The entire arsenal that it has been accumulating for the war with the whole world, Russia has directed against Ukraine
A cold war always has a chance to turn into a hot one, at least to some extent. During the First Cold War, Moscow for years accumulated huge stocks of weapons for the war against the whole world. And now Russia uses it for the invasion of Ukraine.
The Cold War began in 1946. The Soviet Union was then preparing for war against the capitalists. For 45 years until its collapse, the USSR was only engaged in building armored vehicles. The defense industry was the only sector of the Soviet industry that was not affected by the deficit. And after the collapse of the Evil Empire, its successor, Russia, continued to arm itself, especially speedily after 2008.
Since 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea and started a war in Donbas, hiding its military under the guise of local separatists, relations between the West and the Kremlin have deteriorated. China, whose power has grown noticeably, added to Moscow’s determination to renew the dispute with Washington. Moscow’s imperial ambitions, with the ideological support of Beijing, resulted in a global struggle of “democracies against autocracies”, which some have already called the Second Cold War. However, it is worth noting that the First Cold War has not reached its logical conclusion when the Soviet Union collapsed because the stockpiled arms remained ready. So, it is too early to talk about the beginning of the Second Cold War.
After all, and unfortunately for Ukraine, the final split between the Kremlin and the Western civilization began not at all with a new Cold War but with a “hot” full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Now we have a situation where virtually all the weapons that Moscow has been preparing since 1946 to fight the whole world are aimed at one small country.
In addition, during this conventionally “interwar” period, Russia was increasing spending on the army for years, i.e., it continued preparing its army for war with everyone. And by 2022, Russia had already waged local wars recently: from Moldova or Georgia to the already mentioned invasion of Ukraine in 2014 or the operation in Syria. However, the peculiarity of the 2022 war on Ukraine is that the Russian Federation will use all its potential, except for nuclear weapons.
Thus, Ukraine is resisting the army that was getting ready to fight with the entire West, planned ambitiously to capture all of Europe in the event of a large-scale conflict. In terms of scale, it could be compared to a hypothetical situation when NATO suddenly declares war on Australia. It is not surprising that Kyiv needs the help of the West in this war.
As a result of this war, almost all the weapons of the Warsaw Pact countries from the First Cold War would be used up and written off. Its stocks across Eastern Europe are already running out, and Russia itself has used up or lost a huge amount of Soviet equipment in four months. It continues to de-conserve its weapons warehouses.
Hence, it is this war that will finally end the First Cold War, and the fate has determined that it will end on the borders of Ukraine. At the same time, the outcome of the war will define, with what forces and weapons the parties will enter the Second Cold War.
If the democratic world does not want a new Warsaw Pact instead of the would-be Tehran Pact, then it should increase the pace of supplying weapons to us. It’s needed for the Ukrainian army to be able to completely destroy Russia’s means of an offensive, to make it incapable of future war against the collective West and against Ukraine.
