Did the war in Ukraine really begin in 2022, or was it the inevitable breakdown of a decades-long tension between major superpowers?
While mainstream narratives often reduce the conflict to a simple "good vs. evil" story, the reality is far more complex. Long before tanks rolled across the border, Ukraine was caught at the centre of an economic tug-of-war between the USA and the EU's Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA) and the Russia’s post-Soviet Eurasian Customs Union.
In this video, we strip away the moralising rhetoric to analyse the cold, hard realpolitik of trade, energy pipelines, regulatory dominance, and superpower interference that ultimately sparked the conflict in post-Soviet Eurasia.
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🔍 **KEY TOPICS COVERED:**
• **The Trade Clash:** Why Ukraine legally could not choose both the EU's Association Agreement and Russia’s Eurasian Customs Union.
• **Technical Trade Barriers:** How replacing Soviet-era GOST standards with EU regulations threatened Russia's economy and defense supply chains.
• **Regulatory Imperialism:** How Brussels exports its legal standards to secure market access, energy transit routes and other strategic areas.
• **The US Role ** Geopolitical leverage, energy market displacement, and foreign policy interests in Europe.
• **The Economic Reality:** The $588B+ reconstruction bill, European defence spending shifts, and the geopolitical deadlock.
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