The Russia-Ukraine warfare as the final stage of U.S.-Russia proxy war in Donbas (2014-2022)
A fter thirteen months since the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine warfare , neither country will likely be able to achieve absolute victory[ 2 ], while confronting the daunting possibility of war protraction. Thus, now is high time to identify its root cause in search for an end to the warfare. True, Russian’s aggression against Ukraine for some is evident, but it is a result, rather than a cause, of the circumstances, as in the common saying “ there is no smoke without fire ”. Given that Ukraine neither made an armed attack nor deliberated an imminent attack against Russia, its armed invasion seems to constitute a quintessential case of one nation-state’s unprovoked aggression against another according to basic international law. Yet, Russian President Vladimir Putin has justified the invasion by invoking “t he responsibility to protect ”, another international law principle. It is often applied to an ethnic conflict in an independent state that involves mass atrocity crimes, such a