What will go down in history is that while Vladimir Putin and Sergei Lavrov reiterated their commitment to the Minsk accords and organized high diplomacy meetings in theatrical settings, they planned the invasion of a sovereign country, the capture of its institutions and the replacement of the his regime by force. While we discussed the size of the tables, they prepared for war.
A war of choice and a war of occupation. If NATO’s territorial extent required an immediate solution, it did not pose an imminent threat. European powers, starting with Germany, had already ruled out Ukraine’s entry into the western defense system in the near future. Russia’s call for a NATO veto on Ukraine’s membership was moving within Western circles.
In recent weeks, US establishment officials such as Thomas Friedman and Jeffrey Sachs have advocated a solution to a veto on Ukraine’s entry. Stephen Walt, who trained half of American diplomats, pointed out that the laws that governed NATO are not “the laws of the universe.”
Within European diplomatic circles, Berlin and Rome were pressing Kiev to take the initiative to deny NATO, in what many saw as a capitulation. Putin’s brawny diplomacy was bringing undeniable results. But the goal he pursued — the definitive and irreversible incorporation of Ukraine into Russian geopolitical space — was not achievable through diplomatic channels. Only by the military.
Putin’s speech on Monday (21) ignores the NATO issue and moves on to another argument, much darker and illegitimate: the denial of the Ukrainian state. Its central claim, that the “Ukrainian state was created entirely by Russia or, to be more precise, by Communist and Bolshevik Russia”, is intended to eradicate from the history of the Ukrainian nationalist movement, whose origins date back to the mid-19th century.
But none of that matters. History, regardless of its interpretation, does not give the right to conquest. In 1991, over 90% of Ukrainians voted for independence. They can be divided between pro-Europeans and Russophiles without compromising their autonomy within the international system. If political, social and ethnic polarization justified the fragmentation and implosion of the State, there would be no more States.
The position that NATO’s expansionism explains diplomatic pressure, but does not justify military action, has guided political stances. Exponents of the anti-NATO political class in Europe clearly took a stand against Russia. Gabriel Boric unambiguously condemned the illegitimate use of force while Alberto Fernández sought a more moderate position, appealing to Russia to stop the invasion.
Those who say that Moscow is receiving support from the so-called Global South also ignore the position of African states, where borders, drawn by colonial powers, are the subject of permanent tension. Kenya’s ambassador to the UN extolled Ukraine’s suffering and said: “We must rise from the embers of dead empires so that we do not fall back into new forms of domination and oppression.”
The unconditional defense of peace must extend to all parties to the conflict. If Ukrainians have the intrinsic right to protect themselves, only madmen and armamentists advocate retaliation against the Russian nuclear power.
The unfolding of the conflict should also reinforce the impression that international sanctions have become the weapons of the powerless, who anticipate everything but do nothing. Deflated because of the contradictions of Western countries, torn between the need to react to aggression and to take care of their economic assets, the sanctions seem easily assimilated by a regime that has spent months preparing to live with them.
Perhaps even more importantly, the implementation of these purely administrative measures will in no way impact the lives of Ukrainians threatened by weapons. If nothing changes, Kiev will fall lonely, brave and abandoned.
The reconstruction of the international arena now involves welcoming refugees, preventing the spread of conflict, denouncing the arbitrariness of a future regime legitimized by the occupying force and working to restore international law and the integrity of borders in this new geopolitical moment.
It is imperative to create new spaces for dialogue for the international community, more dynamic and democratic than the Security Council. Because the threat is at our doors. In the near future, nothing will prevent an American Trumpist administration from invoking the Ukrainian precedent to resume the offensive against Venezuela in the name of hegemony in its “sphere of influence”.
The last thing we want is to see war on the other side of the world justifying one on our borders.
