Eugene Chausovsky
The Middle East teeters on the brink of a regional war, and Israel’s conflict with Hamas hit the one-year mark on Oct 7. The longer that such wars—particularly when they are centered around long-standing geopolitical hot spots—go on, the greater their potential to spread—not just militarily, but also into the tangled domains of hybrid warfare, where political, strategic, and economic demands meet. Russia’s war in Ukraine offers a telling set of examples of what might be to come in the Middle East.
While the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 brought global attention to the conflict, the war was already long underway. Its start came with the Euromaidan revolution in Kyiv in 2014 and Russia’s subsequent annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, which was followed by Russian support of pro-Moscow separatists in eastern Ukraine during the ensuing years. Attempts at international mediation and negotiations over a cease-fire ultimately proved unsuccessful, leading to a gradual escalation of tensions between Russia and Ukraine that exploded into full-scale war nearly a decade later.
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