Only a victory for Ukraine can ensure peace in Ukraine

Nobody yearns for peace now more than Ukrainians. So why, after a year of death and destruction, are more Ukrainians than ever – as many as 95% – convinced that peace can only be gained by Ukraine’s military victory? Up until February 24, 2022, almost no one in Ukraine – myself included – could believe that Russia would start bombing Ukrainian cities. Despite eight years of war that Russia waged in Donbas (a region with no prior separatist movements), which took 14,000 Ukrainian lives, despite Crimea’s annexation, despite attempts to smuggle Kremlin’s people into Ukrainian parliament (via the Minsk Agreements), Ukrainians refused to believe in an imminent all-out war. A third of Ukrainians have family in Russia and they could not believe that their cousins and grandmothers would support the destruction of their homes and their outright murder. Vladimir Putin’s war disabused Ukrainians of many beliefs. And for anyone calling for peace talks with Putin, here are a few hard facts. Putin said there was no Russian military in Donbas between 2014 and 2022, while personally authorising the delivery of the missile that downed Malaysian Flight MH17. Putin affirmed repeatedly that Crimea was indisputably Ukrainian; he then annexed it. He said he would not invade Ukraine; then he did. He claimed that the “special military operation” was meant to “liberate” Donbas, but his tanks rolled into the regions of Chernigiv, Kharkiv, Nikolaev, Zaporizhya, Kherson and Kyiv. Putin professes sympathy for the Global South but starves people in poor countries by blocking Ukrainian grain. The day the grain deal was reached, Russian missiles hit the main export seaport of Odessa. One flew directly over my head. Putin states that he wishes to liberate Russian speakers in Ukraine – I am one of them – then razes their homes. He tells the UN secretary general that he wants a peace deal with Kyiv, then bombs the city during his visit. Putin claims he wants peace but makes the word “peace” a criminal offence in Russia. Any agreement requires parties to it to do what they promise. Putin usually does the opposite of what he promises. What he is strikingly lucid about are his imperial designs. Despite a hotchpotch of justifications for the invasion – removing a “Nazi regime”, “demilitarising” a sovereign country, defending Donbas, saving ethnic Russians, fighting American imperialism, saving the world from Satanists and gays – his strategic aims are clear enough. He intends to expand the Russian empire and he intends for Ukraine not to exist – politically, demographically, physically. It is not possible to make peace with a state bent on your annihilation, which has already broken the ultimate peace deal: The 1994 Budapest Memorandum, in which Ukraine gave up the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal in exchange for Russia’s promise to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty. The Kremlin’s offer of a “peace deal” today is no more than an attempt to buy time to regroup and push further forward. Every minute under Russian occupation brings more death, marauding, abductions, deportation, torture and rape. This is not propaganda: My friends and family in Bucha and Kherson saw all this with their own eyes. Any territories conceded to Russia will only bring more horror into their residents’ lives. For anyone who may still doubt that the Russian army can be defeated, Ukrainians offer another year-long lesson in realism. Whatever happened to Kyiv’s three-day capture, expected confidently by every expert in the world? Wherever is the all-mighty Russian army? Buying weapons from North Korea and Iran, emptying prisons of convicted rapists and murderers to fill its ranks. But old myths are slow to die. And many still believe that Ukraine cannot possibly win, despite already reclaiming half of the occupied territories with three dazzling counteroffensives, conducted while drastically outmanned and outgunned. What they lack in weapons, they more than make up in spirit. Every Ukrainian soldier I have spoken to knows that they are not fighting only for their own land, freedom and lives. As Rishi Sunak put it at the Munich Security Conference last week, “What’s at stake…(is) the security and sovereignty of every nation.” Should we allow Russia to conquer Ukraine, Putin’s armies will march across the rest of Europe and Central Asia. Why does every one of Russia’s neighbours – from Finland and Poland, Georgia to Azerbaijan – see Russia as a threat? Why do they know that one cannot negotiate with the Russian state? Because Russia is not the socialist USSR, but an insatiable empire out to suborn and vanquish (while threatening the world with nuclear war). This war is not only about Russia’s neighbours. It is about strategic peace. Russia walking away with newly conquered lands will confirm that might is right and embolden others to new invasions. So, anyone thinking in India that Russia should be allowed to grab Ukrainian lands because it has more missiles, should be prepared for India to “negotiate” away territory to China – because China has stronger armed forces. The writer is Social Anthropologist, King’s College, London