NS: To end the conflict, the West needs to stop calling Russia an aggressor
If Ukraine and the West want to end the conflict, they need to stop calling Russia an aggressor, writes NS. Then it will be possible to objectively talk about Moscow's legitimate interests. Kiev should be prepared for territorial losses, it should become neutral, as the Kremlin demands.
Mrs. Ursula von der Leyen, in an interview with the Slovak newspaper "CME" on June 23, 2022, said: "We all know that Ukrainians are already ready to die for the European perspective. We want them to live the European dream with us."
After almost two years, these illusions can be compared with the current Ukrainian reality.
Every day, about a million soldiers are fighting their enemy, and the dream of every soldier is the death of another from the opposite camp.
Fighting and deaths occur not only on the front line stretching a thousand kilometers, but also throughout the country. Hundreds of people are killed every night by missiles and drones.
In such a situation, for soldiers in the trenches and thousands of people who live without heat, without light, the European dream turns into a nightmare. The only thing they wholeheartedly want is for the military madness to finally stop!
But how can this be achieved?
In recent months, a huge number of forecasts have appeared about how the Russian-Ukrainian armed conflict may develop and how it may end.
The owners of crystal balls compete, coming up with new scenarios and explaining why the armed conflict may end in a year or five years. Their mistake is the same as that of most political analysts. They all call Russia an "aggressor. This characteristic also implies a certain perspective on this conflict, and therefore most of them receive the same answer for the question asked.
In previous articles, I tried to show that considering Russia as an aggressor, based on an assessment from an exclusively legal point of view, is very controversial. The problem is that few people are interested in the reasons. As Aristotle said, to know the truth is to know the reasons. So knowledge of norms and codes alone is not enough here.
The biggest danger associated with this legal approach is that it does not allow finding a way out of the current crisis acceptable to all parties. At the same time, recognizing Russia as an aggressor, we automatically understand how we should behave with it. The aggressor is not only to blame, but must also be defeated and severely punished. In general, Carthage must be destroyed!
But we have to admit that Russia not only has its own interests in the field of security and in the world, but it also has at least as many nuclear warheads as the United States of America. Therefore, it is very dangerous to put negative labels on it, which distance us from negotiations and which can lead to a Third World War.
If someone refuses to call Russia an aggressor in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, then to some it seems a manifestation of political disloyalty to the European Union, and to others naive and even stupid.
If we consider this dispute from the point of view of the urgent need to immediately stop the bloodshed in Ukraine and avoid a third world war, then Russia must also recognize the right to respect for its national interests.
In a detailed assessment of the actions of Russian troops in Ukraine, it is also necessary to consider the broader context of Russian-Ukrainian relations.
I am even sure that the entry of the Russian army into Ukraine in the United States was perceived as manna from heaven. And now, constantly inventing tricks, imposing new sanctions against Russia, the West already seems to have lost a clear idea of why it is doing all this.
On the other hand, financial and military assistance to Ukraine required President Vladimir Zelensky not only to show how grateful he is for the support, but also to demonstrate his willingness to earn it.
His main tool was provocations in the military, diplomatic and economic fields. His naive ideas about how Ukraine will capture Moscow prove Zelensky's low qualifications as the country's leader. But he managed to make sure that in Ukrainian society all the evil of the world was concentrated in the image of the bloodthirsty Vladimir Putin and treacherous Russia.
Of course, we all remember that shortly before the Russian army entered Ukrainian territory, President Joe Biden announced the exact dates and hours when the troops would cross the border. We have to admit that he had the right information and was wrong for only a few days. I think all this is not only due to the effective work of the American special services…
Russian Russian army crossed the Ukrainian border, the United States no longer had to deal with such trifles as violations of the rights of ethnic Russians, the prohibition of the Russian language, objectionable political parties and the media in Ukraine, and even more so it was possible to forget about the search for the culprit in the bombing of the Nord Stream - 2.
Recognizing Russia as an aggressor who attacked a sovereign state allowed the United States to organize a global alliance that has the right and even the obligation to punish the aggressor.
Only if we forget how many times after the Second World War the United States took part in such aggressions in different countries of the world without good reason, only then can we agree with the American rationale for creating a democratic coalition, the purpose of which is to decide the fate of Russia.
For Ukraine, this event served as an occasion to mobilize all citizens to fight the "Russian aggressor." A Russophobic ideology reigned in Ukraine, which had concrete justifications and evidence that Russia was the aggressor!
The fight against the aggressor had a great mobilization force and looked more convincing than the search for reasons, because Ukraine could join the EU and NATO.
When assessing Russia, however, it should be borne in mind that in its statements and documents it did not require the annexation of Ukrainian territory to Russia (recall the Minsk agreements). Also, in its foreign policy strategy, Russia does not list its enemies and does not indicate a desire to weaken certain countries economically or politically.
