Ukraine: obviously so

Will she sue for peace, or will it be imposed on her?

Image: war graves near the city of Dnipro, in Ukraine.

A conversation took place on 24 February 2022 that had a decisive influence on what Ukrainians, to a man, woman and child, are doing today. It took place in the throes of the latest Russian invasion of Ukraine on that day and, to be quite frank, if the second part of the conversation had differed in its substance, what Ukrainians are doing today might not be vastly different to what they did the previous day.

The conversation was conducted on the telephone between Joe Biden, President of the United States of America, and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, President of Ukraine, and its substance ran as follows: Biden—I will send helicopters to evacuate you and your family; Zelenskyy—it is not helicopters that I need, it’s bombs.

In those few words, Volodymyr Zelenskyy took a momentous decision that, at the time, some considered foolhardy—the decision to wager his life, and the lives of his 45 million compatriots, in a bid to repel the new onslaught from the east. And, in those few words, Volodymyr Zelenskyy made plain the conditions under which he took that decision. He knew he stood no chance against Russia without help from the US. Well, he got his chance, but the question that now arises is whether, when (and not if) he terminates his country’s support for Ukraine, Donald Trump will offer to send Mr Zelenskyy the helicopters?

War may be waged in deadly earnest by the fighting parties but, for the bystanders, it is a gruesome spectator sport. Not their homes are bombarded by missiles. Not their children are abducted into re-education in a far-off enemy land. Not their lives are turned topsy turvy in the chaos that invasion brings. Not their sons and daughters go off to the battlefront to defend the homeland. Not their sons and daughters return with medals, minus limbs. The observer enjoys, at least as far as the conflict goes, a certain, reassuring peace of mind: that when, on the morrow, the morning sun breaks over the eastern horizon to shine its glorious rays on the endless prospects of swaying wheat fields, their cities will still be standing. Of this I am humbly aware, for I am one such bystander.

In the two-and-a-half years that the Russo-Ukrainian War has been ongoing, there have been peace talks, notably attended by the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich and viewed with the same seriousness as one would accord to talks on whose sidelines sits a (now) sanctioned criminal; and Zelenskyy himself has tabled his famous ten-point peace plan, at the reception of which he cannot but be disappointed. It hardly gained traction among his allies, let alone the opposition in Moscow. The Ukrainian military effort now faces the unknown potential effects of the ten to twelve thousand North Korean troops approaching Kursk, insistence by his allies that attacks deep into Russia using their weaponry must not occur, and a shortfall in supplies of long-range missiles to sustain Ukraine’s defence. It is as if Zelenskyy were standing fighting the war with the latest machine gun in his right hand, but no ammunition, and with one arm tied behind his back. And the question that now must haunt him in the cold, fearful, autumn nights has to be: do my allies actually want me to win, or are they only pretending?

Donald Trump has said that he can secure peace in Ukraine in one day. However he would do that, I am categorically certain that it would not involve supplying Ukraine with the kind of arms that the current US president has been supplying to a certain other war zone this past year; nor that it will involve impressing upon Russia the need to withdraw from the Donbas or the Crimea. The telephone call that reportedly occurred between the US president-elect and the Russian president has not been commented upon by the former and has been vehemently denied by the latter. Nonetheless, Mr Trump will have Ukraine on his agenda for some time in January of next year. Meanwhile, gradually, Ukraine’s support among its allies is flickering and waning: its reluctant tank-supplying supporter in Germany is in a political crisis; the UK’s new prime minister is stalwart in his words, but weak in substance; and the US is what Donald Rumsfeld would have labelled a known unknown (and perhaps not just for Volodymyr Zelenskyy).

Will Ukraine have to swallow its pride to achieve peace? And what is peace? You can view peace as one of two things: a cessation of hostilities followed by a rebuilding based on a secure understanding with the enemy—in other words, not war; or it can be seen as a state in which the oligarchs who raped Ukraine prior to the war and are likely still doing so are expelled, exposed, imprisoned and dispossessed of their ill-gotten gains, a state in which freedom under restraint of respect thrives and the unity of the Ukrainian people knows no machination, no argument, no infighting, just harmony and mutual deference—in other words, death, if death can be understood as the attainment of paradise, for the paradise thus described does not exist anywhere on earth, so why should it exist in Ukraine?

You may retort that there is a midpoint between not war and death, in which a society can thrive and for the most part survive, and not have their lives taken from them, and I would agree that that seems to be feasible. To achieve it, however, requires first that there be no war, and the question now arises not as to what the conditions for the war to cease might be, but whether they are embraced pragmatically by the Ukrainian people and their leaders, or are imposed by a third party, whether by force of persuasion or by denying material support to their war effort.

