Ukraine Triggers Deeper Divide

Hundreds of Italians showed up in Rome last month in support of Russian President Vladimir Putin and against Ukraine in September. They wanted their government to stop aiding Ukraine under President Volodymyr Zelensky. It was an event that reiterated how Putin has managed to withstand the sharp edge of a series of expansive sanctions clamped on his country at the initiative of the United States after the outbreak of the Ukraine war in February 2022. Subsequent events have clearly underscored a gradual polarisation in global political landscape. Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping accept what they see as a multipolar global system in which the United States does not dominate. 

Putin’s September visit to Mongolia, despite a warrant issued by the International Criminal Court for his arrest, was a show of confidence and a rebuff to the Hague-headquartered ICC, which has Mongolia among 124 members. Construction of a major pipeline is planned to a yearly supply of 50 billion cubic metres of natural gas from Russia’s Yamal region through Mongolia to China. This is designed to compensate Russia for the loss of gas revenue from Europe.

North Korean supply of ammunitions and China, the second largest economy destined to take the world No. 1 spot within a decade, giving it a strong backing, plus Saudi Arabia nodding at Moscow, have enabled Putin’s Russia to withstand Western sanctions. Oil power has come in handy for Putin. North Korea has been sanctioned for decades, its leaders ridiculed and its defence budget was dubbed poverty and famine-generating scheme. That kind of disparaging talk is rare since the Ukraine war. The world has begun to look at Pyongyang with a new lens. Putin has obtained cheap but effective 5,000 drones from Iran. 

Steady economy

Russian economy is comparatively in a better shape than much of Europe’s and the US’s. Differing with the West should not invite a push on the margins of the global system. This sends ominous signals to others. Genuine grievances had been brewing in the global South since long. Now the South senses better times for their voices to be heard and prospects of being heeded by the big powers.  Moscow is moving towards strategic coordination for changes and consolidation of what has been achieved so far. Technological advances, as in the previous 400 years, when the West took a runaway lead, is what China and Russia combine view as an opportunity to break the West’s vice-like domination.

Russo-Iranian relations have also warmed up on a new scale, which should not surprise many. Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin-Salman, is a known Putin admirer. Although US President Joe Biden personally paid a call on the Saudi prince two years ago to increase oil production for stabilising prices, the prince did not oblige the American leader. Putin recently dared the West to try to win on the battlefield and said chances of talks grew dim. Likewise, the war in Gaza has completed a year—the longest war Israel has been engaged in. This is a setback to Israel’s strongest supporters. Palestinians cannot be punished for the Holocaust Jews suffered under Nazi Germany. Unconditional US support to Israel has angered many Muslim majority nations. Pressure on ICC not to issue warrant against Benjamin Netanyahu has led some sections to believe that the organisation’s decisions are made in Washington. 

When legacy powers sense competition to reckon with, they cease to be as calm as they might like to be. These days, the West feels an extreme heat of competition. Trade deficit being their chief cause of consternation, they are now raising tariffs on goods coming from the target countries. During the Ronald Reagan presidency in the 1980s, Americans were prevented from visiting Libya. Those violating the ban were liable to be fined $50,000 and a ten-year imprisonment. A slow steady process of division in the West over unconditional support for Israel is developing. Ukraine has received billions of dollars from European Union members, the US and their close allies. The conflict is responsible for hike in energy prices. 

EU’s largest economy, Germany has had to pay an extra $1.5 trillion for oil and gas because of the protracted war. Germany used to obtain cheaper oil supply from Rusia prior to the Nord Stream pipeline being bombed beyond repair. No one has claimed responsibility. American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh in 2023 named the US and Norway for destroying the pipeline that used to supply Russian oil and gas for Europe. Initially, conflicting reports circulated on the sources behind the pipeline’s sabotage. Speculation that Ukraine or Russia did the damage was rife, while some suspected the US behind the devastation. A Pulitzer Prize winner, Seymour Hersh, 86, reported that the US, in tandem with Denmark, perpetrated the bombing—a claim that Washington and Copenhagen curtly denied. The major media in the West were not very receptive to American journalist’s narrative.

Table turns

In September, former US President Donald Trump vowed to lift all sanctions on Russia if he were elected in November. Stressing that they should be applied judiciously to address the consequences on the sanctions-inflicting countries too, he blamed NATO for ammunitions shortage in the US.  Apparently gauging the mood among allies, Biden sent his envoy to meet with Putin for what Washington described as maintaining a line of communication. A division in individual members’ stand on the EU policy towards China is also surfacing. China is accused of providing unfair subsidies to its EV industry. But Spain and Germany oppose increase in tariffs on Chinese electrical vehicles. The EU and NATO members worry about the implications on their trade with China which has ever-deepening ties with Russia.

Zelensky’s critics portray him as the image of a proxy player pushed into the conflict ring for as long as his foreign supporters want. The carnage left in the process is horrendous. Western media have not given the blow-by-blow report on the casualty figures that Ukraine has suffered. As the resultant burden of inflation is a punishing cost the European Union’s largest economy, Germany, it has had to bear in seething but hapless silence. Others in the region are beginning to air their concerns over the effects the protracted Ukraine war are having on them.

(Professor Kharel specialises in political communication.)