The Russian invasion of Ukraine claimed hundreds of lives on the battlefields and in shelled Ukrainian cities. But internationally, it also affects everything from food security in Cairo to gas prices in California. It has highlighted major geopolitical shifts and changed the way some of the world’s best-known institutions operate.
Here’s how the world has changed in the 10 days since war returned to Europe.
Changing world order
The invasion of Ukraine did not usher in a new era of big power politics. It was a frantic exclamation mark, confirming one of the most significant changes in the geopolitical world order since 9/11.
In the following years, global terrorism attracted much attention from Western leaders. Al-Qaeda and ISIS were enemies that needed to be confronted. The Kremlin was no longer viewed as the same threat as before, so much so that in 2012, President Barack Obama ridiculed then-presidential candidate Mitt Romney by calling Russia the number one geopolitical enemy of the United States. .
By then, Putin had already shown that he was seeking to destroy the post-Cold War order.
The former KGB intelligence officer took office in 2000, promising to restore Russia’s former glory, sometimes through military force. As prime minister in 1999, he launched an offensive in Chechnya against separatist fighters. In 2008, the Kremlin invaded Georgia and recognized the two self-proclaimed republics in a country that was moving closer to Europe at the time.
More recently, Putin’s support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad — ostensibly as an ally in the war on terrorism — has not earned him the favor of Western democracies, not least because of credible reports of the Syrian dictator’s decision to attack his own people with chemical weapons. . Putin’s decision to annex Crimea in 2014 and support separatists in eastern Ukraine led to sanctions and was strongly condemned. The same can be said about Russia’s alleged attempts to kill its enemies on foreign soil.
But Putin remained an important player and partner, albeit a dubious one, for leaders from Washington to Warsaw into the 2010s. Russia has been an important factor in the fight against ISIS; the main energy supplier in Europe; and helped negotiate important diplomatic agreements such as the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
Last week’s invasion could have put an end to that. After a quarter century of the Western world’s relationship with Putin, he may have finally gone beyond the bounds of the possible and become a pariah.
In response, the Western world has hit Russia with unprecedented sanctions that have crippled its financial institutions, sent its economy and the ruble into a tailspin, and even targeted Putin personally and some of his inner circle.
“Putin is now more isolated from the world than ever,” US President Joe Biden said Tuesday in his State of the Union address.
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