I am, like everyone else, deeply worried about the conflict in Ukraine, which will soon enter its second year.
However, these days, contrary to the ambient current which seems to hope for a more favorable outcome with a shipment of tanks, I cannot sincerely welcome this new escalation. In my opinion, it will not really solve anything, but will continue to perpetuate the war, the human and material losses, and then to enrich the very prosperous arms industry, who benefits – am I cynical? — the appalling drama of the Russian invasion orchestrated by Putin.
Is this really the only possible solution on the table today?
Before answering, let’s try a brief overview.
It is almost certain that no one will be able to “win” this war, because the West is becoming more and more determined, rightly, not to accept the invasion of Ukraine and its senseless destruction. Because Russia, for its part, is mobilizing around a virtuous discourse, through the voice of Kyrill, the patriarch of its Orthodox Church, with condemnation ad hoc moral excesses of Western societies. But let us remember that Putin has been emphasizing above all, and for several years already, his anger in the face of certain “conquering” desires of the democracies of Europe and the “Western” whose roadmaps are, as we know, stained with disastrous boldness linked to bursts of colonial liberalism.
Nothing to do with the present situation, you will say, but, in the context, the strong emotions of the belligerents are not to be ignored. Visceral hatred exists!
There are those who think that the West, convinced of its right and its circumstantial strength in the face of a stripped Russia after the dissolution of the USSR, has multiplied errors of judgment with, for example, Thatcher’s contempt for concede any opening to a Gorbachev eager for rapprochement. This same solidarity from the West has subsequently accelerated its mistakes: in 2002 with the unilateral withdrawal of Bush, son, from the ABM treaty, thus upsetting Russia and its new president… Putin. And then with, in the process, the entry into NATO of a whole string of countries, in eastern Europe, nations which now line the Russian borders with the exception of Ukraine, whose Membership was, however, proposed at the Bucharest summit in 2008 — with some follow-ups since.
There are those who, moreover, concede good reasons for Putin to take over the “cradle” of Russia, to protect the rights of Russian-speaking citizens of Donbass or Crimea. To also consolidate its commercial and strategic ports on the Black Sea, or even to find a way to drape itself, in the shadow of the statues of Peter the Great, with a national and spiritual mission from which it cannot escape.
It is probable, on one side as on the other, that all these events and hypotheses contribute to varying degrees to their tragic implementation.
Ukraine will fight heroically to the last soldier, but their numbers and adherence to the rules of engagement will not favor them in the long run. In this, I sincerely hope I am wrong!
Russia, for its part, will prefer a vast field of rubble to any compromise that could defeat its frustrations, its dreams and further threaten its territory, especially with the very likely entry of Finland into the NATO family. — an (involuntary!) extension of some 1,300 additional kilometers of hated borders.
We have been, for nearly twelve months, the helpless and dumbfounded witnesses of a conflict whose end no one can really imagine except, in all likelihood, by the fruit of a negotiated agreement. But, but… that day, we will surely have arrived at a devilishly more calamitous situation than today.
This is without mentioning the nuclear hypothesis which, however unlikely it may be, still remains in play.
And here we are before the impasse of this deadly hike.
I’m not advancing anything original, but wouldn’t it be better if we could stop this carnage clearly and quickly, by putting forward a frank and lasting solution, such as that of a neutral Ukraine? The reconstruction of the country at the expense of Russia or its oligarchs, borders reestablished according to the lines drawn before the annexation of Crimea, normalization of trade with access to the Russian market at the ports of Sevastopol and Odessa and then the right given to the country’s Russian speakers to speak their language, while being able to develop their culture.
An unlimited neutrality, therefore, which would allow Ukraine to regain its integrity and pride in its identity and which would rid Putin and his successors of their untenable feeling that this neighboring nation represents a permanent threat from the West.
I obviously support Zelensky wholeheartedly, he who has no choice but to defend himself. I have absolute admiration for his courage and for that of his people.
But in the sights of the Ukrainian army are the unspeakable Wagner militia, the lines of massive fortifications now erected in the Donbass and east of the Dnieper, the supply of arms and ammunition to the rogue states and then the considerable resources in men that Putin will never hesitate to throw into the fray. This is the cold reality that leads me today to reflect on the side of this hypothesis, already understood, of neutrality.
But how to get there? Is it crazy to think that a triumvirate of countries that have remained neutral in the conflict, and representing just over a third of humanity, could take on this mission? I am thinking of Xi Jinping, Modi and Erdogan.
Could they be convinced to rise above the fray, to set aside their obvious interests in this war—oil again! —, and aiming for the Greater Good by proposing this possibility of ending the crisis with arguments of human, humanitarian consideration and geopolitical stability? Naive, perhaps, this hope, but shouldn’t we try everything?
Zelensky would no longer have the NATO military argument, but rather the promise of an untouchable peace. Putin, on the other hand, could boast of having succeeded, thanks to his coup de force, in preventing “the capture of Ukraine by the enemy” and of having forced it to abandon the dream that the West to side with him.
If Modi and Xi Jinping could not imagine themselves sitting at the same table, perhaps Erdogan and Xi Jinping could form the duo, or even go it alone with, in the event of success, the right probability of boast of a Nobel Peace Prize. For a communist China, or for an authoritarian regime, what a halo and, from their point of view, what a snub to the democracies!