The advance of the Ukrainian armed forces on the Russia-occupied territories in Autumn 2022, marked by a the liberation of the strategically and symbolically necessary metropolis of Kherson in November, emboldened Ukraine supporters who demand extra support for the beleaguered nation and imagine that its victory, i.e., full recapture of misplaced territories, is more and more possible. Alternatively, the Ukrainian advance additional unnerved the sceptics who’ve by no means removed their pinky thought of a ‘negotiated answer’ to the conflict in Ukraine as the one doable approach out.
The optimists draw their arguments on a (maybe naive) perception in worldwide regulation, solidarity, dedication to the professed liberal-democratic values (freedom, dignity and sovereignty particularly), and more and more on Ukraine’s resilience, civic unity and patriotic dedication to wage the nationwide liberation conflict so long as vital.
The sceptics’ arguments enormously differ – from the preliminary disbelief within the capability of Ukraine’s statehood and nationwide unity, to extra substantiated warnings on the inevitable ‘Ukraine fatigue’ on the prospect of an power disaster and financial hardships, and in the end to the apocalyptic imaginative and prescient of a nuclear Armageddon that Ukrainians could ‘provoke’ by unreasonable makes an attempt to defend their sovereignty.
Whereas western ‘Ukraine fatigue’ and Russian nuclear blackmail certainly are critical issues, the query is what the options are. In different phrases, how can that coveted ‘diplomatic answer’ may be viably outlined and realistically applied?
There have been no lack of requires ‘peace negotiations’ however only a few if any concrete proposals of doable compromises that could possibly be acceptable for each side. The reason being easy. The last word objective for Ukraine on this conflict is to defend its official, internationally acknowledged borders and shield sovereignty, freedom, dignity and identification of its residents. How can that be reconciled with the final word objective of Russia: to abolish worldwide regulation, to occupy Ukrainian territory, eradicate Ukrainian identification, exterminate the Ukrainian elite, and to remodel the remaining free residents of the democratic nation into the unvoiced slaves of a fascistoid despot?
What’s the viable centre between these two initiatives the place liberal Kyiv and totalitarian Moscow may compromise?
Ukraїner: The costumes of the Bears, the characters of Malanka, are manufactured from bundles of sedge twisted right into a knot. The costume of an grownup character weighs 30-40 kilograms. Beleluya, Halychyna. January 2022. Photograph: Artem Galkin.
Warfare on standing and identification
Classical peacemaking templates should not relevant right here. This conflict is just not about territory – Russia has occupied Crimea and a part of the Donbas since 2014, however was not glad. It’s not about safety and the proverbial ‘NATO risk’: since 2012 Ukraine was formally a impartial (‘non-aligned’) nation, like Finland, the Baltic states and Afghanistan when the Soviets invaded them. And it’s actually not concerning the legendary ‘Nazis’ and ‘oppressed’ Russophones. Quite the opposite: Russophones are the first victims of Putin’s shelling right this moment, whereas the ‘Nazis’ elected an (initially) pacifist and cosmopolitan, Russian-speaking Jew as president in 2019, eradicating his allegedly ‘ultra-nationalist’ predecessor Poroshenko in free and honest elections.
The conflict is at the beginning about standing and identification. Russia is combating the collective West, for which Ukraine is believed to be the proxy. Russia is combating for equal standing with the US – a standing Russia thinks it’s entitled to (with its duly assigned spheres of affect) however unjustly denied. Russia is combating for a brand new world order the place may makes proper and brutal drive and nuclear blackmail reigns supreme.
That is additionally a conflict about identification – concerning the perverse, paranoid, megalomaniac thought of ‘Russianness’ that originated within the 18th century and have become embedded within the Russian mentality, its tradition and imperial politics. Putin has not invented something new, however merely developed that previous ideology to its excessive, wrapping it in jingoistic rhetoric, and in the end translating it into genocidal practices.
Ukraine had the unhealthy luck to be the main target of that idée fixe, of Putin’s obsession. Russian imperial identification was created on the blatant appropriation of the historical past of Kyivan Rus, the territory of Ruthenia, and the identification of Ukrainians and Belarusians by a marginal Moscow tsardom on the north-eastern outskirts of historic Rus. It actually had some dynastic, ecclesiastic and different connections with Kyiv, however the equation of 18th-century Muscovy with the medieval Kyivan Rus polity that disappeared in 1240 is sort of as nonsensical because the equation of contemporary Romania with historical Rome.
