Why Ukraine chooses war over peace?

People now are often talking about peace talks with Russia. And question why Ukraine continues fighting. Putin proposes peace, no? I will try to explain what is wrong with Putin’s peace.

The main idea of the article can be summarised as following:

Russia: “I want Ukraine cease to exist, their land go to us, exterminate their culture, kill everyone who disagrees”

Peace promoters: “Sounds like a reasonable diplomatic solution to end the war”

What follows is a lengthy explanation.

Preface, initial Russian requirements

Before the full-scale invasion Putin on his Feb 22nd gave three requirements to Ukraine [1]:

Agree that Crimea is Russia
Agree on not joining NATO
Demilitarize

Allegedly there was even some agreement on the topic, especially about NATO. Before the full-scale invasion roughly half (albeit a smaller half) of Ukrainians did not want to join NATO. Opinions about Russia were much better all over Ukraine than now — roughly 50% still had a good opinion about Russia. That time many things could still be done peacefully. War on Donbas was almost frozen, nothing happened regarding Crimea. Time before February 24th was the best time to do negotiations. Would Ukrainians accept it? Maybe yes. Why? With all the honesty, look at the Ukrainian language map [A] and the map of territories occupied by Russians [B]. There is a strong overlap.

Please note that Russia did not propose anything to Ukraine, Russia only had requirements. True to say I don’t know what Russia could give to Ukraine though. Trust in Russia was shaken after Crimea was annexed. The “promises of not attacking” would not be taken seriously. Would they buy Ukraine by cheap gas? I don’t know. Maybe there could be some special rights for Ukrainians in Kuban’, I don’t know. Negotiations could show, but this never happened. What happened instead was…

Full scale invasion

When Russia started bombing Ukrainians cities attitude towards Russia in Ukraine changed dramatically. Remember the time Russia said that it did not bomb Ukrainian cities, that it were Ukrainians who did that? And that only military sites were targeted? Now no one doubts that it was Russia which was indeed bombing Ukrainian cities and Russia themselves admit that they specifically bomb civilian infrastructure. Somehow those who ask for peace forget that Russia often tell lies.

So the bombed cities where mostly Russian-speaking, where the majority of those 50% who felt good about Russia came from. No wonder positive attitude towards Russia fell from 50% to 2%.

Almost from the beginning of the invasion there were some peace talks going on. What people fail to realise is that these were not peace talks. These were ultimatums from Russia. Additionally to the initial three requirements (no NATO, Crimea status, demilitarization) two more were added — denazification and accepting the independent status of new Donbas republics.

The denazification is a joke requirement. It looks like in Russian point of view all people who continue speaking Ukrainian are Nazis. And I’m not making this up — internally Putin was talking about de-Ukrainization. And there are lots of talks in Russian TV that Ukraine is not a nation, Ukrainian language does not exist and Ukrainians are simply a subset of Russians. Those who disagree — are Nazis.

As for accepting the independent status of Donbas republics — why should it take few days for Ukraine if it took 8 years for Russia itself? Where Russia was for all these eight years?

Please note — among these requirements there is nothing for Ukraine. Probably the only thing Ukraine would get is that Russia would not continue the invasion.

Russia promises not to attack Ukraine

No one trusts that in Ukraine. Why? Russia signed the Budapest memorandum, Paris charter and probably even should follow the UN charter — all these documents forbid attacking sovereign nations, with the first one being specifically about Russia promising not to attack Ukraine.

Putin said in his earlier talks that the Crimea will never be invaded by Russia. Then Russia invaded Crimea.

After that Putin said that they will stop on Crimea and no more lands would be conquered. Then they invaded Ukraine in 2022.

Then Putin said that conquering Ukrainian territories is not in Russian plans. And then they annex four Ukrainian regions — roughly 20% of Ukrainian territory.

And then Russia would promise not to attack Ukraine again? Who would trust them in Ukraine? Russia breaking their promises leads to the…

Two main reasons Ukrainians continue fighting

…and both reasons are related.

First one is that Ukrainians don’t trust that Russia would not attack again after Russia broke their promises several times already. Russia breaking the promises is the main reason why Ukrainians want to join NATO to feel some protection. I haven’t heard of USA attacking NATO members. And Russia attacked Ukraine after specifically promising the protection. Ukrainians are pretty sure that Russia will attack again after some years to come if the peace agreement is signed right now. And this brings us to the second reason.

