In-depth Analysis of the Situation in Russia and
Ukraine
1. The Swing of America
Since the late Obama administration, the National strategy of the United States has evolved
into the strategy of great power competition. There are two countries targeted, one is China, the
other is Russia. According to the definition of America's emerging nation strategy, China is the
main competitor and Russia is an important competitor.The implementation is wobbly.
Under The Trump administration, Russia has been largely sidelined and the US has focused
most of its resources on China. At that time, Russia was quite relaxed. When a reporter asked
Putin what he thought about the trade war between China and the United States, Putin seemed
to "sit on a mountain and watch the tiger fight".But after Biden took office, Russia ran into
trouble.
Biden's strategy is to get Allies together to fight China, to mobilize Allies to strengthen their
grip on the EU, to revamp NATO. Making Russia a target and playing up the Russian threat is a
lever to reorient NATO.
So, in 2021, the US screwed up in Ukraine, and the US Secretary of Defense publicly pledged
support for Ukraine's membership of NATO, which greatly rattled Russia's nerves. And this time
the war between Russia and Ukraine is because America wants to use checks and balances to
bypass Russia and Ukraine, even China and the United States to deal with the main target.
While Russia is well aware that America's strategic focus is shifting to Asia and is unlikely to
do much in Europe, it has deeper concerns.
If the US wants to maintain global hegemony, it cannot give up its control over the EU.
Without Europe's support, the dollar hegemony will collapse (more than 70% of the EU's foreign
trade is settled in US dollars, and if the EU dedollarizes, plus Russia, Russia and Iran, the dollar
hegemony will no longer exist). Technological hegemony will also collapse - for example, the
United States will use its high-tech advantage to trap China. If Europe does not cooperate, the
United States will effectively cede the Chinese market to Europe.
If the United States wants to control Europe, Russia will be a target to be hit from time to
time -- in the form of NATO expansion, which Russia cannot stand.
In addition, since 2014, the United States and Europe have imposed a series of sanctions on
Russia, which have lasted for so many years, making Russia very uncomfortable. For example, It is
very difficult for Russia to obtain international financing, capital and technology are difficult to
access.
In Crimea, for example, the economy plummeted and prices rose 180% due to sanctions
imposed by western countries. Russia spent billions of dollars on Crimea, which was also a heavy
burden.
2. Worries for Putin
Putin is 70 years old and has been in power for 22 years. "Give me 20 years and give you a
strong Russia" has become a hollow phrase. Russia's domestic political situation has also been
unstable in recent years, with a near-revolution in 2021.
There is also the question of historical reckoning from Mr Putin's point of view.
What will history and the Russian nation think of Putin if he does nothing after 20 years in
power and fails to address Russia's national security (NATO's eastward expansion)? What about
Vladimir Putin?
So Putin also has a strong incentive to solve Russia's national security problems once and for
all during his time in power.
Therefore, for Russia, it is to seize the opportunity that the United States intends to shift
strategic resources from Europe, to make something to entangle the United States, force the
United States to face up to Russia's interests and concerns (including NATO eastward expansion,
western sanctions, etc.), and force the United States to make a compromise.
Russia's economy is very weak, the strongest is its military strength, so Russia can only use
its military strength to help it play an important role in the diplomatic field, to make some big
noise.
3. Ukraine's irritations
President Zelensky's lack of political experience and misjudgment of the situation after he
took office greatly upset Russian nerves on several occasions.
conflict point
1.Cremia
In 2014, Russia forcibly retook Crimea and annexed it directly to Russia. It's a tough
thing to do, but in a world where your fist is not as strong as your opponent's, you have to
suck it up.
The previous Ukrainian government was wise. Seeing that western countries could not
directly send troops to help Ukraine retake Crimea, it tried to play down the Crimea issue and
mainly dealt with the issue of Eastern Ukraine with Russia. It signed the Minsk Agreement,
granting a high degree of autonomy to two regions in eastern Ukraine.
When Zelensky took office, he wanted to solve the Crimea issue together with the
Eastern Ukraine issue. Zelensky claimed that the conflict with Russia has two parts, one is
Crimea, the other is Eastern Ukraine issue, and both issues should be solved.
Reason is true, but what is the use of reason when you have nothing to back it up?
For Russia, the eastern Ukraine issue is a bargaining chip to contain Ukraine, since it is a
bargaining chip is negotiable. But Crimea has been eaten and become part of The Russian
body, so Crimea is off the table. It is the most sensitive red line for Russia.
Zelensky committed a cardinal sin by trying to get at the negotiating table what he had
lost on the battlefield.
Another real problem in Crimea is the supply of fresh water.
Ukraine closed the upper floodgates of the Northern Crimean Canal after Crimea voted to
secede from Russia in 2014. In 2017, A concrete dam was built on the Crimean peninsula's
border with Ukraine. Cut off the supply of fresh water to Crimea completely.
