Chinese academic sceptical about Putin's war

At an international forum held in Novgorod, Prof. Fen Yu Shun of Shanghai's Fudan University openly stated that in his opinion the invasion of Ukraine is bound to end in a fiasco for Russia. 'Moscow wants to destabilise the world order by forceful actions, Beijing wants to recompose it'.

Moscow (AsiaNews) - At the meeting in Russia of the Valdai International Discussion Club of Novgorod, the speech by Fen Yu Shun, professor at Peking University and director of the research center on Russia and Central Asia at the university, caused a stir Fudan of Shanghai, according to whom Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine was destined to end in fiasco, for a number of reasons.

First of all, he highlighted the high level of opposition and national unity shown by the Ukrainians, and how this has led to great international support, which despite the weakening of recent months still remains a substantial factor.

The third factor highlighted by the expert is the particular character of contemporary war, which depends on the conjunction between industrial power and the military command system, control, communications and intelligence services.

According to Yu Shun, Russia encounters many difficulties in controlling Ukraine's response actions, especially due to the lack of industrial and technological production, which was not adequately restored after the end of the Soviet Union and was too dependent on Western imports .

Another factor of particular importance concerns information: Putin has ended up in a dead end from this point of view, due to his excessive repression and crystallization of the dictatorial system. The Kremlin lacks reliable sources of information gathering, and relies on ineffective error correction mechanisms.

For these reasons, according to the Chinese professor, Russia will inevitably face defeat, and sooner or later will be forced to withdraw troops from all occupied territories of Ukraine, including Crimea. Victory is not guaranteed even by atomic potential, and as an example he cited the withdrawal of American troops, equally supplied with nuclear weapons, from Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan.

The Ukrainian war constituted a moment of rupture in the recent history of Russia, as Yu Shun also writes in an article in the Economist, which forced the Putin regime into international isolation and created fertile ground for "all possible black swans ”, that is, for all sorts of unpredictable catastrophes.

The Moscow regime has already had to begin to deal with several of them, as happened with the Wagner company revolt, with the many inter-ethnic tensions and the recent ISIS-K attack on the Krokus City Hall.

Furthermore, the Ukrainian conflict is convincing almost all the former USSR republics in Europe and Asia, with the sole exception of Belarus, that Russia's imperial ambitions threaten their independence and territorial integrity.

They too are convinced of the impossibility of a Russian victory, and try in every way to distance themselves from the Muscovite influence, even when they maintain a formal haughtiness towards it. In this way "the prospect of Eurasian integration also fades", concludes Yu Shun.

Moreover, the war also forced Europe to realize the enormous threat represented by Russia for the security of the entire continent, abandoning the friendly relations of many countries and forcing NATO to increase military spending, concentrating on the northern sector -eastern and aggregating Sweden and Finland. In this sense, if Putin's war was against NATO enlargement, he has already achieved a resounding defeat.

The Chinese expert also underlines that China "has already organized two rounds of diplomatic mediation", and no one should doubt that the Chinese intention is to put an end to the conflict through negotiations.

This shows that "China and Russia are two very different countries, Russia wants to destabilize the world order with actions of force, China wants to recompose it with peace initiatives". And if a peaceful settlement of the conflict in Ukraine is not achieved, "we can only expect Russia's next war".