Second reason is that Ukrainians don’t want their children to die in the future war, which will be planned by Russia much better than the current one. Current peace will give Russia time to prepare for the next invasion. And that time those who are children right now will fight. Ukrainians fight for the future and lives of their own children.

Russian war crimes

It seems to me peace-seekers often underestimate how Bucha massacre influenced Ukrainian public opinion. Before that we could be angry at Russia that it attacked. But we could seek some peace, some agreement. We could consider this war as a fight of a Russian regime, conquering of a territory, geopolitical games, whatever. Civilians died — but this is the unfortunate consequence of all wars, but this was a war between two armies — Ukrainian and Russian. Until it wasn’t.

Bucha changed everything. After Ukrainians could regain the Kyivan lands horrible atrocities made by Russian soldiers were found. Who forced them? Why the hell would they do it? They came to “liberate people from Nazi regime”? But instead they brought tortures, rapes, deaths, murders and genocide. And Bucha was only one, even though most famous example. As the war continues more and more war crimes surfaced.

Ukrainians don’t see this war as a war for territories. It’s not that Russia occupied some regions and people would continue living as usual and just pay taxes to the different authority. No, now this war is about survival. Where Russian soldiers come — genocide follows. If Russia was about peace — they would not commit these crimes.

Sometimes I hear a funny claim that there was a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine and then suddenly Boris Johnson visited Kyiv and everything stopped. Bucha massacre surfaced several days before Johnson’s visit, and trust me, it was much more important than the visit of some politicians. Before Bucha, Ukraninian government tried to prepare Ukrainians to live without NATO — I remember these talks. Ukrainians weren’t happy about it, but some of them were ready to agree with that. After Bucha the war came on entirely different level.

Peace is surrender

Don’t be fooled by Russian “peace talks”. They call war a “special military operation”, departure from Zmiyiny island a “gesture of good will” and Ukrainian surrender a “peace talks”. Russia wants peace now, because it’s definitely not winning the war and is losing territories to Ukrainian army. But if Russia genuinely wants peace, why it continues bombing Ukrainian civil facilities? Why did it annex four Ukrainian regions, which it did not even fully control? It’s Russia that started the invasion, it could stop it any moment. But they don’t do it. What Russia wants is to stop fighting, keep what it gained — together with all it did not gain (because remember — four annexed regions are not fully controlled) and then prepare for the next war.

In June Peskov (important Russian politician) said [2]:

Украинская сторона может все прекратить до конца суток текущих, нужен […] приказ военным украинским сложить оружие и нужно выполнить условия Российской Федерации

The Ukrainian side can stop everything before the end of the current day, they need […] an order for the Ukrainian military to lay down their arms and they need to fulfill the conditions of the Russian Federation

Peace in Russian point of view is Ukraine to surrender. So please don’t be fooled. When Russia says “We need peace talks” it means “We want Ukraine to surrender”.

Conclusion

Russia wants Ukraine to surrender even though they call it “calling for peace talks”. At the same time they continue comitting atrocities and bombing civilian infrastructure. Ukraine does not believe that Russians will never attack again, because they broke their promises at least twice (2014, 2022) and next time could be much worse. Russia just needs time to regroup and prepare for the next war.

Russians do not accept Ukraine as a sovereign country and Ukrainians as a separate nations. In their point of view Ukrainians should accept that they are Russians or be eliminated. With no exageration what Russia does now is Ukrainian genocide (look up the definition of genocide if you don’t trust me).

Ukrainians want peace much more than Russians want it. But Ukrainians want a real peace, and not a peace which will be broken in some ten years, where our children will die this time. Remember the “demilitarization” and no NATO requirements? If we agree to peace talks now, next time we will have no army to protect us.

Sources:

[1] Putin’s ultimatum to Ukraine: https://www.slovoidilo.ua/2022/02/22/novyna/svit/putin-vysunuv-ultymatumy-ukrayini-vidmovytys-nato-ta-krymu

[2] Peskov telling that peace will come if Ukraine surrenders https://ria.ru/20220628/ukraina-1798672284.html

Images taken from:

Somebody was fooled by Russian “peace talks” rhetorics. Zelensky refuses Peace talks: https://grrrgraphics.com/zelenskys-choice/

[A] Language map of Ukraine (by Tovel, Spesh531): https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:UkraineNativeLanguagesCensus2001detailed-en.png

[B] Map of Ukraine and occupied territories (by Lencer): https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_Ukraine_with_Cities.png