Since 2020, the precipitation in Crimea has decreased and the fresh water storage is in
serious shortage. Therefore, the residents of Crimea have even started to supply the fresh
water quota. Residents are complaining, which makes it very difficult for Russia to consolidate
Crimea.
Russia was prepared to press Ukraine to resume fresh water supplies to Crimea in the
east, but Zelensky's hardline intransigence has given Russia even more incentive to use force.
As soon as the war broke out in Ukraine, Russian troops blew up the gates of the
Northern Crimean Canal.
2.Minsk Agreement
The Minsk agreement was signed by the previous Ukrainian government. The main
content was a ceasefire in eastern Ukraine and a high degree of autonomy was granted to
donetsk and Luhansk.
To be honest, the deal was a bit humiliating for Ukraine, but there was a price to be paid
for the repeated provocations of lesser powers, and the Minsk agreement was that price.
The previous Ukrainian government understood that the West could not be trusted, faced
reality and finally signed the Minsk agreements.
But zelensky came to power and tried to overturn the agreement. On the one hand, he
loudly declared that the local forces in the two states were rebels and would mobilize
Ukrainian government forces to suppress them. On the other hand, it has been reluctant to
amend the constitution to grant autonomy to the two oblasts in accordance with the Minsk
Agreements.
Mr Zelensky's attempts to overturn the Minsk agreement infuriated Russia.
3.Ukraine joins NATO
After taking office, Zelensky aggressively pushed for Ukraine to join NATO, an appeal
that chimed with America's desire to revamp the alliance.
First, the U.S. Defense Secretary spoke out in favor of Ukraine joining NATO, then in
2021, Ukraine was called a NATO capability enhancement partner, and the Ukrainian military
has even begun exercises with NATO forces.
Ukraine's membership in NATO is absolutely unacceptable to Russia. In Russia's view,
Ukraine could achieve its goal of joining NATO within a year or two if it did not act (a guess
eventually confirmed by officials in Brussels).
The tragedy of Ukraine is that it elected an ordinary president with no political
experience, only for Zelensky to mess up and plunge the country into the abyss.
4.The United States and Russia game
As a result of the combination of these factors, In December 2021, Russia began to
mobilize troops on the eastern border of Ukraine, backed by military pressure, Russia put a
price tag on the United States and NATO
One is a written (legally binding) commitment not to expand eastward and that Ukraine
can never join.
Second, NATO would withdraw all troops and equipment from the territories of countries
that joined the alliance after 1997.
It also held three rounds of negotiations with NATO on January 10, 12 and 13, 2022.
At first, the United States judged Russia to be blackmailing, using threats of war to
blackmail the United States into compromise with NATO. So in a Jan. 2, 2022, call with
Zelensky, Biden promised that the United States and its Allies would take "decisive" action if
Russia sent troops into Ukraine. And at the negotiating table, The United States and NATO
played hardball, rejecting all Russian offers.
But as time went on, America began to judge that Russia was not blackmailing after all,
and that this time it was going to do it for real. There are two reasons:
One is that Russia is massing more and more troops on Ukraine's eastern border,
probably a hundred synthetic battalions, more than a hundred thousand troops.
In the Russian winter, more than one hundred thousand troops were mobilized and
assembled, which cost a lot. In addition, Russia's three major fleets also began to combine
training, and even mobilized landing ships from the Far East, which required a distance of
more than twenty thousand kilometers. There is no excuse for Russia to put so much effort
into not doing something.
Another was Putin's trip to China in January, where he quickly produced a sino-Russian
joint Statement.
The statement made the United States nervous because it was clear that Russia had made
significant concessions and had satisfied almost all of China's demands.
From America's point of view, why did Russia suddenly make big concessions to China?
What does Russia want?
Based on these two factors, the United States judged that Russia was likely to use force.
Then, the American response is three.
One is to play up the story of a Russian invasion.
Blinken, Biden personally, repeatedly hyped the news of Russia's imminent invasion,
even publicly made specific timetable for many times, even if the face repeatedly insisted.
One is to distance oneself from positions.
Mr. Biden reversed course after late January and announced that he would not send
troops to Ukraine, an early distancing.
One is sanctions deterrence.
The United States has repeatedly threatened to impose the harshest economic sanctions
on Russia if it invades Ukraine, and even threatened to kick Russia out of the SWIFT system.
Why is the US doing this?Because the United States is also afraid of war.
The US did not engage in a war with Russia, but to strengthen NATO and increase its
power over Europe.
But if war breaks out in Ukraine, the U.S. strategic pivot to Asia will be disrupted and the
U.S. will have to devote more strategic resources toward Europe.
