Carnegie Moscow Center
Under Putin, it seems that there will be no more celebration of the end of Communist rule: the price paid for it is now deemed to be too high.
Russia’s efforts to find an acceptable place for itself in the U.S.-led Western system have ended in a bitter disappointment. The changing trading patterns point to a new era in Moscow’s foreign relations, in which Sino-Russian relations will be taking center stage.
Kyiv and Moscow are on a collision course. They may already be past the point of no return where a negotiated solution might have kept the crisis from escalating.
Prudence dictates that Russia should not invade Ukraine. However, if Putin decides differently, the Ukraine crisis will immediately become a Russia crisis, and then a European one.
Even now, six months into the Ukrainian crisis, Western leaders don’t know how far Vladimir Putin will go in Ukraine. The United States should immediately re-establish real channels of communication with Putin and his inner circle.
Going to war in 1914 was suicidal for the Russian state. Today, a Russian military invasion of Ukraine might well lead to a catastrophe with dire consequences for Russia itself, or to an all-out conflict between Russia and NATO.
During the Cold War, both Washington and Moscow actively encouraged, financed, and supported proxy wars across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In the eyes of many influential figures in Moscow, that is precisely what is happening in Ukraine today.
China will study U.S. strategy toward Russia and draw its own conclusions. Its interests are in keeping Russia as its stable strategic hinterland and a natural-resource base.
The Ukraine crisis has ended the period in Russian-Western relations that began with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and has opened a new period of heightened rivalry, even confrontation, between former Cold War adversaries.
Russia is learning to live in a new harsh environment of U.S.-led economic sanctions and political confrontation with the United States.