Tag: Ukraine

By Charles Onunaiju

Before his travel to the United States of America for the start of what became known as the Oslo Accord or process, the then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin famously said that “peace is only made with enemies and not with friends”. When on September 13, 1993 the Israeli leader stretched out his hands to shake his long-time adversary, former Palestinian leader and chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), Yasser Arafat at the White House lawn, it was both defining and stunning moment. For the two men long engaged in the mortal battles of cracking each other people’s skulls, the moment of their ice-cold handshake, signalling a new chapter in the relations of their two peoples were significant and momentous. At least, it momentarily cracked the ice of one of the world’s longest dispute then. Never mind that Yitzhak Rabin was to be assassinated two years later on November 4, 1995 by one Yigal Amir, an ultra-nationalist Jewish peace rejectionist who opposed the Oslo accords and the process of negotiation that it triggered. The death of Rabin at a peace rally, he organized to drum up support for the Oslo process paved the way for the rise of Benjamin Netanyahu and his ultra-nationalist hard-right that returned the Israeli-Palestinian relations to the trenches of blood-letting, misery and sorrow for which they are currently engrossed.

At the end of the long drawn Iran-Iraq war in 1988, the Iranian spiritual leader, Ayatollah Khomeini agonized that it was worse than swallowing a poison to make peace with former adversary but also noted that peace and reconciliation is only possible with a former bitter foe.

South Africa’s iconic black founding president, Nelson Mandela who jointly won the noble peace prize with the last white minority rule leader, F.W De Klerk in 1993 not because they were friends but they were former bitter adversaries, who overcame deep rooted and even structural hate between their two respective peoples to seek peace and reconciliation, paving the way for a multiracial society or what was colourfully dubbed the rainbow nation.

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Against the trend of established histories and even common sense, the embattled Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy whose term of office elapsed May 20, gathered along with his western patrons, friends and few neutrals at the Swiss resort of Burgenstock from June 15-16 in what was curiously dubbed “peace conference” supposedly aimed to find a solution to the conflict with her bigger neighbour, the Russian Federation. Participants consisting Ukraine’s patrons and few neutrals, the Swiss “peace conference” lived up to expectations, as its final communique piled up litanies of blame at Russia and added that “the United Nations Charter, including the principles  of respect for the territorial integrity and sovereignty of all states, can and will serve as a basis in achieving a comprehensive just and lasting peace in Ukraine”. This is without any due regards that no state in the exercise of her right to territorial integrity and sovereignty should constitute and / or wilfully be an accessory to the breach of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of another state.

The Swiss peace conference of Ukraine and her patrons and friends did not invite the main adversary, the Russian Federation prompting some major powers like China and regional leaders like Nigeria to stay away because the jamboree at the Swiss resort has no peace implication for the Ukraine-Russian conflict, let alone, any peace dividend. Russia has earlier dismissed it as of no consequence, leading the Russian leader to outline his maximalist peace offer, which urged Ukraine to withdraw her forces from her former four regions that voted to become part of the Russian federation last year.

While any genuine peace conference, with the two sides effectively participating would moderate the maximalist positions of the two sides and set the stage for compromises and moderations, the Swiss resort conference of Ukraine and her patrons with neutrals will only induce more fratricidal fighting between the two sides as they struggle to gain battlefield advantage that would be consequential in the future substantive negotiations for peace.

The American-led NATO, the key promoter of the Swiss conference are active party to the conflict and their roles which have largely consisted in supplying military hardware including its accessories cannot be anything except to invite Russia to surrender, the least of options that is on Moscow’s table. In its major military conflict and confrontation since it was founded in 1949, Ukraine’s near certain battlefield defeat will unravel the western military alliance, (NATO) as overrated and a mere political bubble.

Should desperation push the western military alliance into direct confrontation with Russia, it will bring to an end the civilizations of the belligerents and imperil the rest of humanity.

