One of the well-worn journalistic clichés is the use of the term "history" in headlines, to amplify the magnitude of the reported event.
At the time these lines are being written, typing the entry "History" in a Google News search gives about 319,000 results, including titles such as "History in England: For the first time a female soccer player is the athlete of the year", "History: Hapoel Beer Sheva beat Hapoel Jerusalem in the league", "History: Argentina The world champion for the third time", "History: Women and children from Tunisia were recognized as Holocaust survivors" and "History in Ethiopia: For the first time, slaughterers were certified in the Jewish community".
Almost any event can become history - whether for a short time, whether for a certain target audience, or whether it turns out years later that it has historical significance.
However, the year 2022 - which you think back to when you read these lines, in the newspaper or on the website - was an exception.
It can be assumed that in the future textbooks and perhaps also in the online encyclopedias, the volume you will capture will be quite large.
Examples?
Please: In September, Elizabeth II passed away, who during her almost 71-year reign was an anchor and a symbol of stability in a changing world;
She died at the height of an unprecedented political crisis in a country where the sun once never set, but within two months in 2022 she replaced three prime ministers - one of them, the current Prime Minister Rishi Sonak, also became the first British Prime Minister who is the son of immigrants from India, and how symbolic There was his meeting with the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, at the summit of the G20 countries in Indonesia: less because of the ethnic affinity, much more because in 2022 the Indian economy overtook the British - 75 years after independence the former colony overtook the empire.
Sunak.
For the first time, a son of immigrants from India in Downing 10, photo: EFP
But not on Britain alone.
For the first time since the Second World War, a party with fascist roots, "Brothers of Italy", came to power in a country in the European Union - and its leader Giorgia Maloney also became the first female prime minister in the history of the Italian Republic.
In June, the US Supreme Court struck down the constitutional right to abortion - further sharpening the polarization in the world's oldest democracy.
Meloni
For the first time a woman from a fascist party, photo: AP
2022 was also a year of climatic records that made huge headlines, but it seems that we can only understand their full meaning in retrospect.
The entire northern hemisphere is experiencing record-breaking heat.
The summer in Europe was the hottest in 500 years.
This year Pakistan was hit by floods that lasted for two months, claimed the lives of 1,200 people and caused damages of 30 billion dollars.
In China, factories were closed due to the drop in the water level in the rivers that feed power plants.
And all this before the frost storm that is paralyzing large parts of the USA these days.
Dozens perished in the frost storm in the USA. A painful reminder of the intensity of the climate crisis, photo: REUTERS
2022 was also a historic year in the field of sports: for the first time the World Cup was held in a Muslim country, for the first time in an Arab country, for the first time in the Middle East and for the first time in winter.
It is impossible to underestimate the symbolism of the arrival of the biggest sporting event in the world (alongside the Olympic Games) to a country like Qatar, at least when it comes to the visibility of Muslims and their pride - just remember how the Arab-Muslim world coalesced around the Moroccan team, which became the first Muslim and African team - another "first" - to reach the half World Cup final.
And of course, how can we not mention the photo of the year: that of Lionel Messi, waving the soccer world cup.
picture of the year
Messi with the soccer world cup, photo: AP
Back in 2022: the growing riots in Iran lead the regime to announce for the first time the possibility of canceling the "modesty guards" - even if only from the rim to the outside, to quieten the turbulent streets, partly because of death sentences imposed on some of the masterminds.
And the corona that is striking again these days in China, with dizzying numbers of a million patients every day, and an uncertain future.
The riots in Iran.
The regime announced for the first time the possibility of canceling the "modesty guards", photo: REUTERS
But it seems that in 2022 all these events became secondary stories and dwarfed in front of one huge event, the effects of which are felt every day and will probably have an effect for many years to come.
This is an event that changed world orders and caused all the world forces to reorganize.
And the reference is, of course, to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which began on February 24.
And again: danger of nuclear war
A few weeks ago, I ran into an elderly woman at a grocery store in Ashdod who was examining the details of some canning jar next to one of the shelves.
When she found the one she wanted, she put the jar on the shelf and took one from another company.
In a short conversation near the cash register, the story became clear: the woman, apparently from Ukraine, did not want to buy canned goods made in Russia.
"Until Putin leaves, I won't buy any more made in Russia," she said.
Without pretending to claim that the story represents a broad phenomenon in Israel, it nevertheless illustrates how the Russian invasion of Ukraine affected the lives of many people, living outside the borders of the conflict itself.
