WAR IN UKRAINE. A NEW IRON CURTAIN?

February 24, 2022 will go down in history as the black day when the Russian Federation launched an invasion of Ukraine. The imminence of war had been announced weeks earlier by US intelligence services. The dissension between the Russian Federation and Ukraine has taken on a particular magnitude with the annexation of Crimea in 2014, a dark moment for diplomacy and international law. Invasion of Ukraine remains unjustified, horrible and condemnable. Diplomacy has lost its power these days. It remains to be hoped that an international resuscitation will send diplomatic channels back to work and the war will end. Until then we will look with horror at the thousands of deaths, injuries and infrastructure destruction that the war will continue to produce. What exactly will happen next is difficult to predict due to the multitude of possible and probable scenarios. The Russian Federation has become a pariah state. The international community reacted as never before and, in unison, condemned the hostile actions and imposed severe economic sanctions on the invading state. So far, more than two million people are believed to have fled Ukraine to European countries. Millions more are likely to leave in the coming weeks unless a ceasefire is reached. Ukraine's small towns have disappeared from the map of the state, having been flattened by invaders' bombs. Others will disappear and thousands of lives will have been lost because of misguided ambitions. This terrible war has united the countries of the world as no one could have, but the people will be divided. Energy prices in European countries dependent on Russian gas will increase significantly and the final beneficiary, the common man, will feel additional economic pressures. And in a game of dominoes, many products and services will become more expensive. When the economic pressures on ordinary people become unbearable, what will happen? Will the countries become energy independent and prices will be restored to their original values or will we see a chain of anti-government protests in some countries with weaker economies, where the population will not be able to bear the new costs? In 1990, Francis Fukuyama called for an end of history, with the end of the Cold War and the restoration of world order, but will we know the end of the end of history in the near future? Will democracy be able to withstand the new challenges or will we see a potential deconsolidation of democracy, as is happening today in Hungary and, to some extent, in Poland? By the time the war is over, a new Iron Curtain will surely have been drawn across Europe, only this time possibly stretching from Norway, from the Barents Sea, to Turkey, to the Mediterranean Sea, behind it remaining isolated, at least until now, the states of Belarus and the Russian Federation. Will we return to a new period of arming states, just like during the Cold War? A new phase of tensions between the United States and the Russian Federation? Or will everything go back to normal? We stand with the Ukrainian people who are in a difficult time. We stand with the families of war victims and pray for them. We stand by the people who have fled the war and will do whatever we can to help them. We stand by Ukraine. Слава Украине!

The body of this article is intentionally hidden on the public page. Please use the PDF reader or the PDF download for the complete text.