Eurasia Press & News
Peace is the highest good – every day that passes, more soldiers and civilians are killed in the Ukrainian war. It is estimated that more than a million persons have lost their lives in this senseless war, which must be brought to an end as early as possible. This can be done with a modicum of common sense and professionalism. The war should never have started, and it could have been ended in March 2022, if Ukraine had not reneged on the compromise negotiated by Turkish President Erdogan in Istanbul. There were many opportunities to sit down and discuss terms for a ceasefire, but the US, Europe and Ukraine insisted that “Putin must lose”. Thus, the many blueprints for peace issued by the African countries, China and countless international organizations, including the International Peace Bureau, as well as private scholars, were fruitless. This stubbornness and intransigence continue as Ursula von der Leyen, Friedrich Merz and other European leaders oppose the US peace initiative and conspire to continue the war no matter what.
When Trump and Putin meet at the Elmendorf-Richardson base outside Anchorage, Alaska on August 15, peace will be on the table. It will not be an easy meeting, because US-Russian relations have never been as dire. Nevertheless, the Global Majority of humanity wishes them a good beginning of direct negotiations, a businesslike summit that will build on the prior footwork of Steve Witkoff and Sergei Lavrov. Peace is crucial for Europe, for the US, for civilization.
At the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, a sustainable peace was crafted that allowed the major European States and hundreds of German principalities to close the chapter on the disastrous Thirty Years’ War, which cost eight million lives and economically devastated central Europe. There were no winners. Everyone was exhausted and wanted out.
The Ukraine-Russia conundrum is not a bilateral conflict, but a messy multiparty war involving the United States and most NATO and EU countries, which since 2014 have provided military, economic, political, diplomatic and propagandistic support to Ukraine. I say 2014 and not 2022, because the war in the Donbass started when the US and European supported a putsch against the democratically elected President of Ukraine, Victor Yanukovich, and with the arrival in Kiew of a rabidly Russophobic, unconstitutional regime that prohibited the use of the Russian language and relentlessly shelled the Russian civilian population of Lugansk and Donetsk, causing some 14,000 deaths before the Russian invasion of 24 February 2022.
This human tragedy has a long pre-history. There will be no peace until the root causes of the war are addressed, something which the Biden/Blinken Administration and the European powers have refused to do. Most importantly, a European security architecture must be agreed upon that will guarantee the sovereignty of Ukraine and, at the same time, end the Eastward expansion of NATO, which was condemned by George F. Kennan as early as 1997.
The most serious obstacle to crafting a viable peace agreement is the lack of credibility of the United States, or for that matter of the European supporters of Zelinsky. The mainstream media will tell us otherwise, but the fact is that we in the West are notorious for our “culture of cheating”, and this tradition of not honouring agreements renders it difficult to craft viable “deals”.
The Ukrainian conflict goes back to a breach of a promise made by US President George H.W. Bush and repeated by his Secretary of State James Baker to Mikhail Gorbachev in the years 1989-91, that NATO would not expand an inch eastward. As Professors John Mearsheimer and Jeffrey Sachs have convincingly argued, NATO’s 2008 invitation to Ukraine and Georgia to join the alliance constituted a major cause of the current conflict. It is obvious that NATO’s presence at Russia’s borders means a significant security risk. No sovereign country would accept such a menace. As has been said by many, the United States would never accept Mexico or Canada entering into a military alliance with Russia – or China. We already have the precedent of the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis, when the US threatened the Soviet Union with nuclear annihilation, unless the Soviet missiles being installed in Cuba were removed immediately. At the time, the United Nations contributed significantly to defusing the crisis and while Khruschev removed the missiles from Cuba, Kennedy removed US missiles from Turkey.
There are consequences to breaking one’s word, and if a country breaks an agreement, the other party is on notice and must be especially cautious. Trump has recently proven that he is profoundly untrustworthy, recalling the US bombardment of Iran in June 2025, while at the same time negotiating with Tehran to reach a mutually satisfactory agreement. It will take a long time for this breach of good faith to be forgotten. In the context of the Ukraine war, we remember that in 2014 and 2015 the Agreements known as Minsk I and Minsk II were negotiated, providing for a cessation of the Ukrainian bombardment of the Donbass and a commitment on the part of Ukraine to sit down with the representatives of Lugansk and Donets to work out a constitutional arrangement granting a measure of autonomy to the Russian majorities of the Donbass. In exchange, Ukraine received a guarantee of its territorial integrity and sovereignty. Alas, Ukraine reneged on both commitments and accelerated its terroristic attacks on civilian targets in the Donbass. This happened partly because of the military, economic and political support being provided by the US and Europe. As far as the trustworthiness of the Europeans, it suffices to recall the statements made by Angela Merkel and François Hollande that they only entered into the Minsk agreements in order to “gain time” so that Ukraine could be properly armed. Such lack of good faith not only flies in the face of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, it also sends the message to the Russians: beware, because these people cannot be trusted.
