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A daily article on global humanities and geography
WeChat public account: Earth Knowledge Bureau
NO.2159 - Russian-Ukrainian War
Author: Dreamless
Draft: Gu Hanyi / Editor: Tuna
If one were to ask what the hottest news of recent days was, Russia's all-out attack on Ukraine from the north, east and south, following the recognition of the "Donetsk People's Republic" and the "Luhansk People's Republic," is bound to be well-deserved explosive news.
At present, the primary goal of the Russian army is to take Kiev
It can be said that the news surrounding this Russian-Ukrainian conflict, large and small, true and false, has filled the entire Internet space, and related memes are emerging in an endless stream.
But at this stage, the vast majority of people are still concerned about the direct results of the current Russian-Ukrainian military engagement, as well as the statements of the top brass of various countries on this incident, and few people consider the extent to which this fierce national conflict will change the geopolitical landscape of Eastern Europe.
Even, what kind of impact will this Russian-Ukrainian conflict have on the whole world?
Goodbye, Tatyana, I'm going to fight for our country
(Ukrainian soldier says goodbye to girlfriend, photo: Twitter)▼
Cross the Dnieper River and take Kiev
In fact, at this point in time just after the Beijing Winter Olympics, the russian top brass suddenly signed a decree declaring that the recognition of the two "regimes" established by pro-Russian militias in eastern Ukraine as independent countries has already shocked most people's attention.
Not only the people, but also the leaders of various countries have also been dumbfounded
Russia is at war, the United Nations is meeting
(Photo: shutterstock)▼
Since August last year, the British and American media have been reporting that Russia is about to invade Ukraine, and almost half a year has passed, but except for Russia's fact-building troops in the border areas, there is no clear evidence that it is about to attack Ukraine, so many people believe that in the context of the Olympic Games advocating peace, Russia and Ukraine will still maintain the confrontation situation that has not been broken before.
At the same time as Putin's speech, speculation about the outbreak of a direct conflict between Ukraine and Russia had emerged, when it was widely believed that there were four possibilities if there was a war between the two countries:
(1) The "Donetsk People's Republic" and the "Luhansk People's Republic" established by the pro-Russian militia forces in Eastern Ukraine actually occupy only a small part of the two states of Donetsk and Luhansk in Ukraine, and Russia may adopt the strategy of recognizing the two independent "regimes" but confining its territorial scope to the Line of Actual Control, so that the two sides can avoid conflict;
Negotiations are about to begin▼
(2) It is the Russian side that vigorously supports the separatist forces to "revive the homeland" and push the line of actual control to the border of the two oblasts of Ukraine, so that the conflict between the two sides will be controlled within a very small range and the intensity will be relatively low;
Expanded some ▼
(3) Russia directly sent troops, starting from the two "republics" of Crimea and Luton, which it already controlled, and fought all the way westward, eventually stabilizing the front line on the Dnieper River, completely occupying the Wudong region, and threatening the Ukrainian capital Kiev and Ussi Oblast, a level of conflict that has completely broken away from the level of petty fighting.
The feeling of paddling the river and ruling▼
(4) This is also what we are witnessing so far - Russia not only set out from Crimea and Luton to attack westwards, but also sent troops directly from Belarus, bypassing the dangerous Dnieper River, and dispatched air force and missiles to open the way for the army, launching a full-scale war against Ukraine, which will eventually push the front line to lviv and Vennitsa regions on the Ukrainian-Polish border.
It is equivalent to the occupation of the whole territory
To be honest, before February 20, the "sit-in war" between Russia and Ukraine, which had been stationary, was finally able to reach such intensity, which was unexpected by the vast majority of people.
As of this writing, the Russian-Ukrainian scramble over Kiev is raging, with the goal of taking the capital of a country and carrying out a "decapitation operation" (although most of Ukraine's high-ranking officials and rich people have already run away).
My family and I are in Ukraine
I will fight to the end (source: Youtube)▼
Although Russia has great advantages over Ukraine in all aspects objectively speaking. However, war is a very complex issue, and many causes can affect the final outcome.
Here, we assume the most extreme outcome, that is, if Russia occupies all of Ukraine (the most extreme result), what will Russia do next?