The referendum held in the Crimea after it was annexed in the wake of the Maidan revolution, and those likewise organised quasi-farcically after the subsequent annexations of Luhansk, Donetsk and Kherson, invite the question as to what further territorial claims Russia still might press against Ukraine. The initial advance on Kyiv might suggest that Russia sought to take the entire country, but it long since seems to have contented itself with hunkering down on the land bridge between Russia’s Rostov-on-Don and Sebastapol on the Crimean peninsula, thus securing Russia’s longstanding craving for warm-water ports for, although Russia has the longest coastline of any country, only its northern port of Murmansk is favoured by the currents to be generally ice-free during some part of the Arctic winter. The fears that a peace settlement at this juncture would provide only an opportunity for the attacker to regroup and resume its special operation at a later date might be countered by this goal that Russia has now achieved, of having the Sea of Azov and the Crimea as warm water havens. With a regulation of the naval lease between the two countries at Odessa, that would clear that matter up. Except: Russia hasn’t even proposed that, and the war continues. The achievement of a warm water port, even combined with the riches of the Donbas coal fields and steel-making plants, is seemingly a nice to have, but not a prime goal of the conflict. And, if Donald Trump imposes a peace—even of sorts—in Ukraine, that very fact might yet still disguise what the prime goal of the conflict ever was. That is, until the bid to realise it were perhaps one day resumed.

No two cases are exactly alike, but there is an interesting parallel from the region of where the US is supplying arms with the subtext aim of denying a right of self-determination, for the respect of which it has been doing exactly the same thing in Ukraine. Out of the Arab Revolt of 1916, and the ultimate abolition of the Ottoman Sultanate on 1 November 1922, there emerged, initially under British or French hegemony, the nations that characterise the Levant today: modern-day Turkey, Palestine, part of Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq and Transjordan. From out of Mecca came the descendents of Hashem (the breaker of bread), whose lineage traces back to the Prophet Mohamed himself. In 1921, Transjordan was established out of the Ottoman Empire as (by 1923) the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan, the rulers of Mecca relocating to Amman, and also ascending to the thrones of Syria (for a very brief period), Iraq (until deposed in a coup d’état) and Hejaz (before the foundation of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia).

Transjordan would subsequently shorten its name to simply Jordan (on 26 April 1949) but, before doing so, in 1948, it effected a land grab, with help from Iraq, of the territory we now know as the West Bank portion of Palestine. It was largely regarded as illegal (except by the UK, Iraq and Pakistan) but was tolerated as a fait accompli: the Palestinians on the whole recognised King Abdullah I as their monarch at the December 1948 Jericho Conference, but the Arab League preferred to view Jordan as a trustee, pending further settlement of the territory’s status. Palestinians who fled Palestine upon the founding of the state of Israel in 1948 were welcomed into neighbouring Arab countries, but nowhere so completely as Transjordan, where they were accorded full citizenship, alongside Jordan’s existing population, which, along with the formal annexation of the West Bank in 1950 trebled from 400,000 to 1,300,000.

Whilst one of the grounds cited by historian Mary Beard (SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome) for the enduring success of the Roman Empire was its citizenship policy (the populations of all territories brought within the empire were declared to be Roman citizens—as John F. Kennedy would cite in 1963 at the Red City Hall in Berlin: civis Romanus sum), the magnanimity of this gesture by King Abdullah was not appreciated by the Arab Legion, who viewed it as solely furthering the interests of the Hashemite Kingdom, and not the aspirations for a single Arab state. Abdullah’s fate was to be assassinated in 1951, by a Palestinian whose stated motivation was to prevent the King from entering into a peace deal with Israel. (He succeeded, as peace between the two would not be achieved until the Washington Declaration of 1994, coming in the wake of the Oslo Accords.) The two countries’ relations were, indeed, at that time fractious, after Transjordan had (a) denied Israelis access to holy sites under the armistice between them, on the pretext that Israel was blocking the Palestinians’ right of return to their homes, and had (b) deliberately destroyed nearly all the synagogues in Jerusalem that had not fallen victim to the war itself.

The status of the West Bank changed in 1967 as a result of the Six-Day War between Jordan and its allies in Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon, on the one hand, and Israel on the other, pursuant to which Israel occupied the West Bank. The relevance of this story lies not in the status of that territory today, or the imminent change in that status as intimated by the current Israeli administration in Jerusalem. Rather, it lies in its status as it changed in the year 1988, when the then King Hussein of Jordan acquiesced in the Arab League’s 1974 recognition of the Palestine Liberation Organization as the representative voice of the Palestinian people in their quest for a homeland of their own.

Now, remember how I said that no two cases are exactly alike? Luhansk and Donetsk are not the West Bank. Jordan is not Ukraine, and Israel is not Russia. The sympathies and interests differ but the plain facts differ less. Jordan recognised that land incorporated within its territory by way of an act that was somehow questionable, even if generally approved by all concerned (much as the Donbas became part of Ukraine in 1991) had to be relinquished when the people to whom it had belonged wanted to establish their right of self-determination over it. King Hussein’s objective in that was part pragmatic, part driven by third parties, and part a product of his own commitment to peace, a tradition handed down to him over many generations from Mohamed himself. The parallels with the Donbas are not striking, but they are noticeable.