It is irritating to hear European leaders invoking “international law” and refusing to even envisage territorial concessions by Ukraine. This is surrealistic. Have they not violated international law themselves by ignoring pronouncements of the International Court of Justice? Have they not imposed illegal unilateral coercive measures on Russia and half the world, notwithstanding the yearly resolutions of the United Nations General Assembly and UN Human Rights Council condemning these UCMs, wrongly referred to as “sanctions”? Did the US and Europe not commit a brazen aggression against Serbia and destroy the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia in 1999? Did they not use lethal force to tear Kosovo away from Yugoslavia and give it diplomatic recognition? Was it not the US that recognized the illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land, that recognized the illegal “annexation” of the Golan Heights by Israel, that applauded the Israeli aggression against Iran in June 2025?
Do the European leaders fail to understand that the world does not consider the US and Europe to be defenders of international law, that most African and Asian leaders consider the US and Europe to be in open rebellion against the United Nations Charter and against international law itself? In the eyes of the true “international community” – the Global Majority minus the “collective West” — the US and Europe have no moral or legal superiority over the rest of the world and are hardly models of compliance with the UN Charter. The Global Majority rejects the imperialist and neo-colonial mindset of the “collective West” and hopes for multilateralism based on the UN Charter.
In the context of the Israel/Palestine war, what is more evident than the refusal of the US and Europe to honour the Advisory Opinions of the International Court of Justice concerning of 9 July 2004 and 19 July 2024? The continued military, economic, political, diplomatic, and propagandistic support given to the genocidal state of Israel by the US and Europe reveals them as international outlaws and morally bankrupt.
Of course, Putin is no saint, and this author does not pretend to confer any moral edge to the Russians. But for those who live in the real world and not in the parallel worlds created by think tanks and the mainstream media, the Russians do have certain legitimate interests, which they will not give up at the Alaska summit or elsewhere. It is worth revisiting Putin’s 2007 speech at the Munich Security Conference and Putin’s interview with Tucker Carlson in February 2024.
The Russians insist on their right to national security. Doubtless, the expansion of NATO and the relentless provocations of Russia constituted a violation of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, which prohibits not only the use of force, but also the “threat” of the use of force.
The Russians are also concerned about the Russian majorities who live in the Donbass and who were subjected to aggression by the Ukrainian government, in a manner that certainly called for intervention pursuant to the “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine.
Putin did not rush to war. Pursuant to Article 2(3) of the UN Charter, he tried for more than eight years to settle the problems diplomatically. He negotiated with and through the OSCE, the Normandy Format, the Minsk Agreements etc.
The right of self-determination of the Russians of the Donbass is non-negotiable. In the same manner as the Albanian Kosovars would never consent to be ruled by Belgrade, the Russians of the Donbass will never consent to being again ruled by Kiev. Too much blood has been spilled and we must recognize that the level of hatred is such that the reintegration of Kosovo into Serbia and the “return” of the Donbass to Ukraine is simply not viable.
I hope that Trump will understand that to reach a deal with Putin, he must recognize that Ukraine will never be in NATO and that the Donbass Russians must have their self-determination. These are not maximalist demands. These are facts that cannot be ignored.
I hope that someone gives Trump the text of paragraph 80 of the 2010 Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice on Kosovo:
Several participants in the proceedings before the Court have contended that a prohibition of unilateral declarations of independence is implicit in the principle of territorial integrity. The Court recalls that the principle of territorial integrity is an important part of the international legal order and is enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, in particular in Article 2, paragraph 4, which provides that: “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.” In General Assembly resolution 2625 (XXV), entitled “Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States in Accordance with the Charter of the United Nations”, which reflects customary international law (Military and Paramilitary Activities in and against Nicaragua (Nicaragua v. United States of America), Merits, Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 1986, pp. 101-103, paras. 191-193), the General Assembly reiterated “[t]he principle that States shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State”. This resolution then enumerated various obligations incumbent upon States to refrain from violating the territorial integrity of other sovereign States. In the same vein, the Final Act of the Helsinki Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe of 1 August 1975 (the Helsinki Conference) stipulated that “[t]he participating States will respect the territorial integrity of each of the participating States” (Art. IV). Thus, the scope of the principle of territorial integrity is confined to the sphere of relations between States.It is clear that in the case of Kosovo, the right of self-determination of the Albanians was given precedence over the principle of territorial integrity of Serbia. This has created a precedent that has been followed in Crimea, the Donbass and will be followed by many other peoples who aspire to determine their own futures, including the Palestinians.
Bottom line: Peace must guarantee the security of all parties and reaffirm the right of self-determination of all peoples in the region as stipulated in Article 1 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
In this sense let us hope that the Alaska summit brings some preliminary results and that the slaughter ends – better today than tomorrow.