The Swiss meeting did practically nothing to advance settlement of the conflict let alone establishing the framework for peace. Russia dismissed it as a waste of time and some countries that attended including India, Brazil, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and others refused to sign the final communique. Zelensky has earlier  shot himself in the feet when he decreed that Ukraine would never negotiate with the current leadership of the Russian Federation and therefore, any path to meaningful peace negotiations will start with Zelensky overturning his decree which he passed at the initial stage of the conflict, when he thought that a western military might, backing him would secure a quick victory against Moscow.

Thoughtful Western analysts have been cautioning Ukraine to seek negotiation and end the war, when it can secure some useful concessions. The Western military alliance has a long history of cut and run, which was on display in Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq and Ukraine would not be an exception. Meanwhile voters across the European Union, weary and also wary of the humongous sums of money that are handed to Zelensky and Co, have called the bluff to mainstream ruling parties in Germany, Netherlands and even France, in the just concluded Europe’s wide parliamentary elections, prompting the French President, Emmanuel Macron to call for early parliamentary election.

Peace between Russia and Ukraine is possible but must address the core concerns of the two parties in conflict. The conflict is beyond the simplistic narrative, that one country invaded the other, as if states are irrational to undertake costly military operations for the fun of it. Russia already has the largest territory of any country in the world and it would be outright nonsense simply to suggest that Russia launched her special military operation for territorial hunger. Russia makes up 13% of the planet earth. Moscow has clearly outlined her security concerns which was on full display and was generously shared with her western partners before the conflict with Ukraine erupted into military confrontation.

The US-led Western Alliance, the key patron of Ukraine largely ignored these concerns believing that a combination of economic sanction, international campaign of diplomatic isolation and military pressure will force Russia to surrender. With all the arsenals in their kit-economic, diplomatic and military almost exhausted without any result of Russia stumbling let alone falling, common sense dictate that it is time to care about Moscow security concerns and other issues, it raised.

A genuine peace plan, including the China proposed 10 steps which include building a consensus on what Ukraine and Russia really want would, among other things, constitute the genuine framework for peace and reconciliation between the two brotherly neighbours who sprang from the same fountain of the Kievan Rus of Prince Vladmir about a thousand years ago.

•Onunaiju is an Abuja based public affairs analyst.

•  By Alade Fawole

Ukraine has been at war with Russia for two years under President Volodymyr Zelensky. Zelensky is a former television comic actor, a political neophyte set up by Western power brokers and deluded by prodigious Western media adulation that he is a modern-day incarnation of the great Winston Churchill, Britain’s greatest war-time leader of the 20th century. Time Magazine even anointed him as its Person of the Year 2022. He must have become giddy from these adulations. It was all clear from the get-go that he was no Churchill but a palooka seduced into believing he is a great leader even though he himself knew he’s hardly better than a hapless puppet being manipulated by the US and its NATO sidekicks to wreck his country at their instance. America made clear all it wanted was use Ukraine to achieve economic and military weakening of Russia.

Regrettably, though comically dressed in exaggerated combat vests and trousers, merely for optics, and toasted on foreign platforms, including the US Congress, he in no way resembles Winston Churchill. His comical figure doesn’t even remotely come anywhere near the gigantic profile of that heroic and formidable British warlord. He is instead a figure of pity, a straw man created by Western media but now being casually thrown under the bus to give way for Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu. Nevertheless, he is still the one to take the fall for Ukraine’s destruction, as the US casually moves on to the next theatre of another of its forever wars – Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, now it’s Ukraine.

Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine has undoubtedly caused untold hardship to that once promising former Soviet enclave. And it was entirely avoidable if a sagacious and thoughtful leader had been in the saddle in Kiev. Remember that Moscow had warned repeatedly and openly since 2008 that extending NATO membership to Ukraine was an existential threat Russia would not take lightly. But then, the US in its usual hubris wouldn’t countenance Russia’s concerns, and instead kept pushing Ukraine to poke the bear in the eye. How silly is that, against a nation that possesses one of the biggest and most fearsome nuclear arsenals on the planet! What an utterly poor judgement it is to imagine that Ukraine could get away with such an act without Russia lifting a finger? Even after Moscow had massed some 190,000 soldiers at their common border, Zelensky still refused to take it seriously.

