Russia is approaching its second anniversary of the launch of its special military operation in Ukraine. Today, this conflict is still dragging on, the smoke of war has not dissipated, and both Russia and Ukraine are caught in a tragic war of stalemate and attrition. At the same time, the support and attention of Western countries such as the United States and Europe for Ukraine is weakening, and the Russian economy, which has a certain resilience, is beginning to adapt to the "new normal" under sanctions. What does the occurrence of these things indicate? How has the continent's geopolitical landscape, economic development, and attitude towards "war and peace" changed dramatically as a result? How long will it be before peace comes? Let's walk into today's program to find out. Feng Shaolei, director of the Center for Russian Studies at East China Normal University, Teng Jianqun, director of the Center for Diplomatic Studies at Hunan Normal University, Ma Xiaolin, dean of the Institute of Circum-Mediterranean Studies at Zhejiang University of Foreign Chinese, and host Yuan Ming discussed these issues on the program "Global Intersections".
Feng Shaolei: The narrative of war is not only about you winning or losing, but also about the arrangements, rules and principles of the entire international order. On October 5 last year, Putin said in a speech that the Russia-Ukraine conflict has nothing to do with territory. Second, the Russia-Ukraine conflict has nothing to do with geopolitics, which is NATO's eastward expansion and changes in the world order. How could it not consider NATO's eastward expansion? The world order has changed, and the issue of NATO's eastward expansion has been resolved. That's why Putin asked for a security framework, where we can live, I can live, and you can live too, and everyone can live without interfering with each other and be at peace with each other.
Ma Xiaolin: International law and the UN Charter are indeed very noble and we should all abide by them, but the current world politics is a naked "jungle society". The United States has even openly said that strength determines status. Syria does not have any legitimate ** invitation to the United States, it entered Syria and occupied it. Iraq let them go, and they won't. Like Israel, it bombs Lebanon today, Syria tomorrow, and Sudan the day after tomorrow. Is international law respected in this society? Especially when it comes to the Russian Slavic nation, a fighting nation that speaks with its fists, it does not believe in "being stunned". It felt that if everyone spoke according to the same rules, if the Warsaw Pact had been dissolved, NATO had also been dissolved, and if NATO had not expanded eastward before the collapse of the Soviet Union, and had not even sent NATO troops to the land of the former Eastern Europe, there might have been no later results.