Ukraine remained a harmful witness of that historic theft, an insurmountable impediment within the easy appropriation of the Rus legacy. It was certainly an alien physique in an in any other case great legendary image. That nuisance was wither to be absorbed and digested – or destroyed.
One needn’t be a lot of a specialist on Russia, Ukraine or Slavonic historical past – it’s ample to learn Putin’s quasi-historical treatises, or to take heed to the venomous statements of his ideologues who angrily deny Ukraine’s proper to exist. Doing so makes one perceive each the underlying motives of the Russian aggression and its final genocidal objective – to wipe Ukraine from the earth as a state and a nation.
In Putin’s Mein Kampf, Ukrainians are merely Russians who forgot who they had been, and may due to this fact be forcibly returned to the Russian fold. Pliable topics needs to be embraced and rewarded, the defiant ones ‘re-educated’, and the resistant species exterminated as incurable ‘nationalists’ or ‘Nazis’. On this perverted imago, Ukraine is proclaimed the ‘anti-Russia’ – an existential risk each to Russian identification and the Russian state. It’s there doomed to annihilation.
Make peace is assist Ukraine win
Putinists’ phrases and deeds depart little question about their intentions, and Ukrainians are completely conscious of this. That’s the reason no one in Ukraine takes the concept of ‘negotiated options’ significantly. However the western ‘peacemakers’ nonetheless suggest these unspecified ‘options’, apparently failing to acknowledge the extent of Putin’s obsession with the ‘Ukrainian query’ – which is sort of as paranoid as Hitler’s obsession with Jews. In each instances, we completely know what the ‘ultimate answer’ means.
Therefore, the first query that western ‘peacemakers’ ought to ask is concerning the Führer’s ideological obsession: is Putin in a position and keen to renege on his ‘Ukraine denial’, the basis reason for his genocidal rhetoric and genocidal conflict? Till and until this occurs (and it’ll actually not), all ‘diplomatic options’ are wishful pondering that point out both the speaker’s perception in miracles or a frantic seek for a mild solution to wash their fingers of duty.
However even when it had been to be deserted by its companions, Ukrainians would proceed to combat. What the western ‘peacemakers’ are prone to obtain in Ukraine by withdrawing their army support is just not the coveted peace, however extra Russian terror and extra mass graves like in Bucha, Izium, Mariupol and elsewhere.
The one solution to make peace in Ukraine is to assist Ukraine win. This could be a problem, because the sceptics rightly level out. ‘Ukraine fatigue’ is an actual risk. However it’s as much as western political leaders and opinion formers to speak what the conflict is about: what is absolutely at stake in historic and worldwide phrases, and minor the inconveniences for Europeans are in comparison with the ordeals that the Ukrainians are going via for the sake of what they imagine are frequent values, frequent safety and a standard future.
The nuclear blackmail is a extra sophisticated concern, since no one can present a hundred-percent assure that the besieged Russian forces within the Crimea wouldn’t make use of a ‘tactical’ nuclear weapon because the final resort. However this, once more, is a matter of communication: how clearly and persuasively will the western leaders will clarify to Putin the direst penalties of his recklessness?
Putin is psychopathic however not suicidal – bear in mind his panic response to COVID and his extreme, caricatured distancing measures. Besieged Crimea is just not a besieged Moscow. In any case, there is no such thing as a higher different to countering nuclear blackmail. If we succumb to the blackmailer right this moment, we’ll create a harmful precedent for the longer term. We ship a sign to all rogue states that aggression pays off, that conflict crimes go unpunished, and that nuclear saber-rattling can work. By giving in to the blackmailer we don’t clear up the issue however postpone and multiply it.
The unhappy fact that every one peacemakers ought to understand is that Russia is dominated by a rogue regime, that may neither be talked to nor trusted. It means no cheap negotiations are doable till the regime modifications. This may occasionally not occur quickly, however Ukrainians are decided to defend their nation, their freedom and dignity so long as it takes. It might be neither morally honest nor politically sensible to discourage them from resistance.
As UN secretary-general Antonio Gutteres has reiterated, we should help peace however ‘not any form of peace – peace based mostly on the values of the UN Constitution, and peace based mostly on worldwide regulation’.
