Watch the ‘Arming Ukraine’ Film CBS Pulled After Gov’t Pressure

CHISINAU, Moldova—Nestled above the Black Sea, between the war zone in Ukraine and the eastern limits of NATO territory in Romania, sits the tiny, oft-forgotten landlocked nation of Moldova. Among the poorest countries in Europe by just about any relevant metric, it has been overwhelmed by Ukrainian refugees in the three weeks since the outset of what Russia calls its “special military operation” (спецоперация) in Ukraine.

More than 359,000 people of the 3.38 million who have fled Ukraine since February 24 have passed in and out of the country, according to the United Nations Commissioner for Refugees. Roman Macovenco of the Moldovan Consular Directorate confirmed at least 300,000 Ukrainians had crossed through Moldova. The vast majority came through the border town of Palanca, just 57 kilometers (or 35 miles) from Ukraine’s Odessa. Many wound up in Chisinau, the tiny country’s capital. As of March 14, roughly 100,000 remained in Moldova.

Primarily due to its limited capacity and even more limited financial resources, Moldova is a transitional zone for refugees. Though, the length of their stay depends on their economic status. Moldovan Ministry of Interior Principal Specialist Olesea Sirghi and Macovenco said the refugees who remain for more than two days cannot afford passage to EU countries.

‘Oligarchs Who Drink, Complain and Chase Women’

This reporter learned from local people that the first wave of refugees was made up of almost exclusively wealthy elites.

Misha Tsarkisan is a Georgian migrant who has lived for years in Moldova and does maintenance work near one of Chisinau’s primary refugee centers. He described the initial wave as “oligarchs, who came to drink, complain and chase women.”

Similar sentiments can be heard everywhere in the capital, though they are often expressed with more nuance. Ion Popov, 25, moved his coffee truck near a bus depot that dealt with the influx of refugees. He told Toward Freedom the arrivals were as mixed in their attitudes and temperament as any group might be.

“The rich loaded their things up in their cars with as much money as they could gather, and have generally behaved rudely,” Popov said. “I don’t know how you can be in such a situation and expect to make demands. But you know, many of these people are just caught in a bad situation, and many of them are perfectly decent.”

Moldova’s split identity, vacillating between former Soviet, Russian, Romanian and independently Moldovan, lends to these simmering tensions.

For less affluent refugees, the primary destination is the International Exhibition Center MoldExpo, the largest complex of any sort in the country. The scene on March 14 featured police checkpoints, buses coming and going, and makeshift kiosks-turned-sleeping-quarters. Visitors ranged from young volunteers to European reporters, as well as a troop of “Dream Doctors.” These entertainers were dressed as clowns to provide limited medical care. An Israeli non-governmental organization (NGO) had flown them in from Tel-Aviv (Occupied Jaffa).

The center itself is a collection of concrete buildings, offset from a wooded park that boasts a Soviet-era “Hall of Fame” featuring a collection of statues: Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and the towering centerpiece, Vladimir Lenin.

Inside the center, refugees are served food and drink, and can access donated items, such as clothing, diapers and medical equipment. About 200 people appeared to be in that case, sleeping on cots. The majority came from the southwestern Ukrainian cities of Odessa and Mykolayiv, but also from the capital, Kyiv.

From Chisinau, NGO-sponsored buses take off to EU countries, but most especially to Germany and Poland. In some cases, the embassies of EU countries are paying for the buses. According to the aforementioned Moldovan officials as well as an NGO representative, the EU has pledged about $20 million in support funds to Moldova. Far more buses await at the Romanian border, as Romania simply has more infrastructure as well as the presence of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the United Nations. People with even modest means appeared able to find a way to arrange passage to Romania. But those Ukrainians who are completely destitute often remain in the shelter.

Refugees Speak Out

Contrary to the narratives with which the Western public has been inundated, Ukrainian refugees expressed largely divergent positions on the causes and potential outcomes of the conflict. This reporter witnessed EU-zone reporters gravitating toward the far fewer refugees who held pro-Kyiv positions. Not a single foreign press crew had a Russian- or Ukrainian-speaking member in tow, making it less likely they would hear from working-class Ukrainians, who mainly spoke Ukrainian or Russian.

