For the reason that Russia is de-facto dismantling the existing US-led world order, and the US is striving to preserve it within the old framework and along the principles of the late-Washington world order, Russia will be declared the guilty side. However, if you look at the situation through the logic of the post-Washington world order, Russia’s actions directly or indirectly lead to the creation of a true multipolar world, where the US and its European satellites will not be able to maintain old institutions of control over the world. The war in Ukraine is essentially part of the process of the destruction of the old world, upon the ruins of which a new world will emerge. Russia’s challenge is simple — to survive in this conflict, in order to take a completely different role in case of the successful outcome of this confrontation. The challenge of the US is also quite clear — to bury Russia under the debris of the crumbling world order and to ensure the modernisation of the extant instruments of world control.
It should be noted that the role of the US in the destablisation and destruction of the old system is far greater than Russia’s. It was precisely the US which shattered the backbone of the current world order by means of aggressions and coup d’etats, considering that due to its enormous military, economic, cultural and political power the world would just accept it and there will be no direct threat to the American hegemony. Consequently, the harder the US tries to squeeze the world in the fist of its superpower ambitions, the more sand of the crumbling old world was pouring through its fingers. The war in Afghanistan ended in a failure, and the Taliban is now counting days till the Americans leave the country for good in order to take power again. Secular autocracies in the Middle East and North Africa were destroyed, but what came in the aftermath was Islamist madness spreading out of control and threatening America’s own interests. They wanted to teach Russia a lesson in Ukraine, but it resulted in a war which threatens the fundamentals of the current world order. And the more persistently the US tries to wage wars of aggression, bringing down the regimes it doesn’t like, the more clear becomes the weakening of the world hegemon, which is gradually losing control over the situation.
Now the US is offering Europe the last change to persuade Russia to back down in Ukraine, but the West will hardly get the capitulation it wants from Russia so badly. The repetition of the situation with the «truce» in Ukraine (the junta continues to play the fool and today it claimed that the legal power in Donbass is the authority elected in the days of Yanukovich) shows quite clearly, that for all the diplomatic maneuvering, the parties are still facing a blind wall of unresolvable conflicts of interests, no matter how they blame Russia for being guilty of everything. As long as no one is going to stop wars of aggression and colour revolutions, there’s no reason to assume that all these ultimatums and the attempts to drive the dissenters into the cage of late-Washington world order will lead to the healing of wounds of the old world. Its breakdown under the weight of irreconcilable contradictions and the formation of the a new system of world order which will benefit the winners of the current conflict is looking more probable.