Although they narrowly voted for Ukrainian independence back in 1991, today the Donbas regions lean towards Russia, speak Russian, affiliate with that country, admittedly in part due to the fact that large swathes of the Ukrainian-speaking population have left, or have had to leave. It’s a demographic fact: when the British left India, it became Indian. When the Palestinians had to leave Palestine, it became Israeli. When the Mexicans left Texas, it became American. If the complaint against Russia’s policy in Ukraine is that it is deemed irredentist (forming a claim to the return of territory that was formerly part of the claimant’s territory), there is an argument that Ukraine’s demanding the return of Donetsk and Luhansk is likewise irredentist: those regions don’t seem to want it, and returning to the status quo ante bellum is asking a great deal, especially post-bellum. Ukraine cannot ignore the fact of this war, regardless of the moral justifications that embolden its indignation and its aspirations.

As for the Crimea, it is not so much that the peninsula was snatched in a swift move by Russia when Ukraine was preoccupied with ousting its massively corrupt president, Viktor Yanukovych, nor the fact that Ukraine’s armed forces fairly meekly packed up their kitbags and left the territory as a result of the 2014 invasion, nor even the fact that, historically, the Crimea had in fact belonged not to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, but the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic, somewhat validating Russia’s claims to the territory, even notwithstanding the terms of their 1991 settlement, rather it is the somewhat stark reality of the sheer difficulty of retaking the Crimea into Ukraine and, what’s more, keeping it there, that persuades me, at least, that they would be better to simply acquiesce in that loss. The sights that Russia set on Kherson would in part seem to be motivated by the desire to keep the water-supply canal open, which leads from the River Dnieper to Sebastapol (since the Crimea has no adequate water supply for its population).

In a 2023 interview with The Guardian, Ukrainian philosopher Vlad Beliavsky says, “You’ve got 40 million united Ukrainians, so what will Putin do? Will he massacre 40 million people? That’s the only way he can win this war. The only way.” It sounds very resilient, very forthright, very Ukrainian, even. But is it true? Maybe we should qualify a few things. First, the 40 million Ukrainians need to be united. But are they as united now as they were when they were stopping Russian tanks with their bare hands? And, to massacre 40 million Ukrainians, Putin would need to sacrifice, even on a two-to-one basis, 20 million Russians, and it would be far from certain how easily he could sell that on the Kievan Rus’ historiography that he set down in his thesis in July 2021. Finally, it clearly would not be necessary for Putin to massacre 40 million Ukrainians; but just how many it would be necessary for him to massacre before Ukraine surrendered is the big question.

“A simple thought experiment drives home this point. All it takes is three questions. Would Ukraine be willing to sacrifice one life in exchange for a 50 per cent chance of recapturing all of the separatist regions in the east? Yes, that would be a bargain. Would Ukraine be willing to sacrifice its entire population of 40 million to do the same? No, that would defeat the purpose of saving the territory. Finally, is it better to sacrifice fewer lives in exchange for the cause than more? Obviously so.” (William Spaniel: What Caused the Russia-Ukraine War? (And How Will It End?))

Obviously so. So, when does the death toll reach a level at which suing for peace, however one might want to define it, becomes, as Spaniel puts it, obvious? Well, factored into that is the degree to which the Ukrainian people are, as Beliavsky puts it, united.

Since the US was founded, it has never been invaded. It has never lost portions of its territory that were taken by force by a foreign power. It has conducted wars in order to increase its territory, and it has acquired territory by contract. But it has never lost land to a superior power (unless you count the 1800 western border squabble with British Canada). It fled from Vietnam, from Korea and from Afghanistan, but they were other people’s lands, not its own. It is poor solace, but the US doesn’t know how it feels: how it feels to have someone march in and take what has been internationally agreed to be rightfully yours. But, even if an imposed peace would simply constitute a springboard for a future Russian attack, then Ukraine will have the time to prepare itself for that, although will need to do so without provoking it.

Aside from massacring 40 million Ukrainians, there is another path to winning the war, and it is perhaps just as unrealistic: massacring 144 million Russians. If the peace would then be destined for those of the 40 million who are left to enjoy, then those who perished in the struggle would rest in another peace, not tainted by failure, but honoured by endeavour. The decision lies ultimately with the same man as was on the phone with Joe Biden on 24 February 2022. And it is a decision that is not one whit easier than that which he took on that day.

I’ll leave you with this bit of comedy from Monty Python’s 1975 movie King Arthur and the Holy Grail. As every comic knows, there’s always a bit of truth in what we find funny.