The Institute for Foreign Affairs and Trade (IFAT) organized a roundtable discussion entitled ’Russian-Ukrainian war after a half year: takeaways, goals, and the chance of peace’ on the 25th August 2022 in the conference room at Baruch Palace. Our guests has been Robert C. Castel, writer of Neokohn journal, Tamás Csiki Varga, senior research fellow of SVKI and the moderator has been Péter Stepper, senior research fellow of IFAT.
Tamás Csiki Varga summarized the takeaways from what we have seen on the battlefield so far, highlighting that neither the Russian agressor, nor the Ukrainian defenders did not reached an ’exit point’, and still not have an interest for a ceasefire. Robert Castel raised the attention for the importance of Mearsheimer’s viewpoint in spite of the worldview of Fukuyama, which he argued, has many flaws. According to him, the fate of this war is not based on the outcome of large or small battles in Eastern Ukraine, but influenced by economics, and energy policy. Tamás Csiki Varga praised the significance of modern technologies, arguing that many of the Ukrainian successes are in connection with Western armaments. Robert Castel paid attention to the three potential target in a war, mentioned by the late Clausewitz, arguing that during the first stage, we witnessed Russian making precision strikes against high-value target, in the second stage they changed the tactics to destroy military defence by heavy artillery. The third stage of targeting critical infrastructure and terrorize civilian population on a large scale is yet to come.
Photos by: Institute for Foreign Affairs and Trade (IFAT)