 It's been two months since the war in Ukraine began, and this is clearly a war which is not only a military conflict, but has also developed into a political and economic, a geo-strategic conflict in various ways. This is also one war which is not just between two countries, it's also become a global conflict in so many ways as well. We will be trying to understand all these dynamics in this episode of Mapping for Alliance. We are joined by Prabhupur Kaisa. Prabir, so two months since the war began, we have of course talked in earlier episodes about the military situation, about the kind of impact that it is that global economy is facing, for instance food, oil supplies, all these kind of issues. But one issue we identified from the very beginning was that this was largely spurred by NATO's expansion. And one of the recent announcements or declarations we have seen is the fact that NATO seems set to expand even more with two more countries, that is Finland and Sweden, likely to join NATO. On the other hand, we have also seen that US President Joe Biden has announced nearly $800 million worth of weapons supplies. So right now, like I said earlier, this is not a war between Russia and Ukraine. We always said NATO was a key player, but it seems more and more like this is becoming a full-fledged NATO versus Russia conflict. So before we get into some of the technicalities on weapons supplies and all that, how do you see this geo-strategically? I think it's very clear that this is a war in which NATO is fighting Russia till the last Ukrainian. So the fact that Ukrainians are bearing the brunt of the battle, the battle is for NATO expansion. And it is unfortunate that a section of the Ukrainians are willing to go with NATO on this and not agree to a peace negotiations. The fact that the Eastern Ukraine should be giving certain degree of autonomy, which by the way other linguistic groups in Europe have also claimed. And again, in different countries, different kinds of relationships have been worked out in Czechoslovakia. They were not worked out, but they decided mutually to split and became the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic. So if you look at all of this, the unfinished agenda of nation-forming in Europe has been very bloody. This we seem to see continue right now on what's happening in Ukraine. But the operative part of it, which you have said, is NATO expansion and bringing it even closer to Russia. And thinking that with this encirclement of Russia, that they will have the upper hand in any military conflict. And you can see what you have said. You can see now at top, you have Finland and Sweden joining. Norway willing to maybe position NATO troops in Norway's soil, which it didn't earlier. You can also see that the brown-colored parts, which are the new NATO expansion, which have taken place from the earlier NATO expansions, which are in red. You can see how much closer they have come to Russia and also with Ukraine, if they do that. Then St. Petersburg and Moscow are also really literally five to seven minutes missile distance away from the borders. Now, given that and the fact in Poland and Romania, they have had missile batteries which can attack as well as supposedly be anti-missile batteries. If we take all of this into account, Russia's position has been that this is essentially an aggressive move against us and therefore would like Ukraine to remain neutral. But if we see the amount of arguments coming in, it's very clear what they want is Ukraine to resist Russia as long as it can. And hopefully weaken Russia for the NATO encirclement that is continuing. Right. So from within this context, you mentioned the weapon supplies. Of course, we have seen, like I said, the U.S. announcement. And we've seen even U.S. media reports which say which court defense department officials or senior officials saying that they really have no idea where a lot of these weapons are going because they say it's a fog of war. The U.S. troops are not on the ground. That's such a bad thing. But they say that, you know, we really don't know what's going to happen. So what we have is Ukraine becoming this source for weapons from all over NATO countries coming in in various degrees and what could be a very explosive situation in the coming years even after the war ends. But this is the issue that any set of weapons which have gone into any war zone finally goes into the hands which destabilize other countries. We have the Libyan example for instance, which the weapons that have been poured into Libya has now found their ways into Africa and again destabilized, for example, Mali. So as we have said that the weapons which went to Libya finally found its ways to all other conflicts and including conflicts in Europe. So these are things which you already have a past record. What happens when you pump weapons into a country, particularly when the central government in this country is already unstable. In case of Ukraine, there are two issues. Once amount of weapons being pushed into Ukraine is very large and they now make essentially NATO countries co-combatants because after all you are giving offensive weapons to another country which is fighting Russia. So effectively you are also fighting indirectly Russia because we also know the so-called soldiers who have come to fight as soldiers of fortune are actually probably NATO intelligence officers and there are some reports that have also come from Ukraine to say so. That they said we are actually running the Ukrainian army. So there's about 10,000 of them who have landed up. It's very difficult to think suddenly 10,000 people have landed up to help Ukraine. It does seem that this was organized and they seem to be the people who today control a lot of the logistics of the Ukraine military and also coordinate with NATO in terms of intelligence, also satellite intelligence, other kinds of intelligence which the NATO forces already have and they are being coordinated with the Ukrainian army. So NATO is not as innocent just restricted to supply of arms. But amount of arms they are giving as you have said is very high and Ukraine seems to be burning out arms at a rate which is depleting even the US. The US intelligence