The Sunday Times recently noted that the war had reawakened the danger of nuclear war, contributed to the rise of global inflation, officially isolated Russian sports and art, spiked the number of strikes in Britain and, in its first five months, raised fears of famine in the Third World due to the huge dependence on grain. of Ukraine, feeding 400 million mouths in the world.
And there is more: after the Western countries closed their skies to Russian flights, Russia responded with a symmetrical step, which extended the long-haul flights.
Thus, for example, the flight from London to Tokyo was extended from 12 to 14 hours.
An hour and a half was added to the flight from Copenhagen to Singapore, while up to 4,000 km were added to flights from Helsinki to some destinations. But all these effects, certainly temporary like the fear of world hunger, were dwarfed by the enormous geopolitical changes driven by the war, the likes of which had not been seen on European soil in 77 years.
To understand the changes and the profound effects, here is a brief reminder: for the first time since 1945, a country invaded its neighbor on the continent and forbade total war.
The first border crossings were recorded near 4:50 a.m., at 4:50 a.m. the recorded speech of Russian President Vladimir Putin was broadcast, in which he announced the launch of a "special military operation" to "protect people who suffered genocide at the hands of the regime in Kiev," and at 5 a.m. :07 Missiles began to land in the cities of Ukraine and its military facilities.
Since that morning, about 7,000 Ukrainians have been killed, of which more than 400 are children, and millions have been left homeless.
Dead from a Russian bomb in Kiev.
Civilian victims in the city centers, photo: EFP
This war, let's just remember, began after many weeks of building an invading force on the border of Ukraine, while Russia claimed that this was another one of the similar exercises it had previously conducted in the region.
On the other hand, in the US and the UK they warned that the war was just around the corner and released intelligence assessments to the media to send a signal to deter Russia. In Kiev they tried to broadcast business as usual, they said that anyway Ukraine has been at war with Russia since 2014, and urged not to panic - but in the meantime they diverted planes and defense systems by air to remote airports.
The surprise: Ukraine survives
Before the invasion, there was one thing Washington and Moscow agreed on: Ukraine would not last more than three days.
On the eve of the catastrophe, the Ukrainian Foreign Minister, Dmytro Koleva, visited the American capital and met with his colleague, Anthony Blinken.
Unusually, a meeting was also arranged for him with US President Joe Biden, with the aim of conveying the depth of American support for Ukraine. But "the atmosphere was a crippled atmosphere", Kolba would recall a few months later, in an interview with Ukrainian journalist Dmitry Gordon, "the president's people looked at me as if The last time, they shook my hand with an expression as if it had just been discovered that I had terminal cancer."
Even in Moscow, they did not believe that Ukraine would last.
According to the plans, the takeover of the country had to be completed within ten days.
In the ranks of the Russian invaders also rode units of the National Guard, with A uniforms for the victory parade.
But they were wrong in both capitals.
What was supposed to be a trip to Kiev turned into the most serious strategic mistake of all the years of Putin's rule, and its consequences are far from being limited only to the military involvement in Ukraine.
First, the people and the world were exposed to the weakness and unpreparedness of the Russian army.
The army, which before the invasion was considered the second best in the world and looked scary in the animations shown to the Kremlin and broadcast on the federal propaganda channels, turned out to be clumsy and unprotected, equipped with maps from the 1960s and outdated combat rations, without devices for encrypted communication and at a loss in the field without instructions from the central command.
And so what at first appeared to be a blitz against which Ukraine had no chance, became within a few weeks the first setback in the battle for Kyiv, when ragged and depleted Russian forces were forced to retreat.
These were the first signs of damage to Russia's status as a military superpower, and they only grew stronger as Ukraine liberated more and more territory over the course of the months.
This already has consequences as far as the demand for Russian weapons is concerned.
Second, the war, and especially the autumn months, brought about changes within Russian society.
And it does not refer to polls, which also have trends that wish to end the war.
Surveys in a country like Russia should be taken with limited liability, both due to the fear of answering "incorrectly" and due to the tendency to authorize the government to do what it deems appropriate - considering "they up there know what they are doing".
To these should also be added the fatigue from engaging in war.
But if you can't believe the polls in a country that is deteriorating into totalitarianism, you can believe the feet: since the beginning of the war, and especially since the general conscription was announced on September 21, about a million citizens have left Russia - many of them members of the technological elite and scientists.
