5 reasons that support Russia’s belief that it is waging a war against the West

Russia currently believes that it is at war with the West in general, and it has been so since it annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, and tried to secure its entry into the city of Sevastopol, to make it a base for its naval fleet in the Black Sea, and as a potential lever of influence over Kiev’s political direction.

Even in 2014, at the annual Valdai security forum in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin was signaling an escalation toward conflict with the West, and later described the West as having “crossed the border.”

Putin said at the time that he was ready to escalate matters further and threaten a broader military conflict, but the West mostly ignored these messages. It took a long time for NATO and many Western countries to realize the importance of Putin’s words, and to understand that they were dealing with a continuous escalation.

Main reasons

Putin now has five main reasons to support Russia’s belief that it is in conflict with the West: the gradual expansion of NATO and the European Union towards the Russian border, Western financial and military support for Ukraine, anti-Russian rhetoric and international sanctions on Russian goods, and measures to restrict Russia’s use of Russian weapons. of the international banking system, and finally Ukraine’s allies allowing it to fire long-range missiles at Russia.

way of thinking

There are many indications of the Kremlin’s way of thinking about the war. For example, in November 2022, Putin said: “Our armed forces are fighting on the line of contact, which is more than 1,000 kilometers long, and are fighting not only against neo-Nazi units, but in fact the entire military machine.” To the West collectively.”

In October 2023, Deputy Chairman of the Russian National Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, described Ukraine’s supporters as “forcefully pushing us towards World War III.”

In January 2024, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov described Russia as “liberated” from the axis of World War II, which is “coming back to life,” indicating that it is confronting another emergence of Nazism.

Types of wars

Russia classifies different types of wars according to their geographical extent and strength. Armed conflict is at the lowest level of its scale, and a higher level is local war.

In 2014, the initial movement of what were called at the time the “green men,” Russian soldiers without military badges, was to take them to Crimea, but it was clearly an act of war, so in many respects Ukraine was at this point. Local war.

The local war is limited and involves political goals and usually occurs in a short period, as happened in 2008 between Russia and Georgia, but it can have repercussions for the allies of the warring countries, and there are two other levels of the Russian war, which are regional wars and comprehensive wars. A group of countries participate in the regional war to secure political, strategic, security and military objectives, as was the Soviet Union’s war in the period between 1979 and 1989. Russia most likely sees the Ukraine war as a regional war since 2022, with some elements that characterize a comprehensive war.

As for comprehensive wars, they are wars between coalitions of countries such as Ukraine and NATO against Russia, Iran, North Korea, and China, or a large number of countries in different parts of the world, such as World War II.

Russia indicated that the recent changes in American and British policy in allowing the launch of their long-range missiles on its territory are considered escalatory.

Direct conflict

Russia modified its nuclear doctrine last November, and then launched a hypersonic missile that could carry nuclear warheads at Ukraine, which brought it closer to direct conflict with NATO countries, and thus some considered Russia to be the one pushing for escalation.

Europe and the United States began to realize, albeit belatedly, that Russia now saw itself in a war with the West, albeit a limited one at the moment.

The European countries closest to Russia, such as Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Lithuania, realized this more clearly, and sought, on the political level, to ally more closely with NATO and European military allies, to forcefully repel Russian interference.

But Europe in general has become fundamentally weak as a result of decades of underinvestment in defense, its inability to coordinate defense and security policy, and its over-reliance on the United States as a guarantee of its security. About “Asia Times”

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Avoid escalation

Overall, a greater understanding of Russian intentions, motives, and capabilities is vital in the West, as this could help avoid further escalation into full-scale war, or at least improve the ability to negotiate with Moscow.

. Some believed that Moscow was pushing for escalation after amending its nuclear doctrine last November.