Toward Freedom spoke at length in Russian with several refugees. What stood out was how few of them lent unequivocal support to the government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Alex Kirillov, a 40-year-old restaurateur originally from Donetsk, had left Kyiv four days earlier with his wife and three children. His main focus on the situation back in Ukraine was what he called a “real problem with nationalist aggression.” He saw no way out of the war without compromise and neutrality. Kirillov said the war had begun eight years ago. “Zelensky’s breaking of the Minsk agreements [ceasefires in Donbass brokered between Moscow and Kyiv] was the only reason this new stage of the war began.” He described pre-2014 Ukraine as “very calm, not as stable as the USSR, but much better than after Maidan, when things became economically unstable and full of war.” Maidan was the series of 2013-14 protests that led to the coup that ousted democratically elected President Victor Yanukovych. Kirillov said the U.S. and NATO supply of weapons to Ukraine worsened the situation. “But, then of course, allies must do this.” He was adamant that Putin, whom he disliked, had zero intention of going past Ukraine, or of even annexing Ukraine itself, and that it was naive to believe otherwise.

Claims have emerged that Russian and Ukrainian troops are being violent toward civilians and journalists. “We have no idea about any of this, as there is so much propaganda,” Kirillov said. “My house is safe, but we did hear bombs, and wanted to leave with the children.” Zelensky, in his eyes, had unwittingly allowed the United States to “poke the Russian bear.” He reiterated Ukrainians and Russians had always seen one another as brothers, a refrain this reporter repeatedly heard from refugees living at the MoldExpo. Then a large white charter bus appeared, he and his family said their goodbyes, and they were off to Belgium.

Oksana Novidskaya, from the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolayiv, found herself in the center with her two teenage children. Her 19-year-old daughter, Sofia, carried a 2-year-old. Novidskaya said a bomb went off near her former classmate’s house. That’s when she decided to leave with her children. “I am not interested in politics, nor do I understand them,” she said. “But I want Russia to stop attacking. All I know is that Russians and Ukrainians should help each other.” Her brother stayed back to fight with the Ukrainian army. As of March 11, he was still okay. When this reporter inquired about her thoughts on the Donbass, Novidskaya did not wish to discuss. Later, she secured a ride to Romania, so she could get to where her mother lives in Italy.

‘The West Was Silent’

Meanwhile, emphatic in opposition to the Ukrainian government was Alec Shevchenko, a 70-year-old former prosecutor from Kharkiv. He approached this reporter, eager to share his perspective, speaking with such vigor that a few dozen other refugees gathered around to witness the conversation.

“This war started when the Ukrainian government began bombing homes in Donbass! The West was silent then. Millions of people live there, you know?”

A civil war began in Ukraine in 2014 after the majority Russian-speaking Donbass region containing two provinces, Donetsk and Lugansk, began breaking away from Ukraine after witnessing the neo-Nazi and nationalist-infused Maidan protests. The provinces announced their secession as independent republics after holding successful referenda. The 2015 Minsk agreements were intended to end the fighting. However, the Ukrainian government has violated the agreements to appease nationalists and neo-Nazis. Since then, more than 14,000 people have been killed in the eastern Ukrainian region and 1.5 million have been displaced.

Shevchenko, who had lived in Ukraine his entire life, then lit a cigarette and demanded this reporter take one as well. “After the Nuremberg Trials, there were no more fascists in the USSR. People from all the Soviet republics—Tajiks, Georgians, Russians, Ukrainians—all lived together happily. But after 1991, suddenly there were some Nazis again. And after 2014, they began to dominate things in Ukraine.”

He grabbed this reporter’s notebook, and wrote down in Roman letters: “AYDAR, AZOV, DNEPRI, TORNADO”

Those are the names of Ukrainian military battalions. Then Shevchenko drew a swastika, and said in English, “These guys!” In his view, explicit Nazis were a minority in the government itself, which he described as full of “actors, athletes, ballerinas and clowns.”

The former prosecutor went on to say the United States and Kyiv had protected and encouraged the military battalions. Putin, in his eyes, was someone who moved deliberately. “He protects his people and his borders. If he was aggressive, like Hitler—as they are saying in Europe—he would have invaded Ukraine 8 years ago.” He gave a strong stare, and said, “Write this down: 80 percent of the Ukrainian people are glad that the Russian army has come. But they are terrified to say so publicly, especially now, because these Nazis will kill them.” The surrounding crowd appeared unfazed at his commentary.

