Saeed Naqvi 

Even though the purpose for which the Ukraine war was provoked has boomeranged on the West, the capacity of the US to needle Russia and not let it rest in peace remains undiminished. 

Western guerrilla actions are feared in each one of the international conferences lined up around the theme of Ukraine. Some of these conferences may not be focused on Ukraine but Ukraine will dominate proceedings. 

Step by step it is building up to a crescendo, the G20 summit in September in New Delhi. Positions taken by all G20 countries are known and yet, the secure lines between Moscow and the Chanceries are working overtime lest an inflection is introduced in the communique by some official who will lift the comma from one place to another and will, by subtle implication, transform a benign statement to a condemnation of Russia. 

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit on July 4 – Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan are all under US pressure to introduce a full stop where a comma suffices. 

A peculiar catch attends the BRICS summit scheduled in South Africa in August. Senator Lindsay Graham had at the very outset of the Ukraine war made a simple suggestion – assassinate Putin. All the troubles will be over. The US has not been emptied of gents teeming with such ideas. 

Short of assassinating Putin is another idea: lock him up in jail, rigorous imprisonment. 

An idea germinating in fertile minds is to make use of the International Criminal Court. There is no guarantee that the Chief Justice will be persuaded by the US to chase Putin with manacles and deliver him to a high-security prison. For this scenario to be played out, the territory has to be located where the ICC’s writ runs. 

Say, someplace like South Africa. South Africa is a signatory to the Rome statute, which obliges the country to deliver the “culprit” to the ICC, should that body issue warrants to the effect. 

Why is South Africa of any relevance in this context? Folks in Washington are smacking their lips because in August the BRICS summiteer will be meeting in that nation. The President of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, a former communist and trade union leader, would not leap to arrest Putin. 

Nor was there a judge at the ICC who would demonstrate enthusiasm to arrest The Russian President. But since June 2021, ICC is led by a British judge of Pakistani origin. Justice Karim Ahmad Khan is British but his father was born in the North West Frontier province. 

Two suggestions are being talked about. Either Putin be represented by someone like Dmitry Medvedev or some other method be devised since Putin’s presence is being seen as important at the crucial summit. The venue for the summit may be shifted to Beijing. This would suitably pique the West and protect Putin. The tussle has already begun behind the scenes. 

The craft and cunning of diplomacy are accelerated when wars begin to taper. Is the Ukraine war tapering? The big signal for the war’s conclusion will be when Western help in weapons and cash shows signs of drying up. 

When wealth being transferred comes down from billions to millions, as happened last week, it should be clear to President Volodymyr Zelensky that the end is nigh. Of course, the West is not going to expose itself to the odium of defeat. 

What is this war about at this stage? Neither side can afford to lose on the battlefield. The stakes for Russia are higher. Their nationhood is at stake, with NATO glaring at them from the border. To prevent such an outcome, Russia will go to any length. A country that can afford to lose 26 million people to defeat the Nazis, will stop at nothing to save Russia. 

 In the face of so much Western propaganda, one sometimes hesitates to spell out even an obvious truth visible to the naked eye. 

 Who began this war and why? The unending Western propaganda suggests Putin embarked on this war, quite unprovoked, as a precursor to the reestablishment of the Soviet or Czarist Empire. Distinguished Western academics are convinced that the West provoked the conflict. 

 Neither NATO-US military help to Zelensky nor “sanctions from hell” have brought Putin down to his knees. Europe, on the other hand, is in desperate straits economically, politically, and socially. Should Trump come on top in the US, we are in for a very unpredictable world, its multipolarity now firmly established. 

Remember how Liz Truss, the British Prime Minister for a week, rushed around the world rallying nations for “Democracy” as opposed to “Autocracy” which is what Putin is supposed to represent. So, in Truss’s perception an epic battle between “Democracy” and “Autocracy” was on. Let us count the trophies the West has picked up for itself from this conflict. 

Far from the democracies, Liz Truss was to be the harbinger of, we now have an accumulation of Far-Right, Nazi forces surging to the fore in Poland, the Netherlands, Austria, Spain, Hungary, France, Germany, Sweden – nations which on current showing make Russia and China look like promising places. What sayest thou, Ms. Truss? 

Let the truth be told. This war was never about Ukraine. It was about the new world order. The West was keen to retain its dominance. The global south led by China, Russia, Brazil, South Africa, and India, members of BRICS had sighted a multipolar world order ever since the delusion of the Sole Superpower moment began to dissolve with the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, leading to corporate collapse on an endemic basis. When China yoked Riyadh and Tehran into a deal, the West wrung its hands in anguish. The consequences of the war were clear as daylight. The main issue of the world order having been settled, the pugilists are now tiring each other out on the battlefield.