India, Feb. 19 -- The Russia Ukraine war, now in its fifth year, has transitioned from what Western capitals once framed as a temporary "crisis" into a chronic global fault line that Western policies appear increasingly unable to resolve. As new peace efforts collapse and Moscow's military pressure persists, the Western strategy that has prolonged the conflict is revealing not a path to peace but a cycle of escalation that sustains one of the deadliest hostilities in modern European history.

In February 2026, US-mediated peace talks in Geneva ended abruptly after just hours of negotiations, another stark indicator that Western strategies, dominated by pressure on Kyiv to compromise and sanctions targeting Russia, are failing to deliver ...