From 2014 to the present, Moscow, despite its relative failure in Ukraine, has changed the world in the interests of Russian and non-Russian revisionism.

At the end of the tenth year of the war in Ukraine, the result of Moscow’s attack on the supposedly “brotherly people” is ambiguous for the Kremlin. On the one hand, Russia suffered an image disaster as a military superpower. The war from 2022 has become an international shame for the Russian leadership, military and arms industry. At the same time, Moscow’s campaign in Ukraine led to the loss of Western partners, sales markets and investors. These, along with other failures, will have far-reaching regional, geopolitical, economic, and possibly domestic political consequences for Russia.

Achievements of Moscow

On the other hand, there are a number of partially ignored, partially underestimated results of Russian policy in Ukraine, which weaken the international order and the West. Certainly, the large-scale invasion of Russia on February 24, 2022 led to a partial consolidation of the West. NATO and the EU have become closer to each other in light of Russian escalation. The Western integration of not only Ukraine, but also Moldova and Georgia took an important step with the acquisition of EU candidate status from 2022/23.

Despite these positive consequences after the Eastern European confrontation, the damage to world politics due to the Russian war is enormous. Although this was not the main goal of the Kremlin, it can be assumed that these side effects are in the interests of Moscow. Current and potential future revisionist actors around the world benefit from Russia’s undermining of international law and order. Russia’s attack on the world security system weakens the West and international organizations. In so doing, it strengthens—at least in the Kremlin’s zero-sum calculations—Moscow itself, its anti-Western allies, and other revisionist actors around the world.

Besides the devastation of Ukraine, Russia’s adventure in Ukraine is the most alarming blow to global stability and cooperation since the end of World War II. Since 1945, there have been several other equally tragic wars in the world with partly as high casualties. However, the Russian war against Ukraine since 2014, but especially after 2022, has a new quality in the sum of its specific characteristics.

Five Russian cracks in the world order

First, in 2014, Russia attacked a completely peaceful and militarily weak country without provocation. The changes in Ukraine’s domestic and foreign policy since 2014 have been much less dramatic than Russia and its apologists abroad have portrayed. Ukrainian policy towards ethnic Russians remained tolerant after the Euromaidan revolution and only became more restrictive as a result of the war. Ukrainian right-wing extremism today is weak by European standards. The Association Agreement between Ukraine and the EU of 2014 did not conflict with the Ukrainian Free Trade Agreement in force at that time.

Ukraine’s much-criticized accession to NATO took place in 2014 and today remains a distant prospect. According to the logic of this popular justification for Putin’s behavior, Russia should have withdrawn its troops from the Republic of Moldova a long time ago, since Moldova has been officially non-aligned since 1994. However, Moscow, with active military and economic support, claimed the unrecognized satellite state of Transnistria on the territory of Moldova for 30 years.

Conversely, according to the logic of Kremlin spokesmen and apologists, Moscow should have attacked Finland in response to its request to join NATO in 2022. After the announcement of Helsinki’s intention to join, it was predictable that NATO would satisfy Finland’s request much faster than Ukraine’s. simultaneous join request. The Russian-Finnish border is, of course, not as long as the Russian-Ukrainian border. However, it is also very long and will almost double the total length of the NATO-Russia border in 2022.

In addition, the accession of Finland put St. Petersburg, Putin’s hometown, in a precarious position. The second Russian capital is now in close proximity to NATO both from the west, from Estonia, and from the northeast, from Finland. This new geopolitical location of St. Petersburg has made Finland’s accession to NATO a more worrisome strategic issue for Russia than Ukraine’s potential accession in the (probably distant) future. However, there was no significant reaction from Russia to Finland’s request and joining NATO, except for some noise. Over the past two years, Russia has withdrawn its troops from the Northern Military District on the Russian-Finnish border, despite Finland’s proximity to and membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Secondly, the Russian invasion in both 2014 and 2022 was aimed not only at the temporary occupation of the conquered territories. This led to their – from Russia’s point of view – final and complete annexation, first of Ukrainian Crimea, and then of four other regions in the southeast of mainland Ukraine. Such an open war for the expansion of one’s own state territory at the expense of an internationally recognized neighboring country is not unique, but after 1945 it became an unusual foreign policy activity.