Had he been a real leader, he would have known that no respectable commander-in-chief ever mobilizes such a large force and their fighting equipment to a proposed theatre of operation only to casually ask them to stand down, without having obtained the outcomes he desired. A commander-in-chief that does so risks loss of respect from his own senior commanders, or a mutiny to remove him. Senior military commanders waiting to command troops and be valourised in battle hardly take kindly to armies being humiliated by a bloody civilian c-in-c. All that was required to avoid the war was a simple undertaking that Ukraine would not push for NATO membership, period. But as president, Zelensky has hardly risen beyond the status of a television comedian who enjoys the klieg lights. No offence intended, but comedians are mere jesters out to make people laugh, and make a good buck doing it, not cut out to be leaders, more so in war time. Zelensky is a veritable example of the danger of comedians deluded into thinking they can lead nations. And he has, expectedly, made a spectacular mess of it. 

Secondly, had Zelensky not repudiated the agreement reached with Russia at the April 2022 negotiations, the war could have come to a quick resolution, with the two most important concessions being devolution of some regional autonomy to the historically Russian-speaking Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzia, and acceptance of neutrality, i.e., no more push to join NATO. Ukraine would have gained back its territories occupied by Russia except Crimea. Instead of taking this sensible option, he let himself to be misled by Western “friends” like Boris Johnson into walking away from the deal, with the promise that the West would support him to defeat Russia. Had he taken the correct steps, Ukraine would most probably have retained sovereignty over its entire territory and retained the millions who had fled the country who may never return, and would have prevented avoidable destruction of its economy, infrastructure and mass internal displacement of its population.

Two full years into a war it cannot win, Ukraine’s grim situation remains pathetic. It has become a shadow of its old self – vastly depopulated by between eight and ten million who have fled abroad; its once large and fearsome military completely eviscerated; its economy in complete ruin, surviving only on handouts from the US even to pay salaries; its infrastructure has been destroyed through relentless bombardments; no longer in control of its pre-war international borders with Russia occupying about a fifth of the country with no hope of ever militarily evicting it; even its only coastal access to the Black Sea for maritime trade is heavily circumscribed by the Russian navy, headquartered in Sevastopol in Crimea.

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In spite of the promises and assurances made by the Western nations, Ukraine is today not any closer to NATO membership than it was at the start of the war. The alliance had made it known it does not consider Ukraine ready for membership in the near future because it is engaged in a war. Unfortunately, that war has destroyed virtually everything Ukraine can leverage in negotiations with Russia. In fact, its fate now resembles that of Germany at the end of the First World War when the victorious allied powers arrogantly shoved the Treaty of Versailles down its throat. I fear that with Western attention and aid now shifted towards helping Israel in the Gaza war, Ukraine might just be abandoned to the option of seeking negotiations with Russia from a badly weakened position than in April 2022. As it is, it has lost every hope of fully recovering Russian-occupied Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzia, Kherson and Crimea. Short of suffering from delusion, the ugly reality must have dawned on Zelensky – he is no longer invited anywhere anymore, and the West has shown it now has a different focus! Israel now takes priority, and that’s where Western weapons, resources, money and attention are currently directed.

Unlike Winston Churchill, whose heroic war-time leadership saved his country, Volodymyr Zelensky has wilfully led Ukraine into near total ruin and a pathetic shadow of its former self. In the end, he is bound to hand over a rump state to his people, a considerably shrunken territory than what was handed over to him, a destroyed industrial capacity, a damaged infrastructure, a degraded military capability and diminished international prestige, a badly depleted and a demoralized population, for that is all he has to show for his leadership. How to save Ukrainians, who have suffered too much already, from further avoidable and pointless mass slaughter and destruction from a war it is clear to the whole world they cannot win, is the big question?

•Prof Fawole writes from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife.