Nearly three years of combat operations, about 20% of territory lost by Ukraine, over 1 million casualties on the battlefield from both sides. Do you think these are the main consequences of the Russian-Ukrainian war, no matter how dramatic they appear? Not at all. There are orders of magnitude more. They have acquired an incredible scale and affect the lives of people far beyond the warring parties.
What in the imagination of many Western politicians was expected as a two-week inconvenience of the caliber of the aggression against Georgia in 2008 or the annexation of Crimea in 2014, has led to unprecedented changes of global scale. This war became Pandora's box, which Russia opened. And with each day the bloodshed continues, the world receives from it ever newer problems of the maximum level of complexity.
By the end of the third year of the great war, the list of its large-scale consequences is so long that to digest them in peacetime, the world would need more than one decade. The current war has already reshaped the global market for commodity goods, especially energy carriers, reformatted trade and transport flows in the world.
It has fundamentally changed military affairs and forced the world's leading states to massively rearm to avoid potential threats. Thanks to it, the latest technologies received a significant impetus for development, and cybersecurity problems fully revealed their potential for destructive impact on states and societies. Through it, the fragile balance in the Middle East, which once cost more than one country in the world dearly, has been irretrievably lost. This list can be continued indefinitely...
Unfortunately, this is not the end yet. There will be more ahead. The problem is that in this war, the West de facto adheres to the tactics of necessary but insufficient support for Ukraine. Western aid is too little, it is allocated slowly, it arrives late. Western politicians justify their inaction with the nuclear threat from Russia. They stubbornly fail to understand that in their scale, the consequences caused by the war have long since surpassed any nuclear strike. This is obvious to a country that survived Chornobyl, but unfortunately, it does not reach the Western establishment.
The West's indecisiveness, its weak support for Ukraine allows Russia to deliver strikes that are far more terrible than a nuclear explosion—destructive strikes against the international order established after World War II. Because while, waving nuclear warheads, the Kremlin sweetly dreams of returning former territories and paves a bloody path to realizing its fantasies, and the West demonstrates catastrophic inaction, paralyzed by fear of "excessively" irritating Putin, the rest of the world carefully observes this and draws dangerous conclusions.
Now it turns out that contrary to the principle of self-determination of peoples, laid as the foundation of the UN Charter, the global tendency toward decolonization, within which dozens of national states gained independence after two world wars, Russia is restoring the right to restore historical territorial greatness through the use of force. Henceforth, every state that once occupied a larger territory receives the right to reconquer lands that have long not belonged to it with impunity. With each day of war, each kilometer of the Russian army's advance deep into Ukraine, each minute of Western inaction, an ever-growing number of people and states in the world understand this.
On this basis, long-forgotten ideas about the "greatness" of individual states and peoples begin crawling out of Pandora's box. "Greater China," "Greater France of Richelieu," "Greater Britain," "Greater Israel," even "Greater America." The ghosts of the world's past begin coming to life, which for the last 80 years found a place perhaps only in dusty history books. Why not recall the "Great Ottoman Empire," the "Great Persian Empire"? Then even "Greater Greece," "Greater Bulgaria," "Greater Azerbaijan," or some other state obsessed with megalomania are not devoid of meaning. While the West silently tolerates Russia's revanchism and its advance in Ukraine, these ideas not only come alive but receive ever higher chances of materializing and turning into a real action plan in the heads of irresponsible politicians across the globe.
Already now, under the influence of these ideas, long-standing conflicts are intensifying in the Middle East. The strengthening of neo-Ottomanist sentiments in Turkey stimulates its disputes with Greece, Armenia, and even the European Union. The concept of "Greater China," based on historical control over Taiwan, provokes a new round of confrontation with the USA, Japan, and their allies. Under the slogans of "Make America great again," the United States appears ready to deepen the split in transatlantic unity. The destructive consequences of these ideas can be named endlessly...
If these trends are not stopped, tomorrow the domino effect will begin. Our planet will turn for a long time into a world of zero security and plunge into total war of all against all. Humanity really faces a return to dark times from which it will be impossible to escape. This is an unprecedented challenge for the world, which finds itself one step away from enormous geopolitical and social cataclysms. What other arguments does the West need to start acting actively?
If the pitiful indecisiveness of current Western politicians were seen by their fathers and grandfathers, who nurtured the post-war world order at the price of a sea of spilled blood, boundless losses of their relatives and loved ones—they would be terribly shocked. They would instantly disperse this sandbox of geopolitical infantilism and without a drop of doubt would stand guard over such a hard-won safe and effective world order.
But unfortunately, they are not on Earth, there is no one to replace them, and their descendants do not want to take responsibility for maintaining world order. To close this damned Pandora's box, the world needs an effective guardian of security and justice, but the West in every way refuses to perform this role. And thereby dooms the entire planet—including itself—to a period of cataclysms. Is Ukraine the only place in the world where people are capable of understanding this?
One gets the impression that certain Western politicians not only refuse to oppose the catastrophic global trends provoked by Russian aggression, but with their actions try to lead them. It's impossible to perceive otherwise Donald Trump's talk about US interest in Greenland and the decision of the US House of Representatives to impose sanctions against the International Criminal Court, one of the basic institutions of the modern global order. If these irresponsible statements turn into real actions—they will become a starting whistle for the world that will begin the war of all against all. This must not be allowed!
