TEHRAN- Russia has been engaged in a war with Ukraine for months. Perhaps in the early days of the war, no one imagined that it would take so long, but if we look at its nature, we will realize that Russia is engaged not only with Ukraine, but with NATO, and Ukraine conducted a proxy war with Russia on the behalf of the military alliance.

The recent statements of the Minister of Defense of Ukraine show that the country is not only fighting against Russia on behalf of the West but it does not shy away from expressing itself as a NATO puppet.

In an interview with a Ukrainian TV channel, Oleksii Reznikov admitted that Ukraine's army is fighting for NATO's mission.

"Ukraine is alive with the help of Western countries and fights on behalf of the West. NATO members are obliged to provide weapons to Ukraine because it is the Ukrainians sacrifice their blood,” Reznikov remarked.

War; when and how

The war in Ukraine started with carelessness by the western-backed government of the country.

On February 21, 2022, Russia recognized the Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic, two self-proclaimed breakaway quasi-states in the Donbas. The next day, the Federation Council of Russia authorized the use of military force and Russian soldiers entered both territories.

Although racial problems in Ukraine and Russians living in the Donbas region were considered to be the Kremlin's concerns, what causes such a huge war must be a much bigger issue.

In the past years, Ukraine has repeatedly expressed its interest in becoming a member of NATO, or in a better way, expanding NATO to the east, but Russia has repeatedly announced that the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to its borders as Moscow's red-line.

Kyiv's indifference for Russia's request caused the country to start " Special Military Operation" against Ukraine in order to confront NATO on its borders.

Russia called the start of its war a special operation because it had declared that its initial goal was nothing but to push NATO away from its eastern borders.

It seems that Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to announce to the West and the international community that he was not about to enter into an all-out war, and as soon as the threat of NATO and its expansion to Russia's borders ended, the operation will end. 
But Ukraine and its president's disregard for the legitimate demands of a neighboring country caused Russia to launch its attack on Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

Interestingly, at the time of the beginning of Russia's special operations in Ukraine Western intelligence agencies were reporting the exact time and the way that the war would start.

Such detailed information showed that the West is not just a mere supporter but the main contractor of the war. They knew what they wanted from Ukraine, and of course, they also knew that Russia would not back down from the red lines it had drawn for itself. They considered war inevitable. But the West's promise to Ukraine, namely its membership in NATO, was a miscalculation.

Signals about possible Ukraine's accession to NATO were a mistake

Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger believes that "it was a mistake for NATO to signal to Ukraine that it might eventually join the alliance" and that Putin’s security concerns should be taken seriously.

"I thought that Poland - all the traditional Western countries that have been part of Western history - were logical members of NATO," he said. "I was in favor of the full independence of Ukraine, but I thought its best role was something like Finland," Kissinger added in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.

In Kissinger’s view, Ukraine "is a collection of territories once appended to Russia, which Russians see as their own, even though ‘some Ukrainians’ do not. Stability would be better served by its acting as a buffer between Russia and the West." 

Sergey Karaganov, a prominent Russian political scientist, says in a conversation with the New York Times:

Ukraine is an important but small part of the engulfing process of the collapse of the former world order of global liberal imperialism imposed by the United States and movement towards a much fairer and freer world of multipolarity and multiplicity of civilizations and cultures.

As the months passed, it seemed that Russia did not change its initial goals in the war and announced once again that it was looking for the liberation of Donbass and other Russian regions of Ukraine, and in the end it only asked Kyiv to accept its terms, including civilian ones. To accept the regions under the rule of Kyiv and to stay away from NATO.

“Brain death of NATO"

The Ukraine crisis has deep geopolitical implications and many believe that it is disrupting the world order established after World War II.

The foundation of the order was to resolve issues related to great powers without resorting to force, but Russia's attack on Ukraine has disrupted this order.

Issues of this nature make the war in Ukraine different from other crises.

One of the issues that cause this war to disturb the world order is its effect on the nature of NATO. Before the start of the crisis and after the end of the Cold War, NATO had lost its reason for existence, and we saw that two years ago, Emmanuel Macron, the French president, had warned European countries that they can no longer rely on America to defend NATO allies. “What we are currently experiencing is the brain death of NATO.” 

Now we see that NATO is revived and some countries are looking to join it. Even countries such as Finland and Sweden, which have adopted a policy of neutrality in conflicts for all these years, are revising their policies. Now they are post-neutral or pre-allied condition.

The reason for focusing on the Ukraine crisis, in different dimensions, in addition to Western media propaganda, is its geopolitical effects, which makes even a country like Japan in East Asia worried about the disruption of the current international order. A country like Germany approves a military budget of 100 billion euros for the first time as a result of the Ukraine crisis. The fact that a crisis in the heart of Europe affects Japan's security thinking in East Asia shows how wide the impact of the crisis has been.

3 possible scenarios for the end of the war

Although it seems difficult to imagine an end to the war, it is possible. And three scenarios are possible for this end.

There are three scenarios for how the conflict ends, and each would have enormous geopolitical consequences. If the Kremlin were to lose decisively in this epic standoff, we would probably see a re-emergence of the unipolar moment—the remaining opposition to this arrangement by Beijing notwithstanding. Although Ukraine might be unfinished business for Putin, Russia’s status is itself unfinished business for many in the West. Triumph for Ukraine might lead to a tamed and domesticated Russia. A quiet Russia would allow the West to cope more easily with China, which would be the only major obstacle to liberal hegemony and the long-awaited “end of history”.

If the conflict results with an imperfect but mutually acceptable settlement, the final outcome of the collision between the Russian and the Ukrainian models will be postponed. Fierce competition between the two models of social organization will continue, but, I hope, in a less brutal mode. A less-than-perfect compromise between the West and Russia might be followed by a more important, and more fundamental, compromise between the West and China. If a deal with Putin is possible, a deal with Xi Jinping would be a logical continuation. A rapprochement between China and the West would require more time, energy, and political flexibility from the West, however. That would lead to a reformation of the global order, with major changes to the UN system, archaic norms of international public law, and recalibrations at the IMF, the WTO, and other bodies.

If there is no agreement on Ukraine and the conflict endures through cycles of shaky ceasefires followed by new rounds of escalation, expect decay in global and regional bodies. Inefficient international institutions may collapse amid an accelerating arms race, nuclear proliferation, and the multiplication of regional conflicts. Such change would lead only to more chaos in the years ahead.

Assessing the probability of any of the three scenarios is extremely difficult—too many independent variables could influence the outcome of the conflict. I consider the reformation scenario, in which an agreement is made to end the conflict, to be the best option for all. The others either will introduce change too quickly or block badly-needed change; in both cases, political risks will multiply. If the conflict triggers a gradual, orderly, and non-violent transition in which the global order becomes more stable, it would mean that humankind has not let Ukraine’s sacrifices go to waste.

Crisis in Ukraine Cui bono

Although the war has caused a lot of damage to Ukraine and Russia, it has created economic opportunities for certain countries.

The Unite States and Europe have created a big market for themselves by selling their weapons.

Turkey's unmanned aircraft called Bayraktar still occupy the main market of the war and the Zionist regime has diverted attention from its policies by approaching both sides of the war and by using the Jews living in the two countries to achieve its goals.