I've recently read an article with very good points about the global meaning of Russia's war against Ukraine by Salvador Lima.
Here are some quotes from it that I found the most relevant/interesting. The article is in Spanish, but Google Translate does a good job, so I recommend reading all of it.
◾️What Putin fears is not NATO, but democracy.
◾️Putin's war, the largest armed conflagration in Europe since 1945, is a crucial challenge to international stability. Its outcome not only affects the defence of Ukrainian territory, but will also be a symbol of the struggle for international law, the sovereignty of the states and respect for the democratic order.
◾️As in 1939, what we have been seeing since 2014 is a fascist state of hegemonic aspirations that invades a weaker sovereign state.
◾️Putin elevates his war to a kind of metaphysical and religious conflict, a civilizational and total struggle where there is no room for the existence of the Ukrainian enemy.
◾️As long as Ukraine is able to resist and demonstrate the legitimacy of its cause, China is unlikely to launch a risky offensive in the Pacific.
◾️A Russian victory in the war would not only entrench Putin's imperial ambitions but embolden other autocrats in China, Iran, Venezuela or North Korea, threatening European international order and security architecture.
◾️For those who see Putin as a master of geopolitics, it is difficult to swallow that the war that began in 2022 was probably the stupidest foreign policy decision since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003: the invasion of Ukraine has ruined the geopolitical balance of the Russian Federation between West and China, burned almost all relations with Europe and the United States and put Russia at the foot of the core. Putin will be able to tell the outcome of his war as he pleases, but China's dependence will be his great legacy.
◾️History teaches that military defeat is good for the citizens of the imperial metropolises.
◾️All the legitimacy of his war is based on the false idea that Russia is a victimized nation and that it is fighting Western imperialism at the gates of Moscow, as Alexander I did in 1812 and Stalin in 1941. Bombing Ukrainians or their European allies with nuclear weapons would erase any glimpse of justice to their rhetoric and make it the pariah of the world.
◾️Pacifism in the face of such aggression amounts to accepting dictatorship and cultural annihilation.
◾️Putin's Russia is nothing more than a fascist state.
◾️Faced with Putin and his fascist war, history has taught Europeans that the long-term costs of appeasement and conformism far outweigh the immediate financial burden of engagement with international law and democracy.
◾️The response to Russian aggression stems from the simple fact that this flagrant violation of bilateral and multilateral agreements has shaken and continues to threaten the foundations of the international order established in the second half of the twentieth century, agitating the spectre of arbitrary border reviews, regional conflicts and global instability.
◾️The unwavering support for Ukraine is not only defending a nation, it is to forge a future in which democracy prevails over autocracy, and in which the rule of law triumphs over the empire of force. For the sake of international stability and democracy, Russia must be defeated.