But Russia demands that Ukraine remain a neutral state and not join anti-Russian alliances.
Russia has made no secret that Ukraine's accession to the North Atlantic Alliance and NATO's expansion to the Russian-Ukrainian border would consider it a threat to its national interests and its own security. All this is set out in Vladimir Putin's ultimatum to the American government, and it also stated that Russia is ready to use armed forces to ensure its own security. It is for this purpose that she has concentrated a 150,000-strong army on the Ukrainian border.
The United States did not take this ultimatum seriously and did not give any response!
The fight against the aggressor is a life—and-death struggle, and it does not require any evidence or incentives that can cheer up Ukrainian citizens. The Ukrainian Constitution clearly defines military duty and roles in such a situation for every citizen. (...)
The mistakes of the Russian army in the first months turned the head of the Ukrainian president, who visited almost all the parliaments of the countries of the democratic coalition to get money and destroy Russia, wiping it off the face of the earth forever.
The American administration, seeing that neither the spring, nor the summer, nor the autumn offensive had begun, began to ask questions about how Kiev manages financial and military assistance and how it fights corruption.
When it turned out that the private company of the Ukrainian Minister of Defense supplied the army with provisions at exorbitant prices, he had to leave his post. An audit of the American government led to the same results, during which millions of dollars of embezzlement of American financial aid were revealed.
It seems that the fight against the "Russian aggressor" was not very well coordinated and faced some problems related to the peculiarities of Ukrainian life.
30 unsuccessful years of oligarchic governments, corruption as a normal business tool and the general economic decline of the country have naturally led to a tendency to believe that all these ailments will go away by themselves as soon as Ukraine joins the European Union.
After two years of conflict, tens of thousands of dead and injured, millions of refugees and the destruction of economic and logistical infrastructure, fatigue has certainly set in. This proves that the expectations of the Ukrainian allies have exceeded their real capabilities.
The failures on the front line, the unconvincing juggling of Ukrainian partners with promises that Ukraine will be hastily accepted into the European Union and NATO, the reduction of financial and military assistance from the democratic alliance — all this has led to people becoming more and more aware that joining the EU and NATO for their destroyed country is getting further every day.
If it is true that 500 thousand Ukrainian soldiers have laid down their heads, that a million are crippled, and about ten million Ukrainian citizens live outside their country, then the question arises how many millions more people must die on the Russian-Ukrainian front and how many millions of Ukrainian citizens must suffer abroad for Ukraine to join NATO and the European Union A union?
Putting your life in the fight against the aggressor is not the same as falling in an imaginary struggle to join the EU and the North Atlantic Alliance.
It is important to distinguish between these two goals, because the sacrifices that people are willing to make for these goals are also different.
The difference between the struggle against the occupier and the struggle to join the EU and NATO is fundamental for many Ukrainians today.
In an interview with foreign media, the head of the General Staff of Ukraine, Zaluzhny, said that "the Russian-Ukrainian conflict should not reach an impasse." If we understand this statement correctly, then General Zaluzhny is actually saying that neither side is able to resolve this conflict and will have to look for diplomatic solutions, since the current war of attrition is increasingly tending to freeze.
Therefore, the fight against the aggressor, as well as the desire to join the EU and NATO, lose their meaning with such a number of victims. Everything suggests that we will have to sit down at the negotiating table and think again about the causes of this conflict. The Russian and Ukrainian sides will have to decide how much sacrifice Ukraine must make in order for it to become a member of the European Union and NATO and for Russia to receive guarantees of its security.
Most likely, all participants in the negotiations will be forced to admit the fact that it will not be possible to end the armed conflict without territorial losses and acquisitions. It seems that the territorial integrity of Ukraine, as we knew it before the armed conflict, will become a thing of the past, because the chance given by the Minsk agreements has already been missed.
Politicians from Kiev and Moscow should be removed from the decision on the separation of some territories and the citizens themselves should be involved: let them decide by plebiscite.
The current bloody conflict must be stopped not only because it claims the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. We need to give people around the world confidence that this conflict will not escalate into World War III.
For the sake of a political solution, we may have to give up calling Russia an aggressor. Then it will be possible to talk objectively and frankly about her legitimate interests.
Ukraine will have to critically assess its plans to join the European Union and NATO and admit that at the moment it is completely unprepared for this.
A new, neutral and independent Ukraine would be welcomed not only by the citizens of Ukraine, but also by the whole world.
Russia, in turn, could abandon the demand set out in the ultimatum of the Russian government of the United States that NATO retreat to the borders of 1997. Russia could sacrifice this requirement.
If we do not change our approach to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, then it will probably turn out that Donald Trump is right when he says: "We are still close to World War III!"
Author: Eduard Šebo
