With every day of the war it becomes more and more obvious that Ukraine is not Russia. Moreover, we are beginning to understand what exactly this means at the present stage.. For Ukraine, this war is a liberation war, and in many ways at once. It is not only about the liberation of territories seized in 2014-2022. No less significant is the liberation from the fragments of the imperial past, stereotypes and complexes imposed on us about ourselves and others, names, titles and monuments of Russian and Soviet origin.. Don't expect everything to be perfect all at once.. It is quite possible that the pendulum, without hesitation, will first strongly slip through the state of equilibrium and swing in the other direction.. It's not scary, harmony will be found, the main thing is that now it is ours, and only ours, the way.

For Russia, this war is predatory, imperial, and therefore meaningless.. She is not going to free herself from anything, although modern states are different than in the days of great empires, and this is one of the reasons why Russia cannot win. Another reason is that even in Russia itself they do not understand what could be their victory.. Every second the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity, the manic destruction of infrastructure and the killing of children, the torture and forced evacuation of civilians speak of the total intellectual degradation of both the political leadership of the Russian Federation and the " They replace meaning with cruelty, and lies, hatred and threats to “repeat”, “wipe to dust”, “turn into radioactive ashes” have become the norm..

Looking back over the past 30 years, we can state that after the collapse of the USSR, Russia went from building oligarchic capitalism to an autocratic state, until it finally slipped into a military dictatorship. All this time, " At first they did not manage to take out the corpse of Lenin and remove the graves from Red Square. Moreover, if the veneration of the cemetery in the very center of the state used to be a tradition, now it has acquired the features of sacredness.. Then the stupidity called the “immortal regiment” became almost the hallmark of the regime, subconsciously forming the glorification of death in the name of the state, which has the right to force citizens to die. The authors of the idea, of course, feel much better in life, but the fact that now they teach their fellow citizens and even children about death, not life, speaks of conquering the highest peaks of the Russian bottom. Psychologists and psychiatrists have yet to evaluate this phenomenon..

The fact that the world failed to recognize in time the transformation of the Russian regime from a cult of personality into a cult of death necessitates, at least now, not to miss something important in the processes of global change that this war has generated or hastened.. And this is the very moment when Arthur Bloch's remarkable statement from the book " Many “experts” very “simplely” explain the seemingly stupidest attempt to annex four partially and temporarily occupied regions of Ukraine by including them in the Constitution of the Russian Federation; long silence, and then not fully understood actions of China; the policy of " Why did the heads of states of Central Asia come to Moscow for the shameful “victory parade”? Why the decision was made to open a NATO office in Japan? Simple but wrong answers to these questions prevent you from getting complex but correct ones.. Let's try to understand some of them..

Putin is not smart, but his instinct for self-preservation is extremely developed. Remember how defiantly, with broadcast on TV, he decided on the war, when each of the members of his " It was a process of forming collective responsibility. But the process of including the partially and temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine in the constitution of the Russian Federation had a completely different goal.. Putin has long understood that he lost. His task is to stay in power as long as possible and minimize the risk of a " By voting in the Duma, he created a " Now there are explanations for additional mobilization, and the fall of the ruble, and many other consequences of aggression. Now it will be extremely difficult for anyone who comes after him to change what they have done - it is necessary to organize a political process, get a majority in the Duma, vote again, and all this in the presence of an extremely specific and duped electorate. They cried at Stalin's funeral, they will cry at Putin's funeral. 70 years have passed since the death of a tyrant and a bloodsucker, and they are still afraid of him. To be continued.

On March 27, an extremely interesting vote was held in the US House of Representatives. A bill was unanimously adopted under the unique name " The law requires the State Department to take action against the classification of China as a " First of all, we are talking about IFIs and the WTO. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbing strongly condemned the move.. “The US cannot decide whether China is a developing country. China will firmly defend its status as a developing country, deepening solidarity and cooperation with other developing countries, protecting their legitimate rights and interests.. GDP per capita in China in 2021 was $12,741. , which is one fifth of the level of developed countries and one sixth of the United States. China ranks 68th in the world in terms of gross national income and 79th in the Human Development Index, which is in line with other developing countries.”.