For the first time since the October Revolution of 1917, a dominant Russian diaspora was formed.
Thirdly, after the withdrawal of the Russians from the Kyiv region and the discovery of the executions in Bocha and Irpin, Russia not only became the first country to violate the European peace, but proved that it has no red lines in terrorism against the civilian population.
It turned out that the bottom of the bombing of residential buildings can also be viewed from below.
In the year or two leading up to the war, the repression within Russia - closing down media outlets, surveillance and arrests of opposition figures, and even assassinations of the most prominent of them (due to the poisoning of Alexei Navalny) - was treated as an internal Russian matter. But when the violence lost all restraint beyond the borders, Russia was not can still be perceived in the West as a legitimate partner. In other words: the era of expressions of "deep concern" and "firm condemnations", after which business continues as usual, is over.
Biden and Zelensky.
To prevent another failure, photo: EFP
And in the West: a surprising mobilization
And if the resounding military failure was the first surprise for Putin, the Western response to the invasion in general, and the horrors of the occupation in particular, was the second.
Shortly after the invasion, the United States, the European Union, Great Britain, Canada and other countries imposed a long series of unprecedented sanctions on Russia. Particularly painful and unexpected was the freezing of approximately 300 billion dollars that Russia held in accounts abroad.
The sanctions came package after package, as they reveal Russia's great technological dependence on the West and the basic deficiencies in production (at one of the meetings of the Federation Council, the chairperson Valentina Matveyenko discovered that in Russia there are no self-produced nails at all...).
The war and its horrors led to the departure of about 1,200 (!) Western companies from Russia, thereby turning Putin's Russia into a leper in the eyes of most Western citizens.
"Regardless of the sanctions, in most companies the managers and boards of directors realized that continuing to do business with Russia would seriously damage the company's reputation and, as a result, its value in the market," said Prof. Sergey Guriev, a Russian economist who serves as pro-rector at the Institute of Political Science, in a recent interview with "Bild" in Paris.
Among the companies that left Russia was McDonald's, whose opening of its first branch in Pushkin Square in Moscow in January 1990 attracted a line of 38,000(!) people and became one of the most famous symbols of the end of the Cold War.
Russia, it must be admitted, knew how to curb some of the economic shocks: in order to balance the ruble, withdrawing foreign currency from accounts was prohibited, and companies were required to convert their income into rubles. The buds of protest against the war were brutally suppressed - perhaps also to signal that this is what will happen to those who try to protest on other issues. Rather 70% of the Russian household's expenses are invested in food and household appliances. And these, as the Russian economist Vyacheslav Inozmetz recently wrote in Israel Hayom, were almost unaffected by domestic production and imports from Asian countries that did not join the sanctions. And finally, trillions of rubles were poured into the economy from the welfare fund Leumit to close holes in the budget and continue funding the war.
At the same time, the Kremlin dug a hole for itself when it decided to turn the gas supply into a pressure measure.
For years, 40% of all gas consumed by the European Union came from Russia.
It was relatively cheap and actually drove the European economy.
Germany, whose industries were particularly dependent on Russian gas, was among the most prominent defenders of continued dependence on Moscow and launched initiatives designed to reduce it.
However, with the beginning of the war, the Kremlin began to cut off the flow for "repairs", while increasing threats to freeze Europe.
Towards the summer they finally realized in Brussels that Russia is no longer a reliable gas supplier and developed a policy designed both to save gas and to fill the reservoirs for the winter.
When Russia almost completely closed the tap in September (and a few weeks later a missing hand blew up the Nordstream submarine pipeline, which was built with an investment of billions of dollars) Europe was already prepared for winter - thanks to the discipline of consumers and institutions on the one hand, and on the other hand the increase in supplies from Norway, Algiers and liquid gas in ships that came mainly from the USA.
Russia, on the other hand, was left with surplus gas that could not be diverted to the Chinese market, because building pipelines to China would take time and Beijing does not need the quantities that Russia can market.
The result was that every day Russia burned gas worth tens of millions of euros - in vain.
"This winter we are safe," the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said recently, but the big story will be next winter, when Europe will have to fill the reservoirs without the Russian gas.
It is likely that next year we will see a greater emphasis on renewable energies.
According to the estimates of the International Energy Agency, Europe will be able to replace another 14 billion cubic meters of Russian gas per year in 2023 if it accelerates projects in the field.
