https://archive.is/mPhZO

I think this conflict as a whole is going to be a major defeat for NATO and a major win for Russia and China.

However, it is a false and under-informed opinion to see Russia’s pivot to what we used to call the Third World as something new. The foreign policy orientation of the Soviet Union was internationalist in the broadest sense. It made fast and true friends across Africa by supporting the national liberation movements. It did the same by supporting Castro and other leaders in Latin America striving to get out from under the boot of Washington in their hemisphere. As for East Asia, apart from China, with which relations blew hot and cold, there was active cultivation of relations with Indonesia, with the countries of Indochina during Soviet times. But whereas the objective of Soviet policy was formation of blocs where possible, the RF objective is to release countries from control by Washington and its allies so that they may pursue their own national interests, which may diverge from Russia’s in many ways.

Yep. There's no single point in history where the USSR didn't try to court the rest of the world.

The single most flagrant error in the analysis of the enlightened and independent minded diplomat whose lecture caught my attention was to measure Russia’s success or failure in the Ukraine war by what we impute to Russia and not what Russians themselves define as their aims. In this war, Vladimir Putin listed three tasks at the outset: to demilitarize Ukraine, to denazify the country and to ensure it does not join NATO. The most important among them is, of course, ‘demilitarization’ which means crushing the Ukrainian armed forces. From this the other two follow necessarily. And destruction of the Ukrainian army is now a realistic expectation in the foreseeable future.

I mean, Western analysts are hardly objective. They are propagandized by their educational institutions and Establishment.