Russia’s Ukrainian adventure
Now that worldwide attention has been deflected from COVID to war (very welcome to certain elite sections of society), the big question is what will this likely accomplish?
In the space of a month it seems that COVID is a distant memory and alongside it the errors and oppressions of governments worldwide vanish into the mists of time. This, of course, is highly convenient that there was less than a few weeks in most places for any kind of post mortem to begin. While COVID galvanises the authoritarian left, war galvanises the authoritarian right and works with the opposite end of the political spectrum.
The likely outcome. It looks like the Russian economy will collapse (leaving a considerable portion of reserves in banks vulnerable to sanction didn’t help) and with VISA and MasterCard cutting off payment services yesterday, the march to the digital rouble will be inexorable. Authoritarian laws recently passed in Russia concerning movement and property are particularly concerning in this context. Ukraine will struggle to recover from the mess created and need international help, furthering the profile and reach of the international supergovernmental bodies (usual suspects).
The media seem intent on being even less trustworthy than the last 2 years, showing old photographs and videos taken out of context repeatedly. The art of the embedded war correspondent seems to be long gone and accurate reports from conflict zones are nowhere to be seen.
Laws restricting rights and freedoms seem to being passed at an ever increasing rate in the “democratic west” with the war in Ukraine providing both a convenient distraction and common ground to unconvincingly plaster over some of the divisions generated in the last 2 years.
The danger. Russian cyberwarfare capability has been strangely absent from the conflict so far and western hackers seem to have been caught up in a now self sustaining snowball effect of self-encouragement to attack targets of all descriptions in Russia from the space agency to the Conti ransomware group and electric charging stations. If this trend continues, it is likely to be used as an excuse for retribution on a large scale. The self-sabotaging energy and food policies of the west is likely to lead to completely predictable very high (or hyper) inflation, which will further the creep of the policies (UBI, big government) of the last two years.
What should happen if the governments in the west wanted to resolve the conflict? Diplomatic efforts, bringing local energy extraction policies to the fore, concentrating on food production before the fertiliser production issue becomes a food supply crunch. Championing freedom at home as well as in Ukraine and Russian should be important. The direction of travel is and will be the opposite I fear on all fronts.