The coordinated action of the European Union to neutralize the threat of the cold winter was indeed the need of the hour, but also an expression of determination and unity in the West that has not been seen for a long time.
It's a step that surprised the Kremlin.
So it is possible that more than anything else, the Russian invasion of Ukraine shook the depth perceptions of the political elites.
For years they made every effort not to upset the Russians and swallowed frog after frog: the invasion of Georgia (2008), the annexation of Crimea (2014), the dropping of former politicians on the boards of Russian corporations (Gerhard Schroeder, Francois Fillon) and investing in friendly-plus relations with others (Silvio Berlusconi, Austria's Foreign Minister Karin Keisel) - all these did not harm the Kremlin's moves in Europe.
But the invasion of Ukraine led to a deep reckoning.
"Let's be honest: the structure (of global security), designed to ensure peace and prosperity, failed Ukraine," said Liz Truss, then the British foreign minister, at the end of April. "In the 1990s, we removed the economic restrictions USSR - Div), but this did not result in gains in economic openness and democracy.
We took the introduction as a matter of course, as long as we used the right carrots and sticks.
And leaders like Putin abused the opportunity for change because they feared losing control.
Instead he used the gas and oil money to consolidate his power and gain influence abroad. The assumption that economic integration leads to political change has not worked. We need a new approach, one that combines solid security and economic security, an approach that builds stronger global alliances where free nations are safer, an approach which recognizes that geopolitics is back."
Frank-Walter Steinmeier, one of the architects of the policy of appeasement towards Russia when he was the foreign minister and now the president of Germany, also struck a sin.
"When we look at Russia, there is no more room for old-fashioned dreams. The invasion made it clear that years of political efforts, including my efforts, were a failure."
The issue that divides the USA. For or against abortion, photo: AP
The end of Trump's separatism
It is doubtful whether the creation of the effective Western front would have been possible without the hawkish position taken by the US. After disconnection and a tendency towards separatism under the Trump administration, President Biden already declared in his inauguration speech: "America is back" - and pledged to "repair the alliances and get involved in the world again".
True, the US could not afford another failure after the hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan, but it can be assumed that even without it, the American standing by Ukraine would have been necessary - both for the status of the US as a superpower, and because of the closeness of the Ukrainian story to a deep American narrative of War for freedom against tyranny;.
And perhaps above all - because a victory or even a Russian success in the war would be interpreted as permission to violate the sovereignty of any country, declare war on it, annex its territories and kill tens of thousands of its citizens - with impunity.
The Russian invasion was an attack on the world order itself.
Its success would have turned into an even bigger attack.
The United States, which at the beginning of the war refused to supply heavy weapons to Ukraine, deepened its military aid more and more. If at first it was anti-tank shoulder-fired missiles, in the summer HIMARS rocket artillery systems arrived that were game-breaking on the front, and just this month the supply of Patriot systems was approved, which at the beginning The war was rejected outright. In other words, as the war progressed, the American attitude changed. So far, the US has invested about 50 billion dollars in aid (half of it military) to Kiev, and a similar investment is expected in the next budget.
The invasion of Ukraine also brought about a change in the security perceptions of several countries in the world.
Thus, for example, Sweden, which had been a neutral country since 1834(!) and had a tiny army, decided to join NATO. Also Finland, which adopted neutrality since World War II because of its proximity to the USSR (and later to Russia), changed its policy and joined Sweden in the process Admission to the North Atlantic Alliance.
Ironically, the Russian president who attacked Ukraine because of the "NATO threat" and demanded that the alliance move away from the 1997 lines, accepted the militarization of his neighbors. And if the Turkish obstacles are removed on the way to accepting Sweden and Finland into the alliance, the Russian border with NATO countries will increase by 1,300 km M.
An equally dramatic change is taking place in Germany's attitude to its army.
The "Bundeswehr", which did not enjoy particularly great popularity due to post-Hitler pacifism, was gradually abandoned.
In January of this year, it became clear that only about 75% of the equipment was operational, and in some areas the situation was much worse: only a third of the ships and 40% of the helicopters were fit for combat missions.
The invasion, which Chancellor Schulz called Zeitenwende (watershed), shook the deepest concepts of German society.
Schulz pledged to increase defense spending to 2% of GDP, and allocated another 100 billion euros to rebuild the army. Among other things, Germany will purchase 35 F-35 aircraft from the US.
