By CAIO BUGIATO*
As Russia gains ground faster than at any point in the war, the new assessment of U.S. foreign policy is that the current world order is obsolete
Seven theses on the war in Ukraine
My investigations have shown that:
(i) The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is an international political-military organization of the imperialist chain led by the United States. Its dynamics include the expansion of Western capitalism, which does not tolerate national and autonomous projects of capitalist development, governments not aligned with the West, independent foreign policies and alternative projects to the current neoliberal capitalism.
(ii) NATO expansionism and its imposition of bourgeois principles, which sought to destroy the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and which seeks to neutralize/incorporate Russia, is by far the main cause of the war.
(iii) The Ukrainian political process known as Euromaidan, which began in 2013, was one of the colorful coups influenced by US diplomacy. The coup deposed an elected pro-Russian government – not aligned with Washington –, promoted a rebellion in the Donbass provinces – with an ethnic Russian majority – and paved the way for governments willing to align themselves and join the European Union and NATO.
(iv) In addition to awakening neo-Nazi forces, the coup resulted in the rise of the government of Volodymyr Zelensky, who did not respect the Minsk agreements that proposed autonomy for the provinces of the Donbass region. Governments and neo-Nazi forces began to harass the population of that region.
(v) Vladimir Putin's Russian government was formed in opposition to Boris Yeltsin's neoliberal government, aligned with the US, in the 1990s; it operates a deterioration of bourgeois democracy with an apparent tendency towards Bonapartism; and it includes a national and autonomous project of capitalist development and an independent foreign policy, in addition to rapprochement with China, which is intolerable for the West and NATO.
(vi) The war in Ukraine is a counter-imperialist war. Initiated as a counter-offensive military operation by the Putin government, it is opposed by the Ukrainian state, together with the imperialist/NATO chain led by the US and the Russian state. In addition to its antagonistic nature to NATO's imperialist expansionism, it is also a war of defense.
(vii) All the economic and military aid to Ukraine and all the sanctions and economic restrictions applied to Russia by the West have not been able to stop Moscow’s armed forces and shake the Russian economy and political institutions. The Putin government has built a war economy, strengthening state activity, national industry and the domestic market, and deepening relations with countries in Asia, Africa and other peripheral countries. In this sense, the Russian state presents itself as an agent of transformation of the international system.
the battlefield
Let's look at the maps[I] below:
MAP 1 – Russian military control during the war
MAP 2 – Current Russian military control
MAP 3 – Ukrainian incursion into Russian territory
Map 1 shows at least three phases of the war. The first was the Russian counteroffensive in the face of NATO's advance and Ukrainian pressure on the separatist provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk in Donbass, eastern Ukraine. In this phase, Russia conquered most of the entire territorial extension that it still maintains under its control today. The second phase was the reaction of NATO and Ukraine, with all the aid coming from the West, which caused losses and setbacks for the Russians.
In this phase, in June 2023, Volodymyr Zelensky's government launched an offensive that was unable to penetrate Russian defense lines. In addition, long and bloody battles were fought, such as in the cities of Bakmut and Avdiivka, with a Russian victory. The third phase is a new, successful Russian counteroffensive, which has gradually conquered new territories. The Russian objective in this phase is to control the integrity of the four provinces, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, in addition to maintaining Crimea, annexed in 2014.
Map 2, from February 2025, shows precisely the almost total Russian control of these five provinces, in a territorial strip that goes from Russia to Crimea and occupies 1/5 of Ukraine.
Map 3 shows the Ukrainian incursion, in a surprise attack in August 2024, which advanced about 30 km into Russian territory, in the Kursk region. The Ukrainian armed forces claim to control an area of more than 1.200 km² and 93 villages. Part of this territory has been retaken, but the Ukrainians still maintain troops in the region. The government of Volodymyr Zelensky intends to use this area as a means of exchange for the territory occupied by the Russians. However, Russia has a large advantage on the battlefield, as the maps show, so any negotiations between the belligerents are unlikely to harm Vladimir Putin's government.
