No end in sight

Russia-Ukraine war has again dominated the news cycles across the globe with the war completing two full years. Over the last two weeks, political analysts, defence experts columnists and war reporters have written numerous articles attempting to dissect the complexities of the war. Television channels gave a significant airtime to discuss the ongoing conflict. The readers have gotten all types of information to consume : partisan, lopsided and impartial. Two years ago, when the war clouds began hovering over Ukraine, all the table talk was about the military strength of Russia. There was a wide perception that the Ukraine could not resist for long. Even General Mark Milley, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff informed lawmakers that Kviy could fall within 72 hours in the event of a full scale Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The war, however, dragged on and entered its second year this February. It vindicated the perception again that it is easy to start a war than to end it.

Over the last few decades, the world has witnessed many wars, both inter-state and intra-state, which lingered for years. It was anticipated that many of these wars would end soon. For example, who could have imagined that it would take US a good 20 years to come out of Afghanistan following its invasion in 2001.

While the Russia-Ukraine war provides a recent example of a not-soon-ending wars, it's economic resilience sprang surprises for the economic experts across the globe.

The tough western sanctions imposed against Russia failed to harm the country's economic significantly. Even it increased in size by 3.6 percent, leaving behind US and Europe in terms of growth. The economy is expected to grow continuously in 2024 despite the US imposed its fresh sanctions on February 26.

Russia has been able to restructure its economy, channelling its gas and oil exports to China and India, which led to a tremendous surge in their purchases.

Russia continued to remain as top crude oil supplier to India with over 35 percent of the total crude oil coming from the country.

Since the beginning of war, India has been able to maintain the good relations with both Russia and Ukraine. It avoided issuing acidic statement or making such diplomatic manoeuvres  that could have harmed its relations with the warring nations.

The New Delhi's G20 declaration vis-a-vis Russia-Ukraine war was rather different than the G20 Bali declaration.

The Delhi declaration avoided the words like "aggression" and "War against Ukraine". The carefully drafted soft text made a call to all nations to respect each other's territorial sovereignty.

The Bali declaration, on the other hand, was direct and harsh.  It billed the Russian invasion as "aggression" and condemned it in no uncertain terms.

Although Ukraine, which was not invited to the summit, said that the summit had "nothing to take proud of", Ukrainian ministers continued to visit New Delhi.

Recently Ukraine Deputy Foreign Minister Iryna Borovets thanked India for providing humanitarian help to Ukraine.

The war is persisting longer than what many had anticipated. It is stretching beyond hours or days and does not appear to end unless warring nations and supporters feel the heat of their resources depletion. However, now the focus of the global media has been shifted to Palestine following the Israel's bombardment on Gaza.