Recent polls on the war have relayed Russian and U.S. public opinions. However, one poll conservative British billionaire Michael Ashcroft conducted March 1 to 3 claims most Ukrainians disfavor Russia, see Russians as kin, favor Europe, approve of NATO expansion, prefer not to leave Ukraine and wish to pick up arms to defend Ukraine.

What was clear in these and other exchanges is the reality of the East-West split in Ukraine, with anti-Russian sentiment the strongest in the west. “[Russians] would never want to kill Ukrainians for no reason,” one refugee, Dima Chumak, 48, of Mykolayev, told Toward Freedom during the conversation with Shevchenko. “But the nationalists want to kill Russians in the east for fun.” What is certain is, like in Syria, Iraq and other U.S.-inspired conflicts, public opinion on the ground is not as uniform as the Western press makes it seem.

Fergie Chambers is a freelance writer and socialist organizer from New York, reporting from eastern Europe for Toward Freedom. He can be found on Twitter, Instagram and Substack.

A scene in Nia Dacosta’s film, “Candyman” (2021), might go unnoticed, but it signifies the theme of representation appearing throughout the film. Representation refers to oppressed people being seen in media and politics, but it does not mean they wield power in those sectors.

Actor Yahya Abdul-Mateen II plays the central character “Anthony McCoy,” whom we aren’t sure can be called a protagonist or an antagonist, even by the movie’s end. In the aforementioned scene, he stands at the intersection of a long-abandoned neighborhood, which is composed of former row-house apartments that used to surround the high-rise tower of Cabrini-Green, a public-housing project in Chicago. The street he is facing is empty of typical neighborhood life—adults going to and from work or errands, kids playing, teens hanging out. But remnants of their neighborhood, including the doorless, windowless apartment units that offer nothing but a foreboding darkness, stand as empty, haunting reminders of a people who used to live there but are long gone. The street is marked by a sign for “Mohawk St.”, and as he walks around the corner, another street sign reads “Locust St.” These are actual streets in the Cabrini-Green neighborhood in Chicago, lending credibility to the storyline by anchoring the tale in the actual remains of the infamous neighborhood, whose residents had been long displaced through gentrification.

But the street names seem to also juxtapose the disappearance of Indigenous tribes, like the Mohawk. They are relegated to outposts that are out of sight, out of mind for the rest of us. The impetus behind the mass displacement of both the Black and poor residents of Cabrini-Green and Indigenous people is the locust-like swarm of gentrification, which could be argued is a modern day form of settler-colonialism. It might be a stretch to make this kind of observation of this scene. It might not have been one that DaCosta might have been intending to make. But it is a connection I couldn’t help making, considering “Candyman” is less of a horror film than an indictment of white supremacy and the terror that it inflicts upon the communities it ravages.

I will try not to provide many spoilers in this review. I will say seeing the first “Candyman” (1992) is critical to understanding the expansion of the story and themes in the current iteration. But those themes that are outside of the conventional horror narrative are as important to the experience as continuing the urban legend of “Candyman.”

Abdul-Mateen is convincing in his portrayal of “Anthony,” a young Black aspiring artist struggling to make his mark on the art world. Ebulliant actor Teyonah Parris plays McCoy’s partner, “Brianna Cartwright,” also a young Black up-and-comer working as a curator at the gallery where her partner’s work is being shown. 

The characters live together in one of the trendy, expensive apartments in the gentrified Cabrini-Green neighborhood, long after the towers had been torn down. Brianna and Anthony appear to have a loving, committed relationship, a lovely expression of Black Love that we all enjoy seeing so much, and we need to see more of. That is until Anthony learns about the legend of Candyman from Brianna’s brother, “Troy,” played by actor Nathan Stewart-Jarrett. Anthony is fascinated with the legend and pursues inspiration for new art by visiting what is left of the old Cabrini-Green neighborhood. He meets one of the last remaining residents, seemingly neighborly “William Burke,” portrayed by veteran actor Colman Domingo. 

Here is where I’ll leave off describing the timeline of the movie, because how things happen almost take a backseat to what some of those things seem to represent. 

Anthony slowly transforms into… something, and his physical transformation coincides with what seems like the fraying of his mental state. Anthony attempts to protect his partner, Brianna, in a pivotal scene that exposes something far more sinister in real life than a horror movie boogeyman: The horrifying and lasting effects of trauma and the unaddressed mental illness among Black people, particularly how Black men are misunderstood or ignored when they suffer mental health crises and trauma.