In addition, if Ukraine is badly beaten by Russia, it will also hurt the prestige of the
United States, after all, in the past, the United States patted its chest to support Ukraine's
membership of NATO, which was equivalent to a security guarantee for Ukraine. Mr Biden
also promised "decisive action" on January 2nd, saying that if Russia were to kick Ukraine's
ass while America stood by, it would chill many of its client states.
So America is trying desperately to distance itself (not to send troops into Ukraine),
threatening to impose the harshest sanctions to deter Russia and, finally, embarrassing the
former by playing up an imminent invasion of Ukraine.
The above is the preliminary game process of the Ukraine war, the following things as
we all know, Russia directly chose war .
If Russia can't get what it wants at the negotiating table, it will get it back by force on the
battlefield. To tell you the truth, at that time, from Russia's point of view, there was really no
other option but war.
Did you think about the consequences of pushing a great power to the brink when NATO
expanded eastward five times to Russia's doorstep?
Reunification across the strait
Does the War in Ukraine have any relation to our country's solution to the reunification
of the two sides? It's very relevant! It could even be argued that the war in Ukraine will help
us speed up the process of reunification.
To solve the Taiwan issue, the voice of military recovery is high in China, but for the
decision makers, there are two unavoidable problems in making a decision - how much will
the war cost? Is that a price we can afford?
In the past, the costs of war have been difficult to assess, mainly because of three
uncertainties.
1. Will the U.S. enter the war?
2. If the United States stays out of the war and collaborates with western countries to
impose sanctions on us, how severe will such sanctions be and how much will we pay？
3. Will the process of Taiwan liberation lead to a brutal urban security war?
In the past, the above three problems could not get relatively certain results from any
computer, there was no reliable reference template, because the cost was highly uncertain, so
the decision was very difficult.
The war in Ukraine now provides a perfect model.
1. Will the U.S. enter the war?
In Ukraine, it is very convenient for NATO to send troops. On the one hand, it can join
forces with European Allies to send troops, and there is no problem in logistics, supply,
military expenditure and so on. With the strength of THE US military, it will not be a problem
to defeat Russia in conventional war by joining forces with European Allies.
But America would rather lose its credibility than send troops to war, or, to put it bluntly,
fear a direct war with a nuclear power, a hangover that is beginning to show, despite its
desperate efforts to distance itself before the war.
Russia's direct assault on Ukraine not only frightens its neighbours, but also shows them
that America cannot be relied on.
Poland, for example, moved decisively to withdraw sanctions against Russia; Instead of
condemning Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Turkey says it understands Russia's position.
Both countries used to be regional powers and used to bully in their respective regions.
Now the regional powers are cowed by the real powers.
Similarly, if a war breaks out across the Taiwan Strait, the United States is even less likely
to send troops to engage in a direct war with another nuclear power when the PEOPLE's
Liberation Army has overwhelming superiority in the Taiwan Strait.
The point is that we must mobilize heavy forces and show our hand at all costs, just as
Russia did. Such a gesture would be enough to deter countries including the United States,
Japan and Australia from acting rashly.
2. If the United States stays out of the war and collaborates with western countries to
impose sanctions on us, how severe will such sanctions be and how much will we pay?
In the run-up to the war in Ukraine, the United States and Europe vowed to impose the
toughest sanctions on Russia. What is the reality?
The above illustrates that even sanctions by western countries have a basic premise -sanctions should not harm their own interests, at least not deeply harm their own interests.
With this reference model, even if a war breaks out across the Taiwan Strait in the future,
the United States and western countries will have a rough idea of the extent to which they will
impose sanctions on China, at least the cost is basically affordable.
At present, the most severe sanctions against Russia by the United States and Europe is
to freeze all Russian assets, the reason is actually very simple, Russia has a lot of assets in the
United States and Europe, and its own assets in Russia is very small.
In the future, if a war breaks out across the Taiwan Strait, I think the US and Europe may
not dare to freeze China's assets, because China's reciprocal retaliation will cost them more.
China's assets in the United States are roughly several hundred billion dollars, while the
United States' assets in China are several trillion dollars. The United States cannot afford to
lose by freezing each other's assets.
The European Union is probably unlikely to go that far with China, because the EU has
so much at stake there.
Europe and the United States are afraid to impose sanctions on Russia. How severe can
they impose sanctions on China, whose economy is 10 times larger than Russia's?
3. Will the process of Taiwan liberation lead to a brutal urban security war?
This is an important question.
If a brutal urban security battle breaks out, it will mean a large number of civilian
casualties, not only facing great international pressure, but also difficult to deal with in the
future.
At present, there is a theoretical view that areas with a low birthrate will not have
large-scale resistance, and there will not be a strong will to resist.