A few unexpected statements, isn't it Doesn't China want to take a place on the Olympus of developed countries China in terms of GDP is the second economy in the world with a GDP of $18.3 trillion. in 2022? China has 969 billionaires (versus 691 in the US), defense spending exceeds $230 billion. , China has the largest military fleet in the world and 400 nuclear warheads. China provided $498 billion to developing countries from 2008 to 2021. loans. China has filed more patents than the US since 2011, and double that in 2021. However, the status of a developing country, like that of Bolivia or Zambia, gives the PRC advantages in trade and access to soft loans, the ability to receive assistance itself (Japan has provided assistance to the PRC for almost 40 years and stopped doing this only last year). Formally, China is indeed still in the “developing” category, but the reason for this is in the population, and only. In terms of global influence, China is strong today and does not hesitate to demonstrate it.. In fact, the status of a developing country is a political identification in foreign policy (in domestic, of course, China is the world leader in everything), allowing Beijing to claim leadership among a significant number of developing states. Among other things, this makes it possible to restrain the similar ambitions of India and Turkey..

The struggle for the “global South” is one of those global trends that have accelerated significantly due to Russia’s war against Ukraine and attempts to transform the liberal world order established after World War II.. China entered the game as soon as the internal problems of Xi Jinping's consolidation of power were successfully resolved, and Russia finally bogged down under Bakhmut. But if the mediating peacekeeping mission of Beijing is just unfolding, then the struggle for Central Asia is already in full swing. China has long and closely engaged in this region, which is important for Beijing's ambitions.. To understand the essence of what is happening, it is enough to read the text of the Joint Statement of the Heads of State of Central Asia and China on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations, adopted a month before the start of Russia's aggression. And so, at the end of April last year, the head of the Japanese Foreign Ministry was going there, and in March of this, Anthony Blinken, which did not go unnoticed. The visit of the heads of Central Asian states to Moscow for a military parade was a worthy response from the United States - collective Putin seeks to expand his international arena beyond the borders of North Korea, Syria, Iran and Belarus. China just won, and even almost nothing had to be done.

However, the move of the knight in Central Asia still pales before the advancement of the queen - the opening of the NATO office in Tokyo. In fact, Japan's relations with NATO have almost twenty years of history, and soon as ten years later, a representative office of the Land of the Rising Sun has been operating in Brussels.. However, it is no longer a secret to anyone that the war in Ukraine has global consequences, and the security of the Transatlantic space is closely connected with the Indo-Pacific region, taking into account the interests of the United States, Britain, France, Germany and other countries of East and Southeast Asia.. Almost half of the EU's foreign trade passes through the South China Sea, and navigation safety issues in this part of the planet are extremely important. Of course, Wang Wenbing immediately protested to both NATO and Japan, arguing that there was no need for a NATO presence in Asia.. It is extremely curious at the same time, what was the need to double the nuclear potential of China over the past two years, and North Korea - to conduct 89 tests of various types of missiles only in 2022? It is quite logical that Japan, as the main US ally in the region, which has global interests integrated with the democratic community, coordinates its security policy, military standards and information exchange with NATO countries.

However, it cannot be ruled out that in the future a defense alliance similar to the current one, focused on eliminating threats in Europe, will also emerge in Southeast Asia.. Jake Sullivan and Wang Yi's eight-hour meeting in Vienna last week leaves hope that dialogue between the developed and developing worlds, frozen after the balloon incident, will be restored. In the meantime, diplomats are polishing the wording of the final documents of the upcoming G-7 summit in Hiroshima. On Ukraine, most likely, there will be a separate statement, and Russia will not like it.