Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN's Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by Global Briefing editor Chris Good Seeing this newsletter as a forward? Subscribe here. March 31, 2022 |
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The war in Ukraine has only gotten foggier in recent days: A top Russian general has said the "first stage" of Russia's campaign is over and that Moscow will now seek "liberation of (the) Donbas" region of eastern Ukraine—a significant downgrade of objectives. And yet, heavy fighting persists near Kyiv, and the US and NATO have voiced skepticism of Russia's purported gearshift.
Amid all this, journalists and commentators see a stalemate. Some envision a protracted one, while others think Russian President Vladimir Putin will be forced to back away from his initial aims.
Its military offensive having "ground to a halt," Russia cannot achieve its most expansive goals of demilitarizing Ukraine and toppling its leadership, Robert Kelly writes at 1945, suggesting Putin will instead attempt to solidify his previous "grabs" of Ukrainian land.
Putin "may settle for less than he set out to achieve," Samir Puri posits in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. If Putin does change course, Puri writes, "there are two logical outcomes of Russia's campaign: Either Russia will 'butcher and bolt' by withdrawing on terms at least partly favorable to some Russian objectives, or its forces will remain and bisect a greater portion of Ukraine." |
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News Stops at Ukraine's Eastern Border |
Given the Kremlin's tight grip on news, Russians and Ukrainians are experiencing vastly different versions of this war, The New York Times' Kara Swisher hears in the most recent episode of her "Sway" podcast.
"It's all really, really surreal conversations," Ukrainian journalist Olga Tokariuk tells Swisher of Ukrainians' contact with friends and relatives in Russia who—especially in the first weeks of conflict—denied the war was happening or blamed Ukrainian troops, even when presented with images and video of destruction.
"Independent journalism gets there," Tikhon Dzyadko of the now-blocked TV Rain says of his native Russia. "But it's obvious that if you compare what was happening before the beginning of the war and what is happening now … the level of access to the independent media is different. … I think that a lot of people, they are just too lazy to download a VPN (a software tool for circumventing location-based Internet controls) and to use it. So the number of those who get access to the independent media has gotten smaller. … A lot of people are brainwashed there, of course." |
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Ending the war is in everyone's interest, Stephen M. Walt writes for Foreign Policy—but the hard part will be crafting a settlement both Ukraine and Russia can live with.
The specifics will be important. For instance, as George Friedman writes for Geopolitical Futures, Ukraine appears ready to discuss its "neutrality" between Russia and the West, but neutrality can take different forms.
"Switzerland claimed neutrality during World War II, which meant that Germany and the Allies both took advantage of its banking system and operated espionage organizations there," Friedman writes. "That's one kind of neutrality. Another kind is Sweden's. It is not in NATO and has limited acquisition of Western military equipment, but no one doubts where it stands. … Ukraine, in accepting neutrality, must adopt Swedish neutrality—formal neutrality covering its real intent. And that makes the matter difficult." |
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The Pending Rise of 'Electrostates' |
The war in Ukraine is both accelerating and reminding observers of an epochal shift that's already happening, The Economist wrote in a recent cover story: the world's move away from fossil fuels. Oil and gas supplies have been disrupted, but the larger exigency of saving the planet will yield big winners and losers in the coming decades, as the magazine sees it.
"The world map will be peppered with distressed ex-petrostates" and ascendant "electrostates," the magazine predicted, the latter being those countries rich in metals needed to build wind turbines, batteries, and the full complement of green-energy tech and infrastructure.
"Low-cost" oil producers like Saudi Arabia will see their balance sheets stay flat, the magazine wrote elsewhere, while the US, Brazil, and Canada will be able to make up for fossil-fuel losses with mineral production. "Higher-cost petrostates" like Algeria and Nigeria will "lose the most," The Economist predicted.
The winners, meanwhile, will be countries rich in copper, lithium, cobalt, aluminum, and the like—for instance Chile, China, Peru, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. "(T)he emerging electrostates face their own battle with the resource curse," the magazine writes, referencing the often-inverse relationship between natural wealth and good governance in the developing world, as influxes of revenue and mining contracts can pose their own challenges. | | |
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