The post-war world order presupposed collective rejection of geopolitical cannibalism in favor of international cooperation and healthy competition. First security—then development; no security—no development. It seems two world wars proved the inevitability of this formula. The world paid the boundless price of the blood of tens of millions of victims to first learn this lesson of history, and then build on its basis a sustainable peace that generally lasted several decades. And now, having opened Pandora's box, Russia forces everyone to forget this lesson and return to the era of chaos and geopolitical cannibalism. Because every country that tries to raise its own status at the expense of others' territories ignores the destructive consequences of its actions for global stability and ultimately risks drowning in the chaos it itself spreads. Is there really no one on the entire Earth with enough brains and courage to stop Putin?
Fortunately, not everything is lost yet. Despite all the tension of the global geopolitical situation, Pandora's box can still be closed. Russia must lose. The world needs this. Not because Ukraine must win: in this war it cannot win anything that would fully compensate for the spilled blood of hundreds of thousands of the best sons and daughters of the Ukrainian people. But because all without exception states of the world must clearly see that the only result of aggression will be not reward, but punishment, that it is unacceptable to violate international law and undermine effective world order for the sake of any ideas of national greatness or territorial ambitions.
Russia has earned a demonstrative thrashing. It must be carried out while the revisionism restored by Russia has not turned into a global trend, while politicians infected with the megalomania of their states have not begun to act. This must be done precisely by the West. Not only because it has all the possibilities and tools for this. Not only to honor the memory of its ancestors, who once already shed blood for this, having won long decades of sustainable peace for their heirs. But rather because in the impenetrable darkness of dark times into which Russia is trying to plunge us all, the free world needs a lighthouse, a source of light, orientation toward which would allow not to drown in chaos. The West is the only one capable of such a role.
Ukraine is the key to Pandora's box. Not because we fight well and must win, otherwise we'll be wiped off the face of the Earth. But because Ukraine has become a global symbol. A symbol of genuine democracy that rejects the actions of dictators that contradict the needs of the people. A symbol of the realization of the right to self-determination, which lies at the foundation of the post-war world order. A symbol of international relations built on law, not force. We earned this status with spilled blood and the resilience and courage with which Ukraine resists the insane onslaught of an extremely strong adversary, from the beginning having no weighty arguments except truth.
Now this status cries out for the restoration of justice: so that Ukraine receives the deserved reward for resilience, and Russia is punished. Only such a scenario of events will allow closing Pandora's box and cooling the heads of those who dream of territorial "greatness." This is the only way to avert the approaching global catastrophe.
For justice to be restored, Ukraine must win this war, and Russia must suffer defeat. For this, all problems with Western military aid must be eliminated. Aid must arrive on time, quickly, and in sufficient volume. There is no room here for bargaining and political discussions, because we're talking about the future of the entire world. Western politicians must understand: if they don't want to send their soldiers to Ukraine to fight Russia, they must provide us with such a powerful shoulder of weapons and technologies with which Ukraine will manage on its own.
Western countries should abandon double standards and condemn any imperial ambitions and attempts at revisionism, inflicting irreparable losses on their initiators at each attempt to realize them. One cannot bargain and generally deal with those who use proceeds for strikes against their partners. This is mortally dangerous for people, states, and world order itself. The West must understand: every word and deed related to the war concerns not only Ukraine and Russia, but the entire world and international order. All states carefully monitor what is happening in Ukraine and adjust their actions. One false step—and the chaos of war of all against all can touch every country, even one that feels safe.
The restoration of justice in combination with Ukraine's status will allow the world to take a giant step into a better future. If ultimately Ukraine's struggle for the force of law against the law of force is rewarded with frozen Russian assets and comprehensive assistance in reconstruction, the world will receive a powerful signal that henceforth even the largest conflicts will be resolved on the basis of international law. And any unfairly injured party will be powerfully supported by the world community. This will simply deprive attempts to revise borders of meaning and will create reliable prerequisites for restoring security and development.
The West's soft policy in the great war is caused by false perception of threats created by the Kremlin and a series of erroneous decisions. The trail of mistakes has been dragging and accumulating for more than one decade, shaking general faith that the West is generally capable of maintaining effective world order, and in the order itself as such. This is an extremely dangerous tendency leading to global disorientation and will end in war of all against all.
The moment of truth has arrived. The West has a last chance to close Pandora's box with the help of Ukraine as the key to it. By this it will clean the history of erroneous decisions, starting with the zero reaction to the war in Georgia and non-fulfillment of the conditions of the Budapest Memorandum, and will again become that lighthouse of law and order that will turn the free world away from plunging into the chaos of war of all against all.
The West should not fear Ukraine's victory and the triumph of justice, excessively worry about Russia's collapse and the fate of Russian nuclear weapons. More than 30 years ago the situation was identical. Then justice triumphed, and the West's firmness, its global authority conditioned by it, allowed adequately solving the problem of nuclear weapons. This time it can be the same. The West need only show more firmness.