Russia's choice, the fate of Ukraine
Judging from the current situation, there are three most likely strategies for the Russian side:
The first is to take full possession and rule of Ukraine after it has been conquered, after all, the february 22 speech completely negates the legal basis for ukraine's existence. As a result, Russia will have both the abundant coal resources and many key military enterprises in eastern Ukraine, as well as the grain-producing areas in the west, but the Russian top will have to face long, low-intensity security wars, as the United States encountered in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The Ukrainian government has struggled to confront protesters in its own country
In the case of foreign occupation, the cost of occupation is difficult to estimate
Although the cultural, religious, and ancestral differences between Russia and Ukraine are much smaller than those between the United States and Iran, russia has actually occupied Crimea since the 2014 Ukraine crisis and supported the establishment of a separatist regime by the Militia forces in Eastern Ukraine, which has led to a surge of nationalism in Ukraine.
External conflicts extend within the country
It is the long-term conflict between Ukrainians and Russians
In addition, some have combined with neo-Nazism, which has risen since 2010, to become very dangerous nationalist Nazis. Like the infamous "Azov Battalion" in the Ukrainian National Guard, it was basically an army armed entirely with Nazi ideology. Faced with such organizations and the groups behind them, even Russia can be quite a headache.
Camp Azov teaches young people to defend their country
It also exposes them to far-right ideologies
Second, the second strategy is that Russia will withdraw most of its forces after a full-scale military operation, leaving a small number of "law and order", and focusing on the operation of the two "republics" of Lu and Dun, and "Finlandizing" the rest of Ukraine, that is, completely unarmed, as a buffer zone between Russia and NATO.
For Russians with a low sense of security, the wider the buffer belt, the better
In this way, the international pressure facing Russia will be much smaller than the previous one, and the most important Donbass region in Ukraine can also be obtained, and the possibility that the Russian side will incorporate the "republics" of Lu and Don into the Territory of the Russian Federation in the form of Crimea in the future.
Similar to another result that goes back to before
But Ukraine, which was once occupied, is completely different
The third is to send back to Ukraine the former legitimately elected president of Ukraine, Yanukovych and other pro-Russian bureaucrats, who fled to Russia in the 2014 coup d'état, to re-establish a pro-Russian government and control the subsequent Ukrainian presidential election.
I still have a chance not (picture: one map network)▼
It could even be argued that this is "well-known" – after all, Yanukovych came to power through a legal electoral process, was later ousted by the Orange Revolution propped up by the West, and now puts the former back in office, at least in the face of "respecting the choice of the Ukrainian people".
The future fate of Ukraine depends on how Russia operates.
In fact, for Russia, it was able to launch this all-out war against Ukraine in large part because Europe and the United States have no cards against it – since the full sanctions imposed on the annexation of Crimea in 2014, Russia has armed itself with an iron barrel array, which can be said to be an order of magnitude stronger than the hedgehog's defense.
Economic sanctions have also increased Russia's internal difficulties and contradictions
Europe and the United States are very hopeful that Russia will have problems from within
(Photo: shutterstock)▼
The first is to hoard foreign exchange reserves in case European and American countries break off economic ties. According to statistics, Russia has hoarded $610 billion worth of foreign exchange, equivalent to the Indian level;
Second, a large number of U.S. Treasuries were sold and U.S. treasuries and U.S. dollars were exchanged for gold, which ensured that they had stable hard currency in times of crisis;
Third, Russia maintains a good national debt ratio, with its national debt accounting for only 17% of GDP in 2021 (this figure in the United States is about 130%), which ensures that the government cannot be crushed by the debt problem because of foreign sanctions;
Fourth, Russia's dependence on foreign investment has been quite low since the 1997 financial crisis, which makes it impossible for the Russian economy to collapse purely by sanctions;
Finally, Russia chose to use the euro as early as possible to replace the dollar for commodity settlement, and further pulled its relationship with Europe while decoupling from the dollar, after all, as the world's second largest nuclear power, Europe and the United States can not directly attack Russia itself...
All those who were sanctioned were sanctioned
(Playing the actor's true color to govern the country does not seem to work, picture: one map network) ▼
Therefore, we can say that in addition to imposing more itchy sanctions, Europe and the United States can say that there is nothing they can do about this one-sided Russia, and the impact of this war on the Russian side is actually far less than most people estimate.
Unlucky Europeans
The Europeans (especially Germany and France) caught between the United States and Ukraine were helpless, and they were the most seriously wounded in a war that was completely powerless on their own.
Before the war between Russia and Ukraine, German Chancellor Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron flew to the United States and Russia to extinguish the fire, and declared that their good offices were effective. Schoelz was fine, he had just been elected in October last year, and everyone probably forgot about it in the next German election, but Macron really regarded the talks with Putin and the assurances he had obtained as his own political achievements, and almost announced that he had "brought back the peace of a generation".
