Ukraine invasion is only the beginning, Taiwan and South Korea will follow.
Ukraine And Russia
Kiev has become the main critical point in relations between Moscow and the West, especially after the deployment of about 175,000 Russian soldiers on the border with Ukraine, to which were added a series of harsh statements by the president, Vladimir Putin, regarding the “Red lines” that NATO would be crossing. The reasons that prompted the head of the Kremlin to rekindle the tensions can be summarized in three main points of a historical, geopolitical and strategic nature. The first reason is to be found in the history that the two countries have long shared. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia lost control of 14 republics which, during the Soviet era, were placed under the rule of the Russian Federation. However, the loss of Ukraine would have been the “bitterest pill” to ingest. The two countries speak closely related languages and later formed, together with Belarus, the Slavic nucleus of the Soviet Union. Many Russians feel a connection with Ukraine that they do not have towards other former Soviet states of the Baltic, the Caucasus and Central Asia. It is precisely these factors that Putin implicitly referred to when, last July 12 of 2021, he wrote the article entitled “On the historical union of Russians and Ukrainians”. In the article, the head of the Kremlin said that Russians and Ukrainians were a people who shared a “single historical and spiritual space” and that the emergence of a “wall” between them in recent years has been tragic. Kiev had rejected the thesis presented by Putin, saying that the historical version described in the article was “too simplified and politically motivated”. The second reason is embedded in the regional geopolitical intertwining. Since the end of the Cold War, NATO has expanded eastward, welcoming 14 new countries, including those of the former Warsaw Pact and the three Baltic nations, which were once part of the Soviet Union. From a Russian point of view, this move to the East has put its national security at risk, since, in fact, the Alliance has “reached the gates of the Federation”. Although Ukraine is not a member of NATO, it has always made its Euro-Atlantic sentiments explicit, which were answered in the promise made by the Alliance on…
