HONG KONG, March 29. /TASS/. The US has made an error trying to use Ukraine to weaken Russia, Michael Brenner, Professor Emeritus of International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), told the Asia Times.

"On Ukraine, it has been a fundamental geostrategic error that has had negative moral consequences: the cynical sacrifice of half a million Ukrainians used as cannon fodder and physical destruction of the country, in the cause of weakening and marginalizing Russia," he pointed out.

According to Brenner, "defeat in Ukraine entails much more than the military collapse of the Ukrainian forces that is in the cards." "The West has thrown everything they have into that campaign: their stock of modern weapons, a corps of advisers, tens of billions of dollars, a draconian set of economic sanctions designed to bring the Russian economy to its knees and a relentless project aimed at isolating Russia and undermining Putin’s position. It has failed ignominiously on every count. Russia is considerably stronger on every dimension than it was before the war; its economy is more robust than any Western economy; it has proven to be militarily superior; and it has won the sympathies of nearly the entire world outside the collective West," the expert emphasized.

In his view, "the assumption that the West remains custodial of global affairs has proven a fantasy." "Such comprehensive failure has meant a decline in the United States’ ability to shape world affairs on matters economic and security," Brenner said.