The Russian war in Ukraine is almost one year old, and there are no signs of its ending soon, with Moscow’s invasion of its neighbour having apparently failed to live up to the hopes and expectations of Russia and its older and newer allies around the world.
Despite the destruction of the invasion, for ten successive months Russia has failed to force surrender on Ukraine. The war has displaced some eight million people in Ukraine, mostly outside the borders of this vast country, but Russia is far from securing either a military or a political victory.
The opposite might be the case, given the many retreats that the Russian army has been forced into.
However, while Russia has been coming face-to-face with the unexpected Ukrainian military performance and resilience, Europe as a whole has also been experiencing a cold winter marked by shortages of energy and austerity measures.
“The Europeans are becoming frustrated. It is not that they don’t wish to see Russia pull out of Ukraine and to have things back to where they were on prior to the start of this war, but they do feel that they are paying a very heavy price for this war that weakens Russia in favour of the US and at the price of Europe,” an Egyptian diplomat said.
European officials, including some heads of government, have been openly saying that the time has come for the war to move into its final chapter. Off record, European diplomats in Cairo say that Europe is going to face an “exceptional winter with limited heating capacities,” while the US is getting off almost harm free.
However, they add that the European countries might share the wish of the US to contain Moscow’s expansionism, and not just in its immediate geographical sphere but also in other parts of the world. In Africa, for example, Russia has been trying to replace the influence of the former colonial powers. A case in point is the Sahel and Sahara, where Russia, through its paramilitary group Wagner, has been aiming to replace France.
“Russia has not just put its feet down in the Sahel and Sahara through Wagner, but has also been orchestrating coups to remove leaders loyal to France and introduce other leaders,” commented one African diplomat.
“France has been unable to push back, and it does want to see Russia being contained. At the same time, it does not seem that France is in agreement with the political and economic price that Europe is being forced to pay to push Russia back on the continent,” he added.
He said that France does not want to see an open-ended military conflict on European soil with Russia.
France has been at the forefront of the European countries supporting Ukraine. Shortly before Christmas, French President Emmanuel Macron hosted a conference to support Ukraine and to provide for its urgent needs. The conference was convened in Paris with UN participation and that of close to 50 states. It came after a phone call between Macron and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to discuss the pressing needs of Ukraine.
Macron spoke firmly at the conference about the need to reach out to Ukraine, especially to its civilians, and of the need to work out a peace plan. Earlier, he had mentioned the need to consider the “guarantees” that both Russia and Ukraine would need before they can move towards a peace deal.
According to diplomats in Cairo, this is where France and some other leading European countries, including Germany, stand today: they do not want to see Ukraine succumb to Russia, but they also do not want the war to be open ended and at the price of Europe’s economy.
At the last EU summit in Brussels on 15 December, France and Germany hesitated to accommodate a new US scheme to expand the pressure put on Moscow since the first weeks of the war. This was not the same position as other EU members located closer to the Russian border who have less than half-a-century old memories of Moscow’s control.
Poland and some Baltic states wished to impose the new sanctions proposed by the US on Russia, as they fear that Moscow will gain leeway in its attempts to secure funds to finance its war that they fear might not end in Ukraine. They are concerned that Russian President Vladimir Putin is trying to revive the power of the former USSR in Europe.
Diplomats in Cairo say that the EU camp cautioning against the embrace of a new tranche of sanctions against Russia is aware of and not in disagreement with the fears of those EU partners who fall within the old domain of Russian influence.
However, they add, this camp is also mindful of Europe being drained to serve the US policy to contain Russia, and for that matter China, even if it comes at the cost of European well-being and prosperity.
U
S PLANS: While the war in Ukraine has been unfolding, the US has been taking military measures against China, the up-and-coming economic power that has stood mostly on the side of Russia, both on the economic and the military fronts, during the war in Ukraine.
The US has been putting political pressure on China, especially vis-à-vis Taiwan. It has also been imposing sanctions on Chinese companies and trying to create a footprint in the geographic zones that China has been trying to control.
