LONDON (AP) — There are moments in history that are as critical to the world as they are terrifying.
Just this century: the attacks of September 11, 2001; the U. S. war of “shock and awe” in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq two years later; the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 killed millions and disrupted lives; and most recently, the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, bringing back a ruinous war to Europe.
Seven months into the standoff and with near-daily nuclear threats from Kremlin leaders with their backs to the wall, Putin terrifyingly promised to protect the newly annexed regions with “all available means. “Almost immediately, the Ukrainian president responded by asking you to join the NATO alliance of armies, preparing Russia to confront the West.
Any idea that this kind of heartbreaking rupture ended in the 1980s, when the last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and then-US President Ronald Reagan toned down the Cold War and the specter of nuclear Armageddon, is now over.
Even with the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan burned into the collective consciousness of humanity, the world digs itself up once again by considering the imaginable use of nuclear weapons.
After a series of humiliating setbacks on the battlefield, Putin made it clear that any attack on the newly annexed regions would be interpreted as an attack on Russia. He would use every means available in his vast arsenal: the nod to cloud-transparent weapons. veiled, and did not brag, he said.
“We are in an escalation phase, and Russia now faces a number of possible options more excessive than before,” said Nigel Gould-Davies, a former UK ambassador to Belarus.
Gould-Davies, a senior researcher for Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said Russia’s attempts to win the war through more moderate means have failed and that Putin will now have to increase “the scope and severity of the measures. “Russia is taking, adding annexation and nuclear threats.
Even as Moscow annexed the four Ukrainian regions in a move that would be known to an overwhelming majority of the world, tens of thousands of Russian men called to fight in the war fled Russia.
Former Kremlin speech editor-turned-political analyst Abbas Gallyamov on Friday connected Russia’s reversals of direction in the war with the annexation push. “It looks like an attempt at a response one way or another, and it sounds pretty pathetic. Ukrainians are doing something, taking action in the real world, while the Kremlin is building a kind of virtual authenticity, unable to respond in the real world,” he said.
At the wheel of Putin, there are years of perceived humiliation in the Western component after the demise of the Soviet Union. And the fact that the bloodshed and atrocities committed against Chechnya and Syria escaped harsh foreign intervention to convince him that he had carte blanche to rebuild an imperial Russia.
That is no longer the case.
Billions of dollars in U. S. and European military aid are helping highly motivated Ukrainian forces liberate territory in the war amid transparent signals from Washington that any use of unconventional weapons through Moscow will have “catastrophic consequences. “
On a day like Friday, September 30, when Russia’s war in Ukraine enters an even more damaging flammable phase, doubt remains; Is a wider war looming with devastating effects on the world, not seen since 1939-1945?
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Tamer Fakahany is the Palestinian Authority’s deputy director of news coordination and helped lead the Palestinian Authority’s foreign policy for 20 years. Follow him on Twitter in https://twitter. com/tamerfakahany. La Associated Press editor Danica Kirka in London contributed to this report.