The logic of this argument is that people in regions with low combined birth rates tend to
be hedonistic and do not want to have children to affect their quality of life. Even if war breaks
out, civilians are more likely to flee as refugees, at least with clean food and water, and to
become a resistance army, endure unimaginably harsh conditions, starve, bathe for a month,
and face ever-present threats to their lives.
No one knows whether this theory is valid without empirical evidence, but the War in
Ukraine provides a template for reference.
With a combined birth rate of 1%, one of the lowest in the world, it will be interesting to
see if there will be a mass resistance in Ukraine, and if not, the theory holds.
Taiwan's combined birth rate is less than 1%, one of the lowest in the world. If there is no
mass resistance in Ukraine, there is no need to worry about brutal urban security warfare in
Taiwan in the future.What's new is that the Ukrainian government is desperately trying to
draw Russian troops into a brutal urban security battle.
The government ignored the flight of rich people (96 of Ukraine's 100 richest people fled,
leaving four with their passports detained on suspicion of criminal charges) and MPS (more
than 60 members of Parliament fled). Mr Zelensky even sent his family abroad in advance
However, after the outbreak of the war, the Ukrainian government even prohibited
Ukrainian male citizens aged between 16 and 60 from leaving Ukraine. The Ukrainian
government also took the initiative to issue guns to Kiev residents and teach city residents to
make bombs, which clearly meant to push ordinary people into the battlefield and deliberately
caused a large number of civilian casualties to arouse sympathy from international public
opinion
In the future war across the Taiwan Strait, we should not overestimate the moral ceiling
of the DPP authorities. They may also follow the example of the Ukrainian government and
forcibly kidnap civilians to participate in the war. Therefore, we must prepare plans in
advance.
My personal suggestion is to issue a law that includes crimes against humanity before the
Taiwan War. As long as the DPP authorities instigate and abet civilians to participate in the
war, it is a crime against humanity. In wartime, we will directly behead those who commit
crimes against humanity and will be severely punished by the law after the war. Only in this
way can we deter Taiwan independence elements.
These are valuable lessons from the template of the War in Ukraine.
Based on the above analysis, we know that we can roughly deduce the responses of all
parties in the future war across the Taiwan Strait from the model of Ukraine war, which
greatly solves the difficult problem of decision makers facing various uncertainties in the
early stage.
Reunification will be greatly accelerated once there is a reliable reference model for the
uncertainties of war.
Moreover, the War in Ukraine has also provided us with many valuable experiences of
modern and new-type warfare.
Russia cleverly combined psychological warfare, propaganda warfare and actual combat
in the Ukraine war. In a series of public video addresses, Mr. Putin repeatedly laid out his
reasons for the military action and publicly called on Ukrainian soldiers to lay down their
weapons and go home.
These statements and speeches are psychological and public opinion warfare at its best,
combined with Russia's repeated announcements of military progress that have done a great
job of demoralizing the Ukrainian army.
Russian troops met little resistance in their early advance into Ukraine, advancing to the
border with Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, within 24 hours.
The Russian military has also performed very well in the war in Ukraine.
Earlier missile attacks crippled the Ukrainian navy and air force within an hour. In fact,
Russian missile attacks mainly targeted military equipment, hit the command structure, and
caused little damage to personnel.
As long as the command system of the adversary is paralyzed in modern war, it basically
deprives the adversary of combat ability, and the killing of personnel is not important.
To Solve
The current conflict between Russia and Ukraine needs to be resolved once and for all:
unless NATO says in writing that it will never admit Ukraine into the alliance. Or the
Ukrainian government could permanently abandon its policy of joining NATO. As long as a
pro-European party is in power, Ukraine is highly unlikely to give up NATO membership.
In addition to Ukraine's membership in NATO, it is difficult to resolve the territorial
dispute between Ukraine and Russia, which is also entangled and difficult to resolve in a short
time. Crimea and Donbas in eastern Ukraine have already broken away from Ukraine's actual
control. From Ukraine's point of view, the fight for control of these regions will continue for a
long time in the future, and local conflicts within Ukraine will still occur frequently. The
probability of a large-scale war between Russia and Ukraine is relatively low. After all, the
consequences of a large-scale war are uncontrollable, and Russia can hardly bear further
severe sanctions from western countries.
Therefore, although Russia withdrew part of its military exercise troops close to the
Ukrainian border on February 15 this year, the situation in Ukraine constantly hyped by the
West temporarily eased, and international oil prices showed a correction. However, the
Conflict between Russia and Ukraine is still difficult to be solved effectively in a short time,
and western media may continue to hype this topic for a long time in the future.
The effective settlement of the russia-Ukraine conflict in the future may require Ukraine
and Russia to reach written agreements on a series of issues (whether Ukraine joins NATO
and territorial disputes) led by Germany and France (EU), or Ukraine and Russia to reach
written agreements on a series of issues led by the United States and Britain (NATO). This may
take a long time to resolve.