The West is still living under the illusion of a quick peace between Ukraine and Russia. But this war will not end without a winner

Yuri Maznychenko 23 March 2022

"What is the situation in Ukraine right now?" - a journalist from Japan asks me. A good friend of mine connected two of us a week ago, and here we are, in between air raids in Kiev, chatting on WhatsApp.

Judging by his nods at my story, Japan is following the latest events of Russian military aggression in Ukraine. Now the Japanese themselves have learned what it is like to negotiate with the Russians.

Russia unilaterally withdrew from negotiations with Japan on a peace treaty on the Southern Kuril Islands. The Japanese, who are used to taking responsibility for commitments and seeing things through to the end, only shrug their shoulders and don't understand how the Russians can be so negligent in resolving important issues.

My colleague was especially struck by the words about the "three forces" that had built an insurmountable barrier for the second world army on Ukrainian lands and created a unified resistance against the occupation invasion. Ukraine's armed forces, territorial defense centers, and volunteers, whose colossal eight years of activity have contributed to Ukraine's month-long successful defense war against Russia.

War throws light on what in peacetime might have been in the shadows and reveals human nature, separating white from black. It is at critical moments when actions speak for words when people without fabulous wealth donate their life savings to humanitarian aid for those affected by war, and when corporations generating huge profits still expect quick peace deal and are in no hurry to stop operating in a country that has unleashed a war. A country, in which 3/4 of the population support war crimes and genocide against one of the most numerous European peoples.

France has been called one of the victorious countries of World War II and the authors of the postwar world order in which Nazi ideology was officially banned. Few, however, like to recall France's "strange war" against Germany from the fall of 1939 to the spring of 1940. Despite the German aggression against Poland, the French did not actually participate in hostilities, despite the then French-Polish protocol of mutual assistance.

And when trouble struck on its own borders, France capitulated to the enemy only a month later with a week. And that happened despite the gap of Western Europe armies in military equipment over Germany and the approximate equality of the sides in human resources.

Ukraine is holding back the 200,000-strong Russian army without a week of that term, allowing the aggressors to seize only one regional center. Our defenders have prevented the Russian armed forces from cordoning off Kiev and inflicting more casualties on them than the enemies suffered in the 10-year war in Afghanistan.

France, which was among the countries that condemned Nazism after World War II, risks falling into the same rake that it did 83 years ago by not taking a categorical stand against manifest evil. Or when the French did not support the newly born Ukrainian state in the 1920s and bet on the White Guards. The consequences of this policy were the "Red terror" in the Ukrainian lands, the creation of a totalitarian Soviet empire, the Holodomor, and repressions. And then - World War II.

French President Emmanuel Macron is naively trying to persuade Russian President Vladimir Putin to make peace, forgetting that the once French policy of containing Adolf Hitler in Europe failed miserably. Terrorists are not negotiated with; they are eliminated before their harmful actions lead to the deaths of many innocent people. After all, after the 2016 terrorist attack in Nice, the French were looking for terrorists with guns, not inviting them into a room to negotiate.

Big French businesses, unlike many international companies, have not stopped operating in Russia, paying for Putin's militarism in Europe with taxes. These corporations are very much counting on the fact that peace will come as soon as possible and that the Russians and Ukrainians will shake hands. Politics is politics, but there are huge investments in Russia, which businesses do not want to lose. After all, money is paramount and it is the nerve of war, while in France you can drink wine on the terrace without care, fighter jets do not fly through the sky, and shells do not hit houses.

If Leroy Merlin is not concerned about the death of an employee as a result of a blow to a shopping mall in Kyiv with a vacuum bomb prohibited by the Geneva Convention, the company's continued silence and unwillingness to boycott the aggressor country should be equated with assistance to terrorism.

This is despite the fact that many French come out to rallies in support of Ukraine, send financial and humanitarian aid to the war victims and openly call on the authorities not to be ceremonious with Putin's criminal regime.

Ukraine's resistance to Russian military aggression could drag on for many months. Ukrainians are not eager to make peace as quickly as possible to avoid more bloodshed, because what is at stake for our people is the right to freely choose the path of development for the country they want to take from us. Putin is sending new batches of mobilized Russians, Russian troops are entrenched in occupied positions and planning to wage a long and exhausting war against the Ukrainian people.

It is time for all third parties to open their eyes to the reality: this war will only end in victory for one side.

Ukraine's victory will be the liberation of Crimea and Donetsk and Luhansk regions from Russian troops, a court martial over Putin's criminal regime, and Russia's transfer of reparations for the billions of dollars of damage inflicted on our country.

Russia's victory will be a complete conquest of Ukraine, its accession to a union of countries with Russia and Belarus and the intensification of further confrontation of such a union with the Western world. In essence - the restoration of the Soviet totalitarian empire.

It is in the power of the West to influence the outcome of the war today in favor of Ukraine, which these days is defending not only its lands, but also the basic European values that are daily violated by Russian barbarians.