"A Clash With The West Cannot End"
"Let me share a few thoughts which I have entertained for a long time, and which took their final shape after the recent Assembly of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy that proved to be one of the most remarkable gatherings in its 31-year history.
"Russia and its leadership seem to be facing a difficult choice. It becomes increasingly clear that a clash with the West cannot end even if we win a partial or even a crushing victory in Ukraine. It will be a really partial victory if we liberate four regions. It will be a slightly bigger victory if we liberate the entire East and South of present-day Ukraine in the next year or two. But there will still remain a part of it with an even more embittered ultranationalist population pumped up with weapons – a bleeding wound threatening inevitable complications and a new war.
"Perhaps the worst situation may occur if, at the cost of enormous losses, we liberate the whole of Ukraine and remain in ruins with a population that mostly hates us. Its 'redemption' will take more than a decade. Any option, especially the latter one, will distract our country from making an urgently needed step to shift its spiritual, economic, and military-political focus to the east of Eurasia. We will get stuck in the west, with no prospects in the foreseeable future, while present-day Ukraine, primarily its central and western regions, will sap managerial, human, and financial resources out the country. These regions were heavily subsidized even in Soviet times. The feud with the West will continue as it will support a low-grade guerrilla civil war.
"A more attractive option would be liberating and reincorporating the East and the South of Ukraine, and forcing the rest to surrender, followed by complete demilitarization and the creation of a friendly buffer state. But this would be possible only if and when we are able to break the West's will to incite and support the Kiev junta, and to force it to retreat strategically. And this brings us to the most important but almost undiscussed issue. The underlying, and even fundamental cause of the conflict in Ukraine and many other tensions in the world, as well as of the overall growth of the threat of war is the accelerating failure of the modern ruling Western elites – mainly comprador ones in Europe (Portuguese colonialists used the word 'comprador' to refer to local traders who catered to their needs) – who were generated by the globalization course of recent decades. This failure is accompanied by rapid changes, unprecedented in history, in the global balance of power in favor of the Global Majority, with China and partly India acting as its economic drivers, and Russia chosen by history to be its military-strategic pillar. This weakening infuriates not only the imperial-cosmopolitan elites (Biden and Co.), but also the imperial-national ones (Trump)."