"This is the biggest change in German security policy since the establishment of the Bundeswehr in 1955," Schultz recently wrote in "Foreign Policy," and according to him, it "reflects the current mood in German society."
Queue for food after the floods in Pakistan.
Hundreds of thousands were left without food and water, photo: REUTERS
Japan returns to the war picture
Far-reaching changes also took place in Japan.
Like Germany, its ally in World War II, there was, and still is, a strong pacifist sentiment in the Land of the Rising Sun.
In the post-war constitution, largely written by the Americans, Article 9 stated that Japan "renounces war as a sovereign right and the use of force to resolve international disputes."
Like Germany, Japan was also allowed to establish an armed force, but it was not even called an army and it remained largely dependent on American defense guarantees.
However, the growing threat from North Korea and the growing Chinese assertiveness in relation to Taiwan - Japan's ally - led to a slow change in Japanese defense spending as well.
The Russian invasion played out the cards and in fact added another potential threat, even though Tokyo and Moscow have a decades-old dispute over the Kuril Islands.
About two weeks ago, Japan announced that it would develop the ability to strike in enemy territory and would allocate 315 billion dollars as part of a five-year plan for a massive weapons arming.
How significant is this?
The Japanese defense budget is expected to become the third largest in the world (after the US and China).
In Russia, people are angry about Japan's strengthening and accuse Tokyo of becoming a puppet of the United States - rhetoric that is strikingly similar to the narratives that have been leading for years in the Russian public in relation to Ukraine. China also did not like Tokyo's moves, which may erode Beijing's ambitions. About a week after the Japanese announcement, China and Russia A joint exercise in the East China Sea, which was only the third this fall. In other words, China and Russia are tightening military cooperation, at least at the tactical level. However, at least as of this writing, China has refrained from assisting Russia militarily.
The one who does do this - and here there is a direct impact on Israel as well - is Iran.
Relations between Tehran and Russia have tightened significantly since the summer, when Tehran began sending to Russia UAVs that were used for attacks inside Ukraine in the fall. Revolutionary Guards personnel even arrived in the territories occupied by Russia in southern Ukraine to help with training (and ten of them were killed). Now the sending of missiles is on the agenda. In return, Russia transfers to Iran advanced technologies, possibly even in the nuclear field, and a few days ago it was reported that it would deliver Su-35 fighter jets.
It also seems that the two countries are planning to expand their trade through the Caspian Sea, in what the parties call the "internal route" that will be far from external threats of attack.
This tightening of ties cannot help but worry Israel, which has refrained - certainly in public - from even sending defensive aid to Ukraine, although according to reports in the US it has provided intelligence assistance with the increase in Iranian involvement in the Russian military effort. Recently the head of the Mossad, Dedi Barna, said that "Iran Deepen the military ties with Russia", and it is possible to assume that his very reference teaches something about the concern in Jerusalem.
The Queen is dead, long live King Charles III, photo: REUTERS
The fear today is about the collapse of Russia
If something unexpected does not happen, such as Putin's descent from the stage of history, the war in Ukraine is expected to continue at least until the summer, as there is no basis for negotiations between the parties.
From Kyiv's point of view, Russia must withdraw from all the territories it has conquered, pay reparations and prosecute the war criminals - conditions that for Putin are equivalent to the collapse of his regime, which was built around imperial ambitions.
Ukraine, which made significant gains in the counter-attacks during the fall and liberated nearly half of the territories occupied by Russia, could have continued the momentum if Russia had not managed to carry out a mass mobilization, and its allies (mainly the USA) had difficulty supplying the required offensive weapons (tanks, artillery, only "water).
In the West, they are delaying the transfer of the offensive weapons needed to Kiev, partly due to the surprising fear that a too quick victory for Ukraine will actually collapse Russia itself.
The decision makers in the US and Europe, it seems, do not yet have a clear script for how to deal with the potential consequences of a Russian loss in the war - for example, the possibility of internal wars between power groups, without or with the possibility of the distribution of certain areas from Russia itself, loss of control over nuclear weapons , and of course a huge flow of refugees that will move westward. In the absence of a clear model for exiting it, when Moscow will try in every way to establish something of its occupations since February 24, while Ukraine will not agree to this in any way - it seems at the moment that the war will continue next year as well and will affect the world which will adapt to it slowly.
shishabat@israelhayom.co.il
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