A wild illegal economy based on boats with the russian flag (nobody will touch them), has already arised and a steady flux of goods towards Russia is most probably being built as we see the war still going on.
So both sides of the coin still show no sign of intention of a real long-term change in the status quo.
i.e. look all that gas still flowing to Germany like nothing has happened at all.
The "big" war is still mostly a byproduct of analyst outcomes - yet serious, nor most probable for edge cases - and media war (hybrid war tough, is a reality, both sides are waging it).
However, there are few key points for me that are rarely addressed which point to rarely spoken conclusion:
-EU,US spends too much effort in maintaining a moral narrative (on its behalf and UA) which does not hold much water and to the degree it does, then trying to reducing all aspects to a single coordinate point has no logic and people see through it for the most part at least ). [Rand corporation released quite telling document in 2019]
-China will not let Russia fall (just yet), I think this is a large blind spot of the western narrative/thinking. [It certainly will not want it strong...but even stronger issue (for China) would be to have pro-western puppet government in Russia. Not factoring this into overall strategy how to deal with this conflict is a mistake in my view]. (US DOD associate Hudson Institute released in 2008 interesting point of view report on that)
-The unprecedented and belligerent economic war West is waging against Russia is not perceived in the rest of the world positively [many western commentators pointed this out from multiple different points of view - likely not a good long term strategy, and it seems damage done to the image of global economy is irreversible.] (nearly all analysis are saying that, which means this is only political will behind this?)
-Ukraine population (non-military) do not perceive USA and EU fully positive from what I gather. Sure, the UA corrupt leadership which already had agreed to play a role in this proxy war (and delivers media messages of thankfulness for promoting the war, however, all (literally) civilian interviews from the impacted war areas I have seen [several dozens cases], (and the few refugees I talked to) are puzzled why the West is anti-peace. There is no single western politician who would be pro-peace. This is to me the most telling sign of something crooked in the entire western story. (We do everything imaginable not to work toward peace, we seem eager only to promote and escalate the war). I think the world would react very differently if EU was pushing 100% pro-peace solution of the conflict while Russia would have rejected that (instead west is waging proxy war and still trying to maintain high moral ground, which is a lost cause to the rest of the world which was at one point or another a western colony or was subjected to such kind of war by the west).
The only logical and coherent conclusion to draw is that EU and USA assume their interests are aligned (I think EU goes into this relationship rather blind), and in fact they are going to wage total and complete war against Russia (in not so distant future if things go well from their point of view) in order to take its natural resources (there is no EU future without Russian natural resources). From EU strategic long-term point of view there is no other conclusion one can draw which is consistent with the evidence (total diplomatic,economic distrust and only military options are discussed) as far as I can see within the limits of my knowledge.
(-- I take a stand rather far away from any details of immediate events of the conflict, Im trying to make sense of the global force field as it is developing...).
