Global uncertainty in the Middle East: Challenges for Ukraine

Abstract

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is one of the most explosive in the world. In recent years, the crisis in the region, which consists of a territorially and culturally connected group of countries from the Maghreb to Pakistan and South Asia, has been growing steadily. The hybrid and proxy-warfare are becoming widespread, the number of participants in local conflicts is increasing, and war zones are being expanded, including operations on land, in the air, at sea, in cyberspace domains. The Covid-19 pandemic has become a new factor in strengthening existing and creating new threats. The peculiarity of modern conflicts is their transition from the regional and local levels to the global one. To the traditional interethnic and religious conflicts are added new ones related to the struggle for regional leadership and the radicalization of fundamentalist Islamic currents. This trend is particularly dangerous for the region in question, and the risks of its implementation are growing. The intervention of international powers (USA, EU countries, China, Russia, etc.), despite the declared stabilization intentions, in practice leads to further aggravation of the situation in the region. The build-up of Russian forces in the Black Sea has created a base for Russia's operations in the southern Mediterranean and the Middle East, as well as in the Balkans. Ukraine is reachable for challenges and risks arising from the Middle East. In the context of the Russian occupation of Crimea and the protracted Russo-Ukrainian war (2014 - present), this factor is becoming particularly dangerous. There is a need to outline the key regional and global trends that operate in the MENA area. Semantic dimension of conflicts so as value systems collision are interpreted as factors of socio-political instability, which are equal in terms of the impact to political, military, economic factors.