The Russian-Ukrainian conflict as a result of the confrontational nature of the international politics of the world powers

Ukraine is a classic example of the promotion of interests between competing world powers. On the one hand, it is the USA and the countries of the European Union, on the other, Russia. International tension in this space has existed basically since the creation of Ukraine as an independent state. It took place with different intensity and in different forms. The confrontational nature of the policy implemented in this way resulted in the first military conflict in 2014. In this conflict, Russian separatists, i.e. the Russian national minority living on Ukrainian territory, and the Ukrainian army fought against each other. The Russian army was not yet officially active in this conflict, even though Russia openly supported the separatists. Since 2014, international diplomacy had the opportunity to reach agreements that would be acceptable to all parties involved, which unfortunately did not happen. Achieving an acceptable consensus should have been mainly in the interest of the EU countries and Russia, i.e. basically Europe as a continent. Geographically, this continent does not end at the borders of Schengen, even though this border divides it into two opportunistic parts. Instead of reaching a consensus, there was a gradual aggravation of relations and an escalation of tensions, which ultimately resulted in this year's direct Russian military intervention on Ukrainian territory. The local conflict thus acquired an international character, where are directly or indirectly involved more and more countries. The outcome of the conflict is not yet known, but it is already possible to say that it will have significant economic impacts on European countries living both in the Schengen area and outside it. Europe will have to deal with the end of supplies of Russian raw materials, on which its individual countries depended to varying degrees. A lot of European countries was not prepared for such a situation. This degree of dependence is the cause of contradictions between individual EU member countries, which may ultimately result in the disruption of the integrity of this previously functioning community. On the other hand, Russia will thus lose an important customer, which will deepen its dependence on China and subsequent orientation towards Eastern countries, which will increase the already existing global polarization