Ukraine Russia War: Where is Ceasefire?
Editor’s note: This piece was originally published in Medium shortly after the outbreak of Ukraine war following Russia’s invasion, on 3 March 2022 with last update on 9 March 2022.
Russia is sadly waging a psychological warfare (just as the US did with Afghanistan ie that region incl Pakistan would be “bombed to Stone Age”) with the threat of potential nuclear war. Indian diplomats privately say that Russia could or already view the US’ unprecedented step of freezing Russia’s central bank’s forex reserves and shutting-off civilian smartphone support as a step “gone too far and a declaration of war by the west”, which didn’t even happen in the height of Cold War.
Issue is the west need to tread with care where the rhetoric don’t accidentally gets misinterpreted and set off the tinderbox because if Russian establishment (or it’s president) is pushed to the corner and the Kremlin establishment feels they have nothing to lose other than accepting defeat and humiliation at the hands of the west, they would treat it as non worthy of living in this world with shame and humiliation and thus wouldn’t hesitate to go for assured mutual destruction. That’s the psych of narcissist dictators or elected dictators (by the way, Trump, Syria’s Assad, Saudi’s MBS, UAE’s MbZ, Israel’s Netanyahu, Egypt’s Sisi, India’s Modi and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un are among the list). Better would be to trying to
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