The tendency for many of us to dissociate ourselves from mental illness and trauma is touched on in a seemingly disconnected flashback that Brianna has of a traumatic childhood experience with her father. No, it’s not sexual abuse, but it is traumatic. But because she never confronts what happens, when her partner, Anthony, begins to display behavior that suggests his mental health is fraying, Brianna responds with less and less understanding, and more and more hostility. Focusing more on moving up in her career than her partner’s obvious growing difficulties, she ultimately leaves Anthony alone to face whatever he is experiencing.

Brianna’s brother, Troy, is also pointedly critical of Anthony as the Black Man Living Off a Black Woman. But Troy himself is settling into a relationship with his new partner, “Clive” (played by Brian King), who Brianna accepts and notes is a welcome change from her brother’s usual unsavory choices. It is another interesting play on the trope of listless Black men being leeches on successful Black women that doesn’t sting any more or less because the one employing it in this case is a gay man. Rather it seems that this represents the pervasiveness of the deadbeat Black man stereotype—even other marginalized Black men believe it.

Much of the first third of the film revolves around Anthony’s transformation. That is where the trauma of centuries of racist violence against Black men emerges.

Much of Anthony’s transmogrification occurs in front of mirrors. That is obvious to the storyline and the myth of Candyman, but it doesn’t quite apply to Anthony because he isn’t sure if he is hallucinating or not. When he realizes that what he is seeing is real, the scene conveys less horror movie scare than a deep reflection into what happens to Black men’s souls living in a white supremacist system that loves their culture, their swag, their art and anything else from which society can profit. But this society doesn’t love them, and it will not hesitate to express its disregard for Black men in the most violent, inhumane ways possible.

That long history of racist violence against Black men is told in cleverly laid-out shadow puppetry, which simultaneously removes the physical gruesomeness of the acts portrayed while delivering their inhumane brutality. Each shadow-puppet story relates to a different iteration of Candyman, and the collective trauma of centuries of violent racist brutality against Black men turns the Candyman figure into something other than a villain. Terrifying in his visage and actions, certainly, but the question emerges as the connections are made between this history and the urban legend come to life: Is Candyman the monster, or is the monster what created Candyman?

As viewers hopefully make this connection, they are invited if they are thinking further to ask a larger question: Are Black men, who lash out at a society that finds every way imaginable to destroy them, the monsters society says they are, or is the monster really society?

Indictments of white supremacist society and privilege, and the impact of the trauma of community having been erased, are woven throughout the film, reflecting ways Black people are either dismissed or used before being discarded.

The contempt and condescending paternalism of society’s gatekeepers is represented by the gallery owner and the art critic—and even the Black major-gallery curator—as they have little regard or use for Anthony as he struggles to produce content that will elevate his profile. They do not hesitate to disregard him when he is no longer of use to them.

The ease with which an oblivious white society appropriates Black culture, traditions and even urban legends—believing no consequences exist for that appropriation because they have no connection to the community those things come from—is reflected in a scene that is on the surface typical horror-movie, high-school kid hijinks.

The crushing trauma of surviving the systematic eradication of one’s community, and the desire to get back or revive what was taken or destroyed, is an underlying aspect of the actions of neighborly-seeming sole survivor/resident of Cabrini-Green, William Burke. 

The way society is more accepting of a Black women’s efforts to climb the ladder, and how easily they dismiss Black men as they fall down it—even as they watch—can be extrapolated as we witness Anthony’s growing instability as it manifests itself when he and Brianna are trying to court a renowned gallery owner.

The way that our parents may have been doing the best they thought they could by moving their children out of the ‘hood and into “better” neighborhoods, encouraging them to forget where they came from in an effort to give them a better life, seeps through the cracks as Anthony confronts his mother about a past she has kept from him. The toll of keeping that secret trauma seems to have weighed heavily on his mother, as well, as family secrets are wont to do…  

The running theme of racist police violence in the film—from beginning to end—is reminiscent of… well… every story we know about racist police violence. Brianna is ultimately put in a horrific situation, and then cynically used against Anthony in a way that shouldn’t be unfamiliar to our real-life experience with racist police terrorism. Brianna realizes then who she is, who Anthony is, and that he is the only one who can save her.

