On March 4th, 2022 an expert roundtable was held on “Europe’s Concerns and Challenges in the Russia-Ukraine Conflict”, joined by Gregory Simons, Communication Studies Professor at Turiba University, Latvia, and researcher at Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies in Uppsala Universite, Sweden.
Simons believes that the US was behind Ukraine crisis so as to avoid the demise of its unipolar hegemonic power in the world. Accordingly, the benefits of Europe and other allies have been deliberately neglected. European governments and media are only following the US approaches toward this crisis and looking for their own benefits.
Gregory Simons highlighted the following predicates:
- The US-led Conflict against Russia: Regarding the balance of power, geopolitics, and media Ukraine crisis is clearly a comprehensive war with implicit racism. The western interpretation of the events in this war, however untrue, has the upper hand and does not let others think about wars in other parts of the world.
- Western-Allied Framework Development and Non-complied Western Governments: This war is also a result of the US security approach by the expansion of NATO to the east, which is clearly opposing the pledges promised by Bill Clinton to Gorbachev before the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and to the first Russian government after the collapse. Those promises were only lies to unite Europe and magnified the cold war atmosphere. As the development of liberal democracy is perceived by non-western communities as a threat.
- Ukraine War as an American Project to Weaken Russia: The outbreak of COVID-19 gave the US administration a unique opportunity to break the ties between Russia and its neighbors, and finally, ally with the United States. The prominent revolutionary movement in Belarus, the crisis in Kazakhstan, and putting flames into the crisis of Nagorno-Karabakh are all already planned by the US. These countries have all one thing in common, allies of Russia. As the demise of the US hegemony is clearly approaching, the last piece of this chain of US instability in the region was recreated by Washington in supporting Ukraine.
- Economic strategies without severe armament of Ukraine: The USA is currently working on breaking the economic ties of Russia with the global markets. However, the kind of interaction between Moscow and Washington’s allies, especially the Europeans, dismantles this strategy. The US regime of sanctions against Iran and Cuba already proved that these sanctions are not fruitful. Moreover, the imposed sanctions are not fully and globally supported.
- The Ultimate Goal; a Europe without Russia: Washington is asking for a long-term crisis between Moscow and Kyiv, and certainly does not care how long this will last or how many Ukrainians will be victimized. The US is after keeping Russia out of Europe. This is the geopolitical and geoeconomic outcome that guarantees the US dominance and hegemony over the green continent.
- Weak Europeans against an Unreliable Ally: This crisis showed transatlantic allies like Germany the fact that the US government is not a reliable ally anymore. Nevertheless, the European governments cannot play their roles and are only followers of the US strategies and politics. Media-wise the Europeans are supporters of Ukraine and practically are seeking their own benefits.
- Nuclear War is No Way Near: Putin is not ready to retreat against the West, he is not into the outbreak of a nuclear war, though.
