On the ground, the war launched by Russia in Ukraine is showing signs of what will be a protracted battle. The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, said: “I see no ceasefire in the near future” or signs favoring the start of first-level diplomatic contacts.

The United States and its allies in Europe maintain a united front against Russia’s aggression on Ukraine. but they show different targets can produce cracks at their usual determination.

The Americans wanted to weaken Russia to the point that it could no longer try adventures like the current war. Europeans have nothing to do with a long war of attrition. They fear that alternatives such as war will lead to an increase with the concrete threat of the use of atomic weapons.

French President Emmanuel Macron, whose role in the crisis is growing after the election that re -elected him for another five years, affirms that “we must succumb to the temptation of shame” and clearly refers to Vladimir Putin . Macron also holds the six -month presidency of the European Union.

In front of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, Macron reiterated: “We are not at war with Russia.” He said he sought an order that Ukraine would accept, “for the return of peace to our continent.”

Europeans fear that the US strategy aims to completely re -arm Ukraine and maintain more than ten thousand sanctions against Russia in the long run.

Europeans believe that if Putin stays in power, it is inevitable to maintain a relationship with him.

The meeting, two days ago in Washington, between US President Joseph Biden and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi was crucial.

Weapons and dialogue

The North American power trusts Draghi and listens to him. In Italy he has received attacks because key sectors of the political cadre that are part of his government insist that the former president of the European Central Bank follows the strict line of the Americans, especially in providing offensive weapons to the Ukrainians.

Instead, Draghi told Biden that “the time has come to start the path of peace”, in line with the leader of the Democratic party, Enrico Letta, who heads the most important political force supporting Italy’s prime minister.

Draghi said that “an agreement has not been reached but the US and Russia should talk to each other.” As one of the most listened to economists today in the international arena, he raised the need to prepare “a Marshall plan for Ukraine long after the war. “

The Marshall Plan was the key to rebuilding Europe destroyed after World War II and General George Marshall, former Pentagon military chief, succeeded in the task.

Draghi raised the need to fully carry out the multimillion-dollar reconstruction of cities, industrial facilities and fields, “with enormous financial effort.”

President Macron, who had a continuous conversations with Putinsaid it was necessary to advance negotiations with the Russians, “because there is no other way to guarantee the security of Ukraine and the strategic security of the European continent”.

In the European Union of 27 countries there are three most important. There is Germany and France, which continue to animate an axis that has been in the EU’s political guide for decades. But the departure of Great Britain along with Brexit and the departure of German Angela Merkel, along with the coming to power in February 2021 by Mario Draghi to head a kind of alliance above the parties, pushed the him towards the summit.

“We should support Ukraine, but we should not try to win, victory is not defined, for Ukraine it means rejecting aggression,” Draghi told the US president. “All parties should make an effort to sit around a table, including the United States,” he added.

The perspective of America

In the US they see the situation from a different angle than the Europeansconsidering that the defense of Ukraine does not necessarily seek a net victory that would remove Vladimir Putin from the stage of Russia, Europe and the world.

This will mark the victory for which in strategic terms the North Americans will be the first to be favored, especially against China.

The director of the U.S. National Intelligence Agency, Avril Haines, told the Senate that Putin was preparing for a protracted conflict with goals beyond the conquest of the Donbas region, with the two Russophile republics of which they were part. that of the Russian Federation.

Russia’s ambitions

There is intelligence information indicating that the Russians occupy 80% of the Donbas, which is a very rich region in Eastern Ukraine, which borders Russia.

But Moscow openly sought to fully occupy the south as well, mainly by taking all of the Black Sea coast from Ukraine.

It was actually a destructive advance whose main goal was to seize the southern metropolis of Ukraine: the city of Odessa, with a million inhabitants, the main port on the Black Sea leading south to the Dardanelles Strait, under the sovereignty of Turkey, and the exit to the Mediterranean.

But on the way to Odessa there are other cities, such as Kherson, that are in Russian hands who want to Russify it immediately and are even considering a referendum in June or July to include it in mother Russia.

Odessa, which would be difficult to occupy if it offered resistance, is very close to the land strip of Transnistria, an entity that seceded from Moldova when it left Russia after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Inhabited by less than a million people but with a full Russian military presence, which maintains a garrison of two thousand soldiers, Transnistria could mean the culmination of Ukrainian land masses.

But Russia wants the whole north of the Black Sea and now there is a battle on Snake Island with Ukrainian forces. Whoever conquers the island will have an important foothold to the north of the sea.

Do not forget the Crimean peninsula, annexed by the Russians in 2014, where the large base of Sevastopol is located.

In the early days of the aggression, Belarusian president Alexander Tymoshenko explained in an interview that reaching Transnistria and covering all the northern shores of the Black Sea was the real purpose of the aggression. You have to believe Tymoshenko, that Russia has made her country a vassal.

The U.S. intelligence director also told the Senate that Putin likely believes Russia is better prepared to face challenges from Western rivals.

It is part of old russian mystique that for centuries they had convinced it of an unparalleled moral superiority and a resentment against the West which, for example, the great writer Fedor Dostoevsky shared, because the Russians were “better than other parts of the world “.

Putin shared his nationalist conservative ideology these ideas helped convince him to invade Ukraine.

The leader believes that in the long run European countries will lose determination as food shortages spread and energy prices and inflation levels rise.

Their enemies think the same way upside down with different nuances between North Americans and Europeans. Meanwhile, the war continues and the fog of battle does not allow us to see the future clearly.

Rome, correspondent

CB