Transformation of Geopolitical Perceptions in the Russian-Ukrainian War: Impact on Regional Relations in the Future

Abstract

The purpose of the research is to highlight the transformation of geopolitical activity during the Russian-Ukrainian war in the early twenty-first century. The specificity of the study is that the regional military conflict has acquired the features of a global confrontation involving (so far without direct participation) many players in world politics. At the same time, the objectives of the article determine the formation of a new paradigm of state interests of different levels of influence. The Russian-Ukrainian war is not only causing geopolitical changes but also transforming the conceptual dimensions of geopolitics. The methodology used in the article is based on historical research methods: historical-systemic (to understand the content of geopolitics), historical-typological (to characterise the format of geopolitics), historical-comparative (to determine geopolitical activity). The general scientific methods of structural-functional and socio-psychological dimensions allow us to analyse the features and consequences of the Russian-Ukrainian war in the local-regional and global-international context. The results of the study show the transformation of the role and positioning of geopolitical actors in the context of the military conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and also a paradigm shift in geopolitics in terms of reorientation from its traditional stable definition to a dynamic hybrid meaning. The classical geopolitical principles of ordering the coexistence of states and their relations are losing relevance both in the institutional (UN crisis) and functional sense. Geopolitics, which used to determine the interests and level of influence of individual states or alliances, is now focused on the synergy of the overall world order in the context of global historical mega-activities. History is familiar with the alternation of geopolitical calm and geopolitical explosions, and the current Russian-Ukrainian war has the potential to end the long-standing orderly world order and to trigger the volatility and uncertainty of civilisational development. So, today, the Russian-Ukrainian war, according to the usual geopolitical interpretation, is a regional conflict that has indirect effects on global processes (political, military, economic, cultural). However, a new conceptual understanding of geopolitics, based on synergistic principles, argues that a military confrontation of this scale has every chance of escalating to the point of a world war. The prospects of the study lie in the need to identify geopolitical principles that will be able to keep the Russian-Ukrainian war at the stage of a regional conflict.