The current situation
Before Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, the American, European and Ukrainian governments formed a cohesive bloc with the aim of sustaining and improving the Ukrainian armed forces, defeating the Russians on the battlefield and winning the war. Despite some friction and disagreements, they were united to the point that military, economic and humanitarian aid from the West reached 246 billion euros. The United States is the largest donor, with 114 billion euros. NATO has even trained Ukrainian troops and the Biden administration has authorized the use of American weapons to reach deep into Russian territory. But all of that seems to be in the past.
As Russia gains ground faster than at any other point in the war, the new assessment of U.S. foreign policy is that the current world order is obsolete, having brought the United States costs, wars, and the rise of new powers. Washington declares the need to replace the postwar liberal order, marked by formally multilateral institutions founded by U.S. governments, with a new U.S. supremacy based on unilateral economic and military power: building a new order by force, with the motto Make America great again. Looking at it from another angle, for the US the war in Ukraine and NATO are not priorities.
The Donald Trump factor for the war in Ukraine can be summed up in the positions of state agents. At a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said that the war must end, but the country's accession to NATO is unrealistic: "The United States does not believe that Ukraine's accession to NATO is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement."
He also stated that the US will no longer prioritize European and Ukrainian security, as the Trump administration will emphasize protecting its own borders and dealing with problems with China. He also stated that the European military should be the main force responsible for protecting Ukraine after the war and the US will not be involved in this: “To be clear, as part of any security guarantee, there will be no US troops sent to Ukraine.”
Furthermore, the secretary assessed that returning Ukraine’s borders to what they were before 2014 is an unrealistic goal, something that Volodymyr Zelensky has already indirectly acknowledged in recent statements. Finally, Pete Hegseth did not announce any new aid for Ukraine. In short, the secretary threw cold water on the Europeans, who have outsourced their security, and on Volodymyr Zelensky’s government, which is completely dependent on Western aid: “We are also here today to express directly and unequivocally that harsh strategic realities prevent the United States of America from focusing primarily on the security of Europe.”
In a more general position, but one that criticizes Europeans and affects the war, the Vice President of the United States, James David Vance, was quite clear at the Munich Security Conference in Germany. He said that Europe's greatest threat "comes from within", that Europeans "have moved away from fundamental values" and are ignoring "voter concerns" about immigration and freedom of expression.
James David Vance cited the arrest of a protester outside an abortion clinic in the UK and the censorship of an anti-Islam campaign in Sweden as limitations on democracy. He said: “The threat that worries me most about Europe is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any other external factor. What worries me is the threat that comes from within: Europe’s retreat from some of its most fundamental values”; “for us on the other side of the Atlantic, it increasingly seems that there are long-standing and entrenched interests behind words that seem to have come from the Soviet era like disinformation or disinformation, where people didn’t like the idea of someone with a different point of view expressing their opinion, or, God forbid, voting differently, or even worse, winning an election.”
Such statements, inserted in the current international context, in which Donald Trump's government is an integral part of a transnational neo-fascist alliance – and perhaps the head of this movement – show the reactionary nature of such a government: the fight against the specter of communism and any political movement that opposes neo-fascist principles and the tendency to replace bourgeois democracy with fascist dictatorship, obviously all within the capitalist order.
Off the battlefield, in the latest episode of the war in Ukraine, the foreign ministers of the United States and Russia met in Saudi Arabia, without Europeans and Ukrainians. They agreed on four points about ending the war, albeit vague: restoring the functionality of diplomatic facilities operating and functioning normally to advance negotiations; the United States will form a high-level team to work towards ending the conflict, in a way that is lasting and acceptable to all parties involved; discussing, thinking about and examining geopolitical and economic cooperation for the countries after the end of the conflict; the five people who participated in the meeting (Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Presidential Advisor Yuri Ushakov) will continue to engage in advancing this process.
It seems that the triumph on the battlefield gave Vladimir Putin a diplomatic victory that came from where it was not expected, from the USA.
* Caio Bugiato is a professor of Political Science and International Relations at UFRRJ and in the Postgraduate Program in International Relations at UFABC.
Note
[I] The maps were prepared by with the BBC, with the data of the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) in partnership with the Critical Threats Project, American Enterprise Institute.
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