The war in Ukraine is no longer merely a territorial conflict between Russia and Ukraine. It has become a battle of competing geopolitical narratives. While the West views the war as resistance against aggression, Russia sees it as the latest phase of a centuries-long struggle over the global distribution of power and strategic resources. Understanding these competing perspectives is essential to understanding why the war continues to escalate. The recent Russian military strikes have been devastating, and it seems there will hardly be any let-up in the Russian response in the coming days. How Russia interprets this war is a critical question, and I wish to answer that in light of a Russian author's assessment.

I have sought a Russian interpretation of the Ukraine War from a column, 'The West's Conflict with Russia: General Issues and Prospects' written for International Affairs magazine by V Levchik, a Russian advisor in the Ministry of Russian Foreign Affairs. According to Levchik, conflicts and geopolitical fault-lines have often been deliberately exploited or intensified by the collective West to preserve a favourable distribution of strategic resources. Starting from the period from colonisation to re-colonisation through international institutions, this resource acquisition was continued by the American resource expansion in the Middle East from the 80s onwards. Later, the three waves of NATO expansions, colour revolutions and NATO's eastward expansion, all from the Russian perspective, highlight the continued Western resource greed. In the current war in Ukraine, it is a Russian belief that the West seeks the ultimate defeat........

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