Russia Is Right: The U.S. Is Waging a Proxy War in Ukraine
The Cold War demonstrated that arming third parties can tie down a rival superpower. But bragging about it defeats the purpose.
Armed and dangerous.
Photographer: Sergei Supinsky/AFP/Getty Images
The war in Ukraine isn’t just a conflict between Moscow and Kyiv, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently declared. It is a “proxy war” in which the world’s most powerful military alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is using Ukraine as a battering ram against the Russian state.
Lavrov is one of the most reliable mouthpieces for President Vladimir Putin’s baseless propaganda, but in this case he’s not wrong. Russia is the target of one of the most ruthlessly effectively proxy wars in modern history. And the less U.S. officials say about it, the better.