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“What is happening has radically changed world geopolitics. It's like a tectonic plate that has moved. The world will be distinguished for a long time from how it was until now”, said yesterday the High Representative for Foreign Policy of the EU, Josep Borrell, during an informal meeting with journalists in Madrid. In this new context, what is foreseeable is that Russia leans more towards China, retreating to large countries that have influence over smaller third parties, which depend more on oil, gas and wheat.
"Africa is a continent where we can see significant Russian influence," Borrell said. Latin America has also been very clearly in favor of Ukraine, until the last vote (the third), where there were already more abstentions.
“There is a geopolitical battle that goes through the speech. Right now the discourse is that European sanctions are going to cause problems for third countries. Go live in Africa because of the sanctions. This is the Russian discourse, amplified by China. Because the Chinese media systematically repeat Russian speeches,” Borrell pointed out. And he clarified: “What they say is that the problem of the food crisis that is coming is a problem caused by the West, because with its sanctions it has distorted the world economy. When really the food problem is caused by the stoppage of wheat exports from Ukraine and Russia. The Russian fleet is blockading the Ukrainian ports and does not allow wheat exports to leave. And they are bombing and destroying and burning the silos where the wheat is stored. Who is going to cause world hunger? The one that prevents the food from arriving. It's not us. They are the ones that prevent it militarily”.
Borrell insisted that we will attend a speech battle, as happened to us during the pandemic: "There was a diplomacy of the mask, a diplomacy of the vaccine and now comes the diplomacy of food." He also stated that Russia “has already said that her wheat will go to friendly countries. And that will be taken into account by many people who are as dependent on Russian wheat as we are on Russian gas. Hence, from the EU it has to be done to have "an important presence at the international level, because there is going to be a diplomatic battle that is going to force us to participate everywhere": "We have to be prepared for a dialectical battle over who is responsible for the energy crisis and who for the food crisis?
"Putin does not want to stop the war"
At its most tactical and defensive level of the war, the ga conflict has changed its nature and has entered a new phase. Now there is a war of positions, which takes place outside the city, in the open field and with the mass media.
“We are making a great diplomatic effort. We have to try to end the war as soon as possible, but how it ends matters to us," said Borrell. He assured that, like all conflicts, the one in Ukraine will also "end with a negotiation", but for now "Putin does not want to stop the war". In this sense, he emphasized the idea that from the EU we are not “promoting the war”: “We are trying to contain it, both in its spatial dimension -so that it does not affect other countries-, and in its vertical dimension -so that it does not more deadly weapons are used. Hence, the members of the countries are helping Ukraine militarily, because they are defending European values and, therefore, they are waging "a war that defends us".
It is time for diplomacy, but also to reduce energy dependence on Russian gas and to face a food crisis. "Each country is reducing energy dependence according to its possibilities," confirmed Borrell, who warned that this war produces an asymmetric shock that affects its back in different ways: due to the demands for asylum and energy dependence. In this sense, “it is time to build unitary responses” that implies “a solidarity effort”.
