Beginnings of the Russo-Ukrainian War

Abstract

The outbreak of the 2022 Russo-Ukrainian war and selected aspects of Western sanctions against Russia are presented—including the problematic enforcement of sanctions against the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, which is located between Lithuania and Poland: with one million Russian inhabitants. The response to Russia’s latest act of aggression, following the 2014 occupation of Crimea and involvement in the conflict in the Donbas Region—is unprecedented. Here, the imposition of sanctions by the EU and Lithuania respectively in June 2022 created a new escalation point, which may drag NATO and the EU into a direct military confrontation with Russia against their own wishes, as a result of inadequate EU diplomacy. Russia will hardly simply accept the partial blockade of rail transit via Lithuania. One of the peculiarities of Western analyses of Russia by Western governments seems to be that Michel Eltchaninoff’s book Inside the Mind of Vladimir Putin (originally published in French in 2015, in German in 2016, in English in 2018) seems to have gone largely unnoticed; the author explains well the ideological reorientation of President Putin over the years, especially under the influence of certain Russian philosophers, including Ivan Ilyin, who seems to have significantly influenced Putin’s view of Ukraine in particular. President Putin has referred to the high esteem with which he regards Ilyin in many of his speeches and in other ways, but hardly anyone in the West has been interested in the implications. Some important starting points on the war and the West’s confrontation with Russia are presented and reflected upon; as well as figures on the contraction of real income in Russia and the high inflation figures to be expected there and elsewhere. Looking at the West, limited points of comparison to the energy crisis of the 1970s emerge. Western sanctions against Russia are outlined.