China will define the next phase of the Russia-Ukraine war—and the shifting world order

Ana Palacio

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“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen,” said Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov—better known as Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin—during his exile prior to the 1917 Revolution. Today though, the quote describes what Europeans and others in the world are experiencing. The abruptness of the change the world is witnessing—which happened, quite literally, overnight—in conjunction with the violence in Ukraine relayed by the media, generates deep uneasiness and fear. How will this affect the rest of the world?

Beyond this question, we Europeans in particular must ask ourselves why the bombing of Mariupol has been so shocking, when we watched—unperturbed—the atrocities Russian President Vladimir Putin committed in the Chechen capital Grozny in 1999-2000 and in Aleppo, Syria, in 2016.