I have noticed among online fan reviews wildly divergent reactions to this movie, almost strictly along racial lines. If the reviewer is a white person, they almost unanimously and unequivocally hate this movie. I see these people as those who do not want to face the traumas and horrors of the history and continuing legacy of racist violence against Black people, which I believe this film effectively expands upon from the original “Candyman.” Although, I find it odd some who have seen this film say they loved the original, but hate this one because it’s “too political,” because they clearly missed the political history of Candyman in the original. They’re mad Candyman only kills certain people, but aren’t bothered at all by the historical track record and legacy of the broken bodies and souls of Black men, women, and children that created Candyman. So they do not see the connection between real life reflected in the film’s themes. But selective memory is what this society is great at, so this response is actually not a surprise at all.

But for others who understand what DaCosta’s “Candyman” is trying to say and why, it may not be scary in the traditional slasher/spine-tingler sense, so it’s hard to say whether or not the movie is “good” as a traditional horror film. However, the real-life nightmares and horrors reflected in this film are what many Black viewers will be all too familiar with.  

As Brianna’s brother, Troy, says early in the movie, “Black people don’t need to be summoning shit.” 

We don’t have to summon supernatural boogeymen. The horrors we live are real.

Jacqueline Luqman is a radical activist based in Washington, D.C.; as well as co-founder of Luqman Nation, an independent Black media outlet that can be found on YouTube (here and here) and on Facebook; and co-host of Radio Sputnik’s “By Any Means Necessary.”

Editor’s Note: The following represents the writer’s analysis.

Chances for a proxy war between Washington and Moscow spiked after the United States refused to provide written guarantees that NATO would neither expand into nor deploy forces to Ukraine and other ex-Soviet states that are not members of the U.S.-led alliance.

However, a reading of the situation indicates Ukraine would be devastated by a NATO-Russia war, which Moscow has been preparing for as diplomatic talks go nowhere. Meanwhile, U.S. President Joe Biden’s latest remarks indicate the United States may be inviting Russia to make a move into Ukraine.

Crossing the ‘Red Line’

In early January, Russian and U.S. representatives held talks over Ukraine, but apparently did not find a common ground. Russian demands were clear: No NATO in Ukraine, and no Ukraine in NATO.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken as well as NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Russia would have no say over who should be allowed to join the bloc. And that was the outcome of the U.S.-Russia negotiations. No compromise has been reached.

Given that it was Russia that initially issued an “ultimatum” to its Western partners, it was not surprising that—after the failure of their recent summits—Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on January 13 that “there is no need for a new round of talks in the near future.” However, his boss, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, reportedly agreed to meet with the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and the two diplomats are expected to hold another round of talks on January 21. Such Russian hesitance gives Washington the upper hand over the Kremlin, and the United States and its allies can simply continue demonstrating they do not take Russian demands, “ultimatums” and “red lines” too seriously.

🇬🇧 передала #ЗСУ легкі протитанкові засоби
Це зміцнюватиме 🛡 спроможності України, а надані засоби будуть використані виключно з оборонною метою pic.twitter.com/ipGpqPfInG

— Defence of Ukraine (@DefenceU) January 18, 2022

Although Russian officials repeated on several occasions that NATO presence in Ukraine is one of the Kremlin’s “red lines,” NATO member United Kingdom continues to supply weapons to the former Soviet republic. Besides that, reports suggest Canadian special forces have been deployed to Ukraine to deter alleged Russian aggression. Plus, Kiev already has purchased and used U.S.-made Javelin anti-tank missiles, as well as Turkey-produced Bayraktar drones. All that, however, does not mean NATO will go to war with Russia over Ukraine. But such actions clearly demonstrate the West still has significant leverage over the Russian Federation.

Russia Prepares for Conflict

Moscow, for its part, has been flexing its military muscle. Russia and its only European ally, Belarus, announced joint drills will be held in February, aimed against Polish, Lithuanian and Ukrainian military build-up. According to Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, Ukraine continues concentrating its radical nationalists from the National Guard next to the Belarusian border, while more than 30,000 military personnel as well as equipment and weapons are concentrated in neighboring Poland and the Baltic states. As the Russian defense ministry announced, the joint exercises will be held at five training grounds, most of them located in the central and eastern parts of Belarus, not in the south close to the Ukrainian border. Still, the United States has inferred Russia and Belarus could use military drills to invade Ukraine, capture the country’s capital, Kiev, and overthrow the government. How likely is such a scenario?