One example of this, commentators say, was the recent US-Africa Summit meeting that US President Joe Biden hosted in Washington prior to the holiday season, promising economic and security cooperation with the countries of a continent that for over two decades has opened up almost unconditionally to China.
Diplomats say that Africa is an example of where the US competition with Russia and China can be monitored. The visits that US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken made to the continent this year were linked to similar visits made by his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov.
Diplomats also refer to the failure of the US to prompt the African countries to vote in favour of a UN General Assembly Resolution adopted in November this year demanding that Moscow compensate Kyiv for damage caused in the Russian invasion. The resolution was adopted with 94 in favour, 14 against, and 74 abstaining. Ethiopia, the US favourite in East Africa, was among those who voted against the resolution.
They add that the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is also a conspicuous zone for a diplomatic bras de fer between the US and both Russia and China.
The US and its European allies have exercised what some European diplomats have qualified as “heavy lifting” to make sure that all the Arab countries voted in favour of a UN General Assembly Resolution on the territorial integrity of and humanitarian aid for Ukraine in March this year, less than a month after the UAE, the non-permanent Arab member of the UN Security Council, abstained in the vote on a Security Council Resolution that condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“What they said then is that they knew Russia was going to veto the resolution anyway, and that they wanted to stay out of the conflict. But it was also very clear that the Arab countries, particularly those who are now in the leadership in the Gulf, are trying to use the current diplomatic conflict between the US and Russia in their favour,” said the same European diplomat.
He added that unlike the US and the rest of the West, Russia, like China, is willing to fully engage in regime-to-regime cooperation without asking questions about human rights, minorities, and good governance. The Arab countries avoid bringing up such issues with Russia and China, even when it comes to Muslim minorities complaining of violations by Peking or Moscow.
According to this and other European and Western diplomats, there was a clear message in Saudi Arabia’s deciding to unroll the red carpet for visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping in December this year and to give him similar diplomatic treatment to that accorded to US President Joe Biden during his visit in July.
Saudi Arabia has been opening up to China, with big business deals in waiting. The UAE has also been opening up to Russia, with the country being a favoured hub for the Russian elite and their wealth.
These Arab and African countries have been reassured by the growing cooperation between China and Russia, especially on the military and economic fronts. It is particularly reassuring for some leading Arab capitals, political sources say, to see this growing coordination, launched through a joint partnership announced in February this year a little over a week before Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine.
“Russia and China are at times friends and at times foes, but for sure they are friends when it comes to serving the purpose of creating a balance with the political supremacy of the US in international politics,” commented an Arab Gulf politician.
This, he said, is something that his and the other Arab Gulf countries support, as long as it does not harm their strategic alliance with the US.
According to the Egyptian diplomat, Egypt, like other African and Arab countries, has had issues with the pressure the US is putting on it in matters of governance. But this has not been the only problem. The war in Ukraine, he said, has had a devastating economic cost for Egypt, due to hikes in food prices that have stretched the already burdened budgets of countries like Egypt.
He said that the war had come at a very big cost to the economies of many developing countries, and it would come to an end if the US moves towards negotiating a deal with Russia. “We were hoping that it would not last for much longer than a year, but we are still looking for signs of an end, and we cannot really find them despite some gestures,” he said.
In December, US and Russia executed a swap that allowed Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout and US basketball star Brittney Griner to go home. However, according to remarks made at the time by Kremlin Spokesman Dimitry Peskov, the deal did not change US-Russian relations, which remain “in a sorry state”.
Senior US officials met with their Chinese counterparts in Beijing in December to discuss improving relations between the two countries. A statement from the Chinese Foreign Ministry called for better communication between China and the US to put bilateral relations back on track.
However, as the same Egyptian diplomat said, it is not clear whether these meetings will open the door to an eventual détente, or if they are strictly a lull in a longer-term military and economic battle to the disadvantage of many around the world, especially in the developing countries.