By Thomas Clark
As of Feb. 21, Russia officially declared two self-proclaimed states in Ukraine as separate from the country of Ukraine. Three days later, Russia started its invasion of the nation, sending tanks in through the Belarus border and targeted airstrikes of military buildings in Ukraine.
As of now Russia is not backing down, but why exactly are they invading Ukraine, and what does this mean for both Russia, and the rest of the world?
Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has made it clear that his wishes are to return the nation of Russia to its former glory, before the collapse of the Soviet Union of 1991, so the question is why now carry out on this desire?
I believe, and the popular belief is: Ukraine’s desire to join what is known as the NATO, while there has been several conflicts between the two nations most importantly: the annexation of Crimea, a peninsula south of Ukraine, and the decision made by the Ukrainian government to cut the canal that flows a significant percentage of Crimea’s clean drinking water, and also Ukraine discovering their own potential to harvest natural gas, which directly competed with Russia’s main source of income: exporting oil to European nations. While these events in their own right are catastrophic to Russia, no action poses a bigger threat than Ukraine’s wishes to join NATO, which with their potential to harvest natural gas could become a reality. NATO is made up of 30 countries with the biggest ones being the United States and the countries of Western Europe, however NATO has continued to push their alliance into Eastern Europe, which directly threatens Russia, their conquest and would weaken their position against a future NATO attack.
My main takeaway from this conflict is that this is the beginning of the end for Russia as a global superpower as we have known them as, almost regardless of outcome at this point as more news comes in. One major catastrophe in Russia is the population decline that it is suffering, between COVID-19 and the declining birth rate in the nation, they had lost just under one million people between October 2020 and November 2021, and this is only a trend that will continue in the future. Meaning that at some point soon, they will be too weak on their own.
A second potential catastrophe is Russia’s struggle as of right now to topple Ukraine. According to John R. Deni, research professor of joint, interagency, intergovernmental, and multinational, JIIM, security studies at the US Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute, “…there are some anomalies that do not make sense to me, including the inability of Russian forces to successfully and conclusively establish air dominance over Ukraine, the inability of Russian forces to retain control and exploit the capture of the Antonov International Airport outside Kyiv, and the evident difficulty Russian forces are experiencing in term of coordination.” While Russia is not deploying their whole military, taking over Ukraine was supposed to be a walk in the park at this stage, with that result not being achieved. Russia cannot fail, and still failure is unlikely for them, any of their ambitions of achieving more land or even competing with NATO is seeming less and less likely by the day. That is why it is my opinion that even if Ukraine is captured, Russia’s days of being a global superpower are numbered; even if it is decades away, the power that we see now will not hold the test of time.
Photo via Flickr