Third, the Russian invasion of 2022 is a war not just of expansion, but of destruction. It is aimed at the liquidation of Ukraine as an independent state and the eradication of the Ukrainian nation as a cultural community separate from Russia. Moscow’s genocidal intent is expressed not only in numerous verbal statements, but also in a number of forms of mass terrorist behavior: deliberate bombing of civilian infrastructure, targeted destruction of Ukrainian cultural institutions, such as churches and libraries, mass destruction of the Ukrainian civilian population through the so-called infiltration camps, arbitrary mistreatment and killing of hundreds of civilians and prisoners of war, mass deportation of tens of thousands of accompanied and unaccompanied children, Russification campaigns in the occupied territories, camps for the re-education of minors and adults, etc. Nor is this genocidal approach unique, even after 1945. However, it has never been used in this form by any permanent member of the UN Security Council outside its territory.

The fourth feature of the war is related to this – Russia’s purposeful use of the seat on the UN Security Council, inherited from the Soviet Union in 1991, for diplomatic support of the war of destruction and political support for territorial expansion. With this approach, since 2014, Russia has turned the original function of the UN upside down. Once the United Nations was created to protect international law and, in particular, the borders, integrity and sovereignty of states, in the hands of Russia it has become an instrument of expansion.

Interestingly, Ukraine, as a former Soviet republic, was one of the founding members of the UN in 1945, while the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), Russia’s predecessor, the current republic of the USSR, was not. However, the successor state of the RSFSR, the Russian Federation, which joined the United Nations in late 1991, today officially includes the five regions forcibly annexed by the founding republic of the UN. In this context, it is not at all surprising that Russia bombed Kyiv at the end of April 2022, when the UN Secretary General was in the city. Antonio Guterres was forced to hide in a bomb shelter in Kyiv because of missiles sent by a permanent member of the UN Security Council and aimed at targets in the immediate vicinity of Guterres.

The most profound consequences of Moscow’s behavior for the world security system are related to the fifth feature – the nuclear aspect of Russia’s expansive and destructive war against Ukraine. The behavior of all the subjects of this confrontation is shaped by the fact that Russia possesses nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, while Ukraine does not. Ukraine, the West and the rest of the world are calculating their actions and signals in light of Moscow’s open threats to use nuclear weapons and Kyiv’s failure to do the same.

The most outrageous aspect of this combination is the fact that the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), which has been in effect since 1970, allows Russia to possess nuclear weapons but prohibits Ukraine from acquiring or building them. Similar to the paradoxical consequences of Russia’s presence in the UN Security Council, Moscow has turned the meaning of the NPT on its head. Conceived as a peacekeeping tool, the consistent implementation of the NPT has, in the context of Russia’s behavior toward the non-nuclear state of Ukraine, the effect of enabling a war of expansion.

As with the membership of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic in the UN since 1945, there is another historical curiosity about the non-proliferation regime. After gaining independence in 1991, Ukraine briefly had the third largest arsenal of nuclear weapons after Russia and the United States. At the time, Ukraine had more nuclear warheads than the other three official nuclear powers – Great Britain, France and China – combined.

However, in the mid-1990s, Kyiv not only agreed to destroy its intercontinental missiles, which were in no way unusable. In exchange for the infamous 1994 Budapest Memorandum, Ukraine was also persuaded to liquidate or hand over to Russia all of its nuclear stockpiles, radioactive materials and nuclear technology, as well as related delivery systems suitable for military use. As of 2022, the tragicomic aspect of this story was Russia’s use of some of the launchers it received from Ukraine in the 1990s as part of the 1994 Budapest Agreement to destroy Ukrainian cities.

Post-war cemetery

Through its war against Ukraine in 2014 and its escalation in 2022, Russia has shaken not only the liberal world order, but also the general order of Europe, if not all of humanity. Russia’s attack is directed not only against Ukrainian democracy, but also against the statehood, borders, sovereignty, identity and integrity of Ukraine. The subversive consequences of such behavior by a permanent member of the UN Security Council and an official nuclear-weapon state under the NPT are exacerbated by the docile or ineffective behavior of other Security Council members, other nuclear-weapon states, and other powerful Western countries, primarily Germany.

Large-scale Western sanctions against Moscow, starting in 2022, prevented a Russian war and weakened the economy. However, they have so far failed to fundamentally contain Russia, let alone end the war. Western arms supplies to Ukraine continue to be uncertain, limited and slow. They remain limited and exclude some important weapon types. _

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