“All supporters of simple solutions should remember the obvious: any agreement with the devil — a bad peace at the expense of Ukrainian territories — will be a victory for Putin and a recipe for success for autocrats around the world.”
In writing these words, Mykhailo Podolyak, a close adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, was willing to state the quiet part aloud. Not only would the wrong peace agreement between Kyiv and the Kremlin be detrimental to the values of freedom and liberty, but it would be the equivalent of making a deal with the devil. In this case, the devil is walking the earth in the guise of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. Podolyak's words were written in response to a short-sighted plea by Nixonian relic and neo-Russian apologist Henry Kissinger for Ukraine to negotiate an end to the hostilities with the Kremlin war criminals, one which would be on the devil’s terms.
Included in Kissinger’s proposal was the ceding of Ukrainian territory, including Crimea, to Russia.
Since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion, President Zelenskyy has been clear Ukraine will never allow any of its land to be sacrificed in the name of an imaginary peace treaty. In May, he spoke up in defense of “the millions of those who actually live on the territory that they propose exchanging for an illusion of peace,” and since then, he and other leading officials have reiterated that stance.
When combining Ukraine’s military successes with Russia’s rapidly diminishing war-fighting capacity, the increasing calls for peace, which all echo the same favorable terms for Russia, of which Kissinger has been just one voice, are appearing more and more as a ploy by the terrorist regime in Moscow to attain a pause on the battlefield. This would serve the dual purpose of allowing them to recalibrate their plans and reequip their soldiers for a new, wider offensive against Ukraine.
Whether the calls for negotiations come from the Russian government or their surrogates, there is no interest in lasting peace, just a ceasefire long enough to restart their attacks. This is clear from what the state sponsors of terrorism are willing to discuss, and what they say is off-limits. In this vein, at the end of the year, the Kremlin regime’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov offered that: "There can be no peace plan for Ukraine that does not take into account today's realities regarding Russian territory, with the entry of four regions into Russia. Plans that do not take these realities into account cannot be peaceful." The disingenuousness of its entreaties is also wholly apparent in its willingness to continue carrying out war crimes and genocide against Ukrainians on a daily basis while proclaiming a desire for peace.
While Russia’s demands are opaque beyond a demand to have the illegally occupied areas of Ukraine recognized legally as part of their failed state, the official Ukrainian stance has been clear for months and was laid out for the world to see on November 15, when President Zelenskyy offered a 10-step peace formula.
Terms of the formula are:
When fully implemented, it would become clear that the Ukrainian Formula for Peace isn’t just beneficial to Ukraine but the global community as a whole, a community that would have a hand in helping craft and executes the points of the plan. Due to this desire for peace, and a fair end to the war of Russian aggression, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called for a February “summit” at the United Nations.
In putting together a common sense approach to finally ending a war that Russia started almost nine years ago, the leadership in Ukraine is showing yet again why it has not only earned the trust of its international partners but a lasting leadership role on the world stage.