sources or military sources according to Bloomberg claims that they are burning out in one week supply in one day. Now of course we could argue that Ukraine is not using it parsimoniously. That could be an argument. They are being profligate in the use of arms. The second is not all the arms are going to the front. They could also be going elsewhere which is what talks, the talk about the black market. We don't know where it's going. This kind of noise is also coming from even the United States defense sources. So if we take all of that, there are two dangers that arise. Keeping the war alive means no peace talks. Of course Ukrainian suffer and Russia is now put to the sword of public opinion. They are continuing a war on Ukraine. So that is one benefit the West seems to get and of course the cost of Ukraine. Second is that all these arms will remain in Europe. It will be a threat to Europe and particularly of the far right which is what is allied with the Ukrainian Nazis as of battalion, right sector, N number of other groups which are there. That this will embolden the right in Europe and also provide arms for them for overthrow of other regimes, other governments in different parts of Europe. So arming the right in Europe is all right for the United States. They have the Atlantic in between. But how good is it for the rest of the European countries is an issue. And of course United Kingdom has always been the pet what is called the lapdog of the United States. They are egging on knowing that they at least have an ocean and seas to protect them from the European land mass. So I think this is something which Europe has to think about. Is that the future they want particularly as they are also dependent for economic reasons on energy from Russia, other raw materials from Russia. Robert since you mentioned energy requirements we also saw Olaf Schulz yesterday the German Chancellor saying that he doesn't want a NATO versus Russia confrontation although it's already happening. And we've also seen that all this high talk about completely cutting off Russian oil supplies could actually backfire. It's not really happening. The US did to some extent of course but Europe is clearly not in a position to do so. So two months into the war how do we see the energy situation as well. Well let's put it this way the sanctions that were put on Russia by the United States is all right for them because they are not too dependent on Russian supplies of oil or coal. But for European Union they are largely dependent on energy which is oil gas and coal on Russia. Now it can be argued that Russia supplies to the world has dropped by 10% as a result of the sanctions. But you have to weigh that against the fact that the oil price rise is 20%. So Russia has actually gained 10% more money as a consequence of the sanctions rather than lost money because of the sanctions. And countries like India and India is not the only one are buying oil which the surplus because of the sanctions. And Russia has certainly delegated probably at less than what the current price is in the international market but above the price which it was say one year back. So given that the sanctions don't seem to be hurting Russia but what is happening at least the energy sanctions are not hurting Russia. But what is happening to Europe? Europe already there is a cut on energy that is coming in. They don't have the ability to handle the amount of LNG that they require to substitute for the pipeline gas. They don't have enough coal supplies. They don't have the ability at the moment to replace Russian gas but even the cuts that have come from the Russian gas supplies. Russia is also cutting its supplies by some amount that as a consequence they also have an issue at the moment that prices of energy have risen by 3 to 4 times in the domestic consumer. A lot of the industries are going to be priced out of the market if the cost of energy goes up because some of the things for instance are critically dependent on the cost of energy. They are in that sense a major part of the cost of production is the cost of energy. If the cost of energy goes up by the market designed mechanism that Europe has that everything has to be market linked and so on. If you do that electricity cost and energy cost are going to go up really very significantly. And as you also talked about the fertilizers you talked about other inputs. Fertilizers being one of them. Metals being one of them. Even to manufacture batteries you need metals in which a lot of the source is really Russia. Given all of that European Union will be put to the sword and in fact the pipelines if they stop supplying gas as the demand is being made on them. European Union should cut off gas supplies. Actually the consequence will be far greater for European Union than for Russia. So given all of this it is very difficult to understand why Europe want to commit harakiri for the benefit of the United States. Because that's what it really amounts to. Trump used to say they have to increase their budget for military by X amount and that would be more purchased from the United States. Because they don't have the armaments manufacturing capacity. So Europe seems to be surrendering to United States damaging their own economy. And in fact the biggest issue that they have been talking about on a global warming and we should completely abjure coal. They are going to increase their use of coal because they don't seem to have any other option. And their whole climate change rhetoric which was built on gas is at least it looks like in the short term going to come apart. So what we are going to see is the European sacrifice for the United States ambition to contain Russia. And essentially NATO is an instrument of subjugation of European Union as well as Russia. In fact if you remember the old statement which was made by the first NATO chief that the objective of NATO is to keep Germany down, Russia out and America in. These are the three objectives of NATO and that seems to be what we are seeing play out at the moment. Absolutely. Thank you so much Rabir. We will be tracking the ongoing war in Ukraine in upcoming episodes of Mapping for Flines. Until then keep watching NewsClick.