Cemalettin Kanaş
editor

Dear readers,

The Kyiv-Moscow (or, more broadly speaking, West-Russian) conflict, which had been shelved since Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, hit the agenda again in February, 8 years later. The world community found the Ukraine crisis, which grew like a snowball, with its pin pulled.

Under the circumstances of the 21st century, those who watch the occupation of a whole country with both conventional and social media opportunities, primarily focus on the humanitarian aspect. However, the harsh realities of life dictate that we cannot overlook the economic effects of this war, especially grain and energy. After the conflict, oil prices exceeded 100 dollars, while grain prices reached 10-to-15 year-high.

It would be a surprise if such a conflict remained only between the two countries and were limited to the products produced by these two countries in today's globalizing world. As a matter of fact, Western capitals, who kept silent in the first hours of the attack and talked about only limited economic sanctions, became more involved in the event when the expectations that Kyiv would raise the white flag from the first day came to nothing. Thus, it is well comprehended this is not a problem between the two Black Sea countries for sure. As I mentioned at the beginning, this is not a Kyiv-Moscow, but a Western world-Russia crisis. The fact that the USA, European countries and NATO pushed their weight around one after the other was an indicator of this.

The conflicts, which have been thought to remain limited to one or two cities in the east of Ukraine, reached Kyiv within a short period, suggesting that the quite unpredictable actors are at work. This is an undesirable situation from both a humanitarian and political perspective. Putin was supposed to respond to a possible sanction by cutting off Europe's natural gas. Now, the bloodcurdling word 'nuclear' is circulating like hot cakes. Let's hope the crisis will be resolved in the most equitable way as soon as possible.

Hope to meet you in our next issue…