East-West war in the wings?

Being on this side of the world, we have to cross our fingers that it doesn’t come down to war between the two sides. We will be impacted directly.

With Ukraine unable to win the war against Russia as envisaged by the West, the European Union is mulling the idea of sending troops to fight against the Russian army on the front lines. Outspoken French President Emmanuel Macron has revealed that the West is discussing despatching troops to Ukraine, indicating that no consensus had been reached yet.

This is not surprising. The West had hoped that by now Russia would have retreated across its border with Ukraine troops in hot pursuit.

But instead, Moscow got stronger and stronger as the war progressed, reducing the numbers of Ukrainian soldiers with its advanced weaponry, which was being produced at a higher rate than before the war.

As the ANC Youth League’s Khulekani Skosana reflected recently, if the EU soldiers were deployed it would prove that the real conflict was between Nato and Russia, with Kyiv only a pawn in the confrontation.

Indeed, few doubt that Kyiv is a proxy and that the real war has always been between Nato and Russia.

“And they [Nato countries] have finished the Ukrainian soldiers and now they are threatening to enter into Ukraine themselves Skosana said.

“So, it would only prove the Russians right in perceiving the Nato expansionism narrative that led them to confront Ukraine,”

With the West already feeling the strength of the Russians in the battlefield through the incineration of most of their supplied tanks on the ground in Ukraine, they want to resort to direct war with Russia.

I dread to think about the devastating consequences for all of us of such a decision.

This is something that Skosana did not mention as he assessed what he calls “worrisome comments” by Macron about Europe’s direct involvement in the war.

Many people know that all along the West avoided direct confrontation with Russia because they knew the consequences of that would be World War III.

In fact, it would not take a week of that war before the first nuclear weapon was released.

The West has not released their feared weapons as part of their support for Ukraine and nor has Russia used what it has. One thing is for sure though. Both have the last-resort weaponry they reserve for use during the real war.

“The biggest fear that everyone has is World War III, but I don’t think that [Macron] will be able to pull through on the comments he made because what has kept the West away from direct confrontation with Russia is the understanding that Russia has superior military might... and basically they’ve just set Ukraine out as a sacrifice,” Skosana told a Russian journalist.

Russia does envisage direct confrontation, hence Putin has warned that a nuclear war is possible. Although the West has been backing Ukraine with weapons including fighter jets and tanks, Russia has only complained about their arms supplies, but did not retaliate directly militarily against them. It only destroyed the tanks that Britain, Germany, the US and others supplied to Ukraine.

As Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov indicated, Moscow is aware of the US and Nato’s direct involvement in the conflict in Ukraine. The training of Ukrainian soldiers in the UK, Germany and Italy is sufficient proof of the West’s direct participation in the war.

Being on this side of the world, we have to cross our fingers that it doesn’t come down to war between the two sides. We will be impacted directly.

In fact, the devastation to the world economy by the current Ukraine-Russia war would look like a Sunday school picnic compared to what would come during a direct war between the West and the East, which may rope in China, Iran and North Korea.