“War is a place where young people who don’t know each other and don’t hate each other kill each other, by the decision of old people who know each other and hate each other, but don’t kill each other.”

• Erich Hartman

“War is a place where young people who don’t know and hate each other kill each other by the choice of old people who know and hate each other but don’t kill each other.” Eric Hartman

Recent developments regarding the conflicts between Russia and Ukraine have further escalated into a large-scale war, however dark and disturbing it seems or may seem, it is very important to go back in time to understand the big game behind this new Eastern European conflict.

The conflicts between Russia and Ukraine are not the latest chapters, the story began in 2014. However, disputes increased in 2021 when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy insisted that Joe Biden would admit Ukraine into NATO. von Zelensky had caused Russia to go on the offensive, resulting in Ukraine being attacked by placing their corps near the borders.

The conflicts began on November 10, 2021, when the United States reported that Russian troops were consolidating on Ukraine’s borders. There was also a report from Ukraine on November 28 claiming that Russia is pushing nearly 92,000 troops to wage an offensive war against Ukraine. On February 24, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a war against Ukraine. Military forces attacked Ukraine in different places and directions, marking the beginning of the war between the two countries, and Russia urged Ukraine to withdraw the request for NATO expansion. war against Ukraine”. As Putin explained in an interview, they believe that Ukraine could retake Crimea (Crimea, a peninsula in Eastern Europe) if it joins NATO.

This drives the Russians to attack Ukraine. Ukraine was also the point of contention between Washington and Moscow. Russia wants to bring weapons operations closer to Russia’s borders and could do so by preventing Ukraine and other Soviet nations from joining NATO. Ukraine could draw closer to Russia if it joins NATO, the Russians believe. If Ukraine joins NATO, it will be able to receive help, military support, weapons and powers in the event of an outside invasion.

On Day 7 of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Russia continued its attacks on crowded Ukrainian cities and a lengthy convoy of Russian tanks and other vehicles advanced slowly toward the capital of Kyiv

It’s a war between two Vladimirs. One, Russia’s indomitable President Vladimir Putin, a strong and impetuous leader with decades of experience in strategy and statecraft, and the other, diminutive Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the inexperienced Jewish-born actor-turned-politician from It’s an unequal struggle between one multimillion-strong Cold War giants and a newborn nation-state with an army less than half the size of its rival.

Putin insists his actions were prompted by security concerns from the North. The Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)’s mischievous maneuvers in Ukraine. But his refrain about “denazification” of Ukraine indicates that this was not just a military battle. The roots of this conflict lie in history and ideology. And this is where Vladimir, a ubiquitous name in Russia, becomes relevant. Vladimir the Great, the 10th-century Grand Duke of the Millennium of Kievan Rus’, is considered the father of the modern Russian nation. But the problem is that Ukrainians think that as King of Kyiv in AD 9801015 he was also the father of the Ukrainian nation. Putin is determined to challenge it, not just academically but physically.

Vladimir the Great could not have been the father of many different nations, he insists. “The story will be kind to me as I intend to write it,” Winston Churchill once joked.

Historical interpretations depend on who presents them and with what force. In a lengthy speech to his compatriots days before his tanks entered Ukrainian territory, Putin spoke at length about Russia’s history and vigorously refuted Ukraine’s argument for a separate national identity. The people of “Rus,” the empire established by Vladimir the Great, are all Russians, he concluded, implying that it was Austro-Hungarians, Germans, Poles and Lithuanians who, on various historical occasions, tried to convince the Ukrainians to do so to bring this to believe they were a town of their own.

But the Ukrainians also have their history. Ukrainians believe that they have been an independent nation with their own language and culture for centuries. Vladimir the Great’s kingdom of Kyiv, now Ukraine’s capital, was an important and powerful empire in the second millennium, they argue, and was never under the full control of the Russian tsars. Only in 1922 did Ukraine become part of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Even then, the Ukrainian communists retained a different identity from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU).

Putin was a confidant of Boris Yeltsin during his years as President of Russia after the collapse of the USSR. Out of gratitude, Yeltsin chose Putin as his successor when he resigned in 1999. Putin is a self-confessed Russian nationalist and maintains that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a “disaster”. He does not mistakenly believe that Western powers were responsible for the turmoil of the great Russian nation, most recently in 1991.

“Taming Russia” had been a project of many European powers over the last millennium. It continued through the Cold War years. The famous “Eisenhower Doctrine” of 1957 had to do with containing the Soviet Union. Like his successors, Stalin was deeply suspicious of the West. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Putin first tried to reconcile with the West by offering to join the European Union. But the doors did not open to him. Putin, who does not take humiliation lightly, decided to teach Europeans a lesson.

In addition to the story, there was also an ideological aspect. The West treated Russians as barbarians and their religion and politics as inferior. In retaliation, Putin made great efforts. undermine western liberal political institutions not only by rejecting them but also by undermining them through digital interventions. Its emphasis on ethnocultural national identity flatly contradicts the modern geopolitical nation-state of the West. For him, Ukraine’s liberal-democratic turn was tantamount to an ideological defeat of his kind of politics. Putin unequivocally emphasized that “Ukraine’s true sovereignty is possible only in partnership with Russia.”

The communists hated religion. At the Tehran Conference in 1943, when Churchill proposed mobilizing the Pope’s support to contain Hitler, Stalin famously asked, “How divided is the Pope? Putin is not anti-religious, but he does suspect that the Catholic powers were trying to weaken the Russian Orthodox identity by turning away from Ukrainians. Incidentally, the Ukrainian president is Jewish, which gives Putin reason to suspect.

It is this complex history and ideology behind the conflict that puts India in a difficult position. He might not have accepted Putin’s basic thesis that Ukrainians are not a separate country. nation without running the risk of denying its position on Tibet, Taiwan and other countries occupied or claimed by China. Nor could he have completely dismissed Russia’s genuine security concerns at the provocative actions of NATO allies.

Public opinion is against Putin’s actions. While India has been opposed in principle to the forced war against Ukraine, the way its attitude towards China is viewed at the United Nations has caused anger in parts of the world. Can this great democratic nation remain neutral for too long?

We must not forget that Russia is our traditional ally. Ukraine has never supported us in history, but we stand in solidarity and ready to do our best.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

The article is a piece based on facts and research done excerpts compilations of prevailing views on the root of the conflict from different perspectives for your eyes and information. Team: NewzQuest