted in the complete victory of the allied forces.
Ukraine is a state independent of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. It has a democratically elected government and there has never been any internal contestation of the country’s government, which was also shown in the unity of Ukrainians. Russia’s fear is clearly securing its borders from the “dangerous NATO alliance.”
Russia’s management of the invasion by Vladimir Putin is reminiscent of empires that often operate by creating a small group of “gangs” of elites who are at the top of the state. And this is proven by the fact that the Russian people are not interested in this war, indifferent to the outcome and the reasons why the Russians want to conquer Ukraine.
While in the Soviet Union there was an ideology that was massively embraced by a large part of the population, this characteristic is lacking today, as the selfish need for the Russian president to prove strength prevails. People are simply ruled by a closed elite. And here we have the classic – for empires – case where the emperor simply wants to increase the riches for himself and the members of the oligarchy.
The greater purpose of Vladimir Putin is to deny the existence of the Ukrainian nation itself and absorb it together with the state. However, to achieve this, it is not enough to conquer Ukraine, but also to keep it conquered. He dreamed of all this without a second plan, because of his belief that the Ukrainians would accept this imposition without a fight.
In fact, since my visit to Kiev and Ukraine in 2018, I realized exactly the opposite: Ukrainians have a sense of patriotism but often also nationalism about the independent existence, history, culture and state of Ukraine. Russia has bolstered groups with weapons that killed Americans for decades, and today it reacts to the possibility of the U.S. supporting Ukrainians with warplanes, arguing that it is a hostile move that will lead to war.
Ukrainians are a true nation and want to be independent at all costs. All that Vl. Putin managed to do is sow hatred in the heart of every Ukrainian. Every day this war continues, every day another Ukrainian civilian or soldier falls dead, this hatred will flare up more and more and can now last for generations. Ukrainians and Russians did not hate each other before Vladimir Putin.
They were siblings. And now because of him they are enemies. This is the legacy that the Russian President will leave behind.
If this war does not stop soon, everyone will suffer, not just Ukrainians and Russians. In recent decades we have lived through an unprecedented period of peace, as evidenced by the budgets of European states, which provided for military spending of almost 3%. “Consider that once, in the age of empires, this was at least 50% of the budget.” Within a few days we saw Germany double that figure.
Greece did the same with the announcement by the Minister of National Defence about the purchase of Léopard tanks, guided missiles, F16 upgrades and corvettes, while other European countries will do the same; which is logical, as the fear is real. Unfortunately, as a result, less money will be spent on education and health.
At this point, in concluding our thoughts, we must observe that in recent years in the West there has been a “culture war” between left and right, between conservative and progressive forces. We hope that the conflict in Ukraine may bring peace to this informal “war” and a change of tactics by parties, governments, intellectuals and others. This may be because everyone suddenly realizes that something so overwhelming is unfolding that it quite unpleasantly highlights far bigger issues in the world than these “informal” rivalries within Western democracies. Even though right-wingers may be concerned about the values of the nation and leftists about the values of liberalism, when they see Ukrainians fighting for their survival, they understand that their values are not as opposite as they thought. Perhaps, then, they can find common ground on how they want their country to move forward.
Finally, the Russia of Vl. Putin is not the Soviet Union. It is a much smaller and weaker country… It is by no means like in the ’60s, when apart from the Soviet Union you had the entire Eastern bloc supporting it. Today it is easier to isolate it, as it is very vulnerable to sanctions of all kinds, especially economic ones. This does not mean, of course, that the sanctions already imposed by the West will act like a deus ex machina that stops the tanks. It takes time. However, the West is able to “supervise” Russia’s imperial appetites with these sanctions much more easily and forcefully than in the past. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will change not only the map of the United Europe but also the policies – strategies of the member states vis-à-vis Brussels themselves and NATO.