Reliable feeling? (Photo: shutterstock)▼
Being punched in the face at the speed of light was a big deal for his election in April, and France's right-wing Republican candidate Pécrés was likely to come later. In order to show his "tough guy style" of never surrendering, Macron had to be tough on Russia against his heart.
However, France, as a nuclear power country, an important source of uranium imports, Mali, is now being stirred up by the pro-Russian new government, which has repeatedly said that it will invite the Russian Wagner Mercenary Corps with low fees to work, which has crowded out France's power in West Africa in disguise, so at this time, it is obviously a bad card that does not want to come out but has to be played.
The Malians even ran to Paris for rallies
Demand for a defense agreement with Russia (Photo: One Map)▼
Worse is actually ahead. In 2021, the European Union encountered an energy crisis, natural gas prices soared has been a cliché news, as a result of Russia just sent troops, natural gas futures prices immediately rose by 25%, along with oil (such as the benchmark of international oil prices, North Sea Brent crude oil futures prices exceeded $100 per barrel) and other commodity prices rose together, the price of hard currency gold has approached $2000 / ounce.
Crude oil prices were still just rising steadily
As soon as the battle situation came out, it directly broke through the 100 mark
According to international laws, the rise in commodity prices will inevitably lead to an increase in the prices of semi-finished products and finished products, push up inflation, and greatly affect the daily life consumption of ordinary people. The most common way to deal with inflation is to raise interest rates to absorb market funds, and inflation can be reduced when cash flows back into the bank.
The problem is that the ECB is currently in a Schrödinger state that wants to raise rates but is afraid to raise them.
Inflation in Europe last year was already very severe (more than 5%)
The global inflation warning line is 3% (figure: One Map Network)▼
I want to raise interest rates because if the inflation in Europe is a flood, then the annual inflation in the United States is probably a common work to break the level of the mountain - the annual inflation in 2021 is as high as 7%, Fed Chairman Powell said many times before re-election that "inflation is temporary", and after re-election, he changed his face and said that he would raise interest rates several times in 2022.
If the European Central Bank does not raise interest rates, then the international capital that is profitable and unjust will inevitably return to the United States.
They did not dare to raise interest rates because countries such as France and Italy had so many national debts that Macron and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi came up with the crooked idea of "converting their own debt into EU debt and taking it together", hoping to drag Germany, a country with relatively good debt problems, into the water. Once the ECB raises interest rates, then France, Italy and other countries will have more difficulty in repaying their own debts, which will inevitably cause opposition from many countries, thus further dividing the EU.
Since they are all in the same boat, they must be able to share the hardships?
Play a good abacus (picture: one map network)▼
And Russia's offensive can be said to have pushed this process again, Russia began to fight, so many years have happened countless times the script reloaded, international floating funds were frightened, have accelerated back to the United States, all kinds of commodity prices soared across the board and pushed up inflation, now Europeans can only do a difficult choice - is to raise interest rates to retain funds but criminal intentions, or not to raise interest rates, please The French intention but let the funds flow out.
The strings of the EU economy are already very tight
In case it collapses, it will only be a big disaster to fly separately
In any case, this question is probably more difficult for Europeans than "Who do you save first when I fall into the water?"
That's not all, except that in order to sanction Russia, it is necessary to reduce the import of natural gas and oil from Russia, so that it is necessary to buy higher-priced shale oil and shale gas from the United States (due to the extraction technology and the use of LNG ships in the transportation process, the price of oil and gas in the United States is significantly higher than that of Russia, and the port must build a new LNG regasification unit).
The total number of LNG vessels is insufficient to respond to fluctuations in supply and demand of this magnitude
As a result, there will be a temporary shortage of natural gas worldwide (Photo: Flickr).▼
Europe will also face a high probability of food shortages this year - the important European granary Ukraine is burning, the Tonga volcano will also exert a certain adverse impact on this year's agricultural production, and next year Europeans may have less meat, eggs and milk on the table.
Russia and Ukraine export agricultural products to the world
Wheat accounts for 29%, corn for 19%, sunflower oil for up to 80%
Interestingly, the United States is the world's largest grain exporter, and Russia is the world's second largest grain exporter.
While the United States is now selling oil and gas and selling grain in the future, so that Russia-Europe relations have successfully deteriorated, in the future, Poland and the Baltic countries, out of fear of Russia, are also very likely to increase their efforts to buy US arms and invite more US troops to settle in, not only allowing the military-industrial complex to make money, but also further deepening the control of Europe, I can't tell how many times the United States has won.
*The content of this article is provided by the author and does not represent the position of the Earth Knowledge Bureau
Cover: shutterstock
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