War in Ukraine: battle of perspectives

The war in Ukraine is no longer merely a territorial conflict between Russia and Ukraine. It has become a battle of competing geopolitical narratives. While the West views the war as resistance against aggression, Russia sees it as the latest phase of a centuries-long struggle over the global distribution of power and strategic resources. Understanding these competing perspectives is essential to understanding why the war continues to escalate. The recent Russian military strikes have been devastating, and it seems there will hardly be any let-up in the Russian response in the coming days. How Russia interprets this war is a critical question, and I wish to answer that in light of a Russian author's assessment.

I have sought a Russian interpretation of the Ukraine War from a column, 'The West's Conflict with Russia: General Issues and Prospects' written for International Affairs magazine by V Levchik, a Russian advisor in the Ministry of Russian Foreign Affairs. According to Levchik, conflicts and geopolitical fault-lines have often been deliberately exploited or intensified by the collective West to preserve a favourable distribution of strategic resources. Starting from the period from colonisation to re-colonisation through international institutions, this resource acquisition was continued by the American resource expansion in the Middle East from the 80s onwards. Later, the three waves of NATO expansions, colour revolutions and NATO's eastward expansion, all from the Russian perspective, highlight the continued Western resource greed. In the current war in Ukraine, it is a Russian belief that the West seeks the ultimate defeat of Russia and, with it, wants to create another opportunity for the West to ride another era of uncontested Western dominance and of deep resource inflow from the region for the next many years.

This Russian geopolitical hypothesis is based on some serious observations, some of which are supported by historical evidence, while others may be contested. To thin-slice this hypothesis, it is important to separate what is already broadly established from what is only a Russian interpretation. There is little doubt that throughout history, great powers have sought to expand or secure access to resources. European colonialism was fundamentally linked to the acquisition of land, labour, raw materials and markets. During the Cold War and after, major powers - including the US, the USSR/ Russia and China - have all sought to shape regional orders in ways that protected their strategic and economic interests.

The more difficult part of this hypothesis is to establish whether there exists a coherent, long-term Western strategy of artificially creating conflicts primarily to facilitate successive waves of resource acquisition. Access to oil, gas, critical minerals, trade routes and technology has influenced many Western foreign policy decisions, resulting in many wars. Some of these wars fought in the Middle East are obvious examples of how energy security was deeply intertwined with national security.

Many events often grouped in the Russian perception – such as the enlargement of NATO, the Baltic states joining the alliance, or some Eastern European governments seeking closer ties with the West - cannot be explained solely by Western expansionism. Many of those states actively pursued NATO membership because of their own historical experiences with Soviet or Russian domination. The strategic nature of Western interests mattered, but in the final analysis, the individual choices of these states to join the Western bloc also mattered. Resource acquisition may have been one factor, but it is difficult to demonstrate that it was the dominant or sole motive across all cases. The Iraq War, NATO enlargement, the Arab Spring, the conflicts in Georgia and Ukraine and various colour revolutions each demonstrated their own distinct domestic, regional, ideological and strategic drivers. So, to view all these conflicts from the lone prism of Western need and motive of another resource flow may not be fair.

The Russian perception of this war also floats the idea that the Russian defeat in the war in Ukraine is a Western political goal which may act as the gateway to another resource-filled Western century. There are two logical explanations to counter this Russian perception. Firstly, if Russia were to suffer a decisive geopolitical defeat, it would mean that the West would gain huge advantages in the distribution of resources; greater access to Eurasian energy and mineral markets; reduced military expenditure needed to deter Russia; and increased investment opportunities across Eastern Europe and potentially parts of Eurasia.

These are plausible Western strategic benefits. However, there are reasons to doubt that such an outcome would automatically translate into many years of uncontested Western dominance. The reason lies in how China is conveniently forgotten as a power that challenges Western dominance. Today's principal economic competitor of the West is not Russia but China. Russia's GDP is relatively modest compared with the US or China, and China is also a manufacturing, technological and financial superpower. Even if Russia were substantially weakened, China would remain capable of challenging Western influence.

The growing reality of the 21st Century is the change in resource dominance. The strategic resources of this century increasingly include: semiconductors, AI, advanced manufacturing, rare earth processing, data infrastructure and biotechnology. Russia possesses enormous natural resources, but control over those resources alone would not recreate the Cold War strategic environment, especially when the international economy is diffusing. Today, countries such as India, Brazil, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Turkey pursue increasingly autonomous foreign policies. Many seek partnerships with both the West and non-Western powers rather than aligning exclusively with one bloc. This diffusion of influence makes sustained unipolarity of any form harder to achieve. Therefore, imagining a Russian defeat as a Western political goal that may result in resource inflows from that region is not a fair geopolitical assessment.

Lastly, if the US and its Western partners want to prove the Russian perception wrong, they must reconsider their current strategy of military support and take practical steps to end this war. They must stop patronising Ukraine. If Washington and Brussels keep aiding Ukraine to fight on, there are little chances of negotiations ever taking place to end this war.