On January 14, Ukraine was hit with a cyber attack that took down the websites of several government departments including the ministries of foreign affairs and education. The authorities have accused both Russia and Belarus of orchestrating the attack. It is worth remembering that in 2008, three weeks before Russia invaded Georgia to protect its proxies in South Ossetia following Georgia’s offensive against the breakaway region, the Caucasus nation started facing cyber attacks alleged deployed by Russia.

Thus, it is entirely possible that what Ukrainian websites experienced is a message that the eastern European country could experience the same fate if it decides to launch a large-scale offensive against Russia-backed self-proclaimed regions that broke away from Ukraine—the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Lugansk People’s Republic in the Donbass region.

However, unless there is a huge provocation against Russian and Belarusian forces, or even against the Donbass republics, Moscow is unlikely to engage in a military campaign against Kiev. Ever since the Donbass conflict erupted in 2014, Russia has been trying to avoid a direct military confrontation against Ukraine at any cost. Back then, the Ukrainian army was on the brink of collapse, and Russia had an opportunity to seize not just Crimea, but all Russian-speaking regions in southeast Ukraine. It remains unclear why the Kremlin would launch an invasion now, when Ukrainian Armed Forces are well equipped and motivated to fight.

Spheres of Influence

It is worth remembering, however, that many in Russia, as well as in southeast Ukraine, hoped in 2014 that the Kremlin would establish a new state dubbed Novorossiya—an entity whose borders would have spanned from the city of Kharkov in the east to the port city of Odessa on the Black Sea. However, in 2015 Alexander Borodai, who served as the first prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and is now a member of the Russian Parliament, said Novorossiya was a “false start.” Has now the time come for a de facto division of Ukraine?

As Biden stressed on January 19, Russian President Vladimir Putin will move into Ukraine “because he has to do something.”

“It’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion and we end up having to fight about what to do and not do,” Biden told reporters during a White House news conference marking his first year in office.

Could it be that the U.S. President de facto gave the green light to Putin for a “minor incursion” into the eastern European country? Does that mean Washington will turn a blind eye if Russia intervenes in the Donbass to protect the self-proclaimed republics in case of a Ukrainian military offensive? 

Western officials, however, keep threatening Russia that it will pay a “high price” if it decides to invade Ukraine. But what if the Kremlin’s calculation shows the price is acceptable? From a purely military perspective, the longer Russia waits, the higher price it will have to pay. Ukraine will have more sophisticated weapons, which means that Russia’s potential invasion will not go as smoothly as some might hope. Even if Russian troops eventually capture Kiev and other Ukrainian regions, that does not mean all troubles for the Kremlin will be over. The West is expected to impose severe sanctions on the Russian Federation, and Moscow will have to find ways to fund what most Ukrainians would call a “occupation apparatus” if Russia happened to occupy more than just the Donbass region, where the majority ethnically Russian population has welcomed Russian backup. But Moscow would also need to find ways to feed millions of people.

The problem, however, is tensions between Russia and the West over Ukraine have reached such a high level that a proxy war—be it on Ukrainian territory or elsewhere—is unlikely to be prevented. It can be postponed, though. The United States is evidently trying to buy time to supply more weapons to Ukraine, which the West helped manufacture a coup inside of in 2014 by funding neo-Nazis, who now make up a portion of Ukraine’s military. Russia could respond by deploying nuclear missiles in Cuba and Venezuela—countries Washington sees as part of its sphere of influence, or as it calls the Western Hemisphere, its “backyard.” At the same time, the United States does not accept Russia can have its own sphere of influence. That means Moscow—if it aims to be accepted as a serious actor in the international arena—will have to fight for the right to have its own geopolitical orbit.

Finally, Ukraine—as the weakest link in the geopolitical game played by the United States and Russia—is expected to pay the heaviest price, and will be treated like collateral damage in a new cold war.

Nikola Mikovic is a Serbia-based contributor to CGTN, Global Comment, Byline Times, Informed Comment, and World Geostrategic Insights, among other publications. He is a geopolitical analyst for KJ Reports and Enquire.