After almost a hundred days into Russia’s unprovoked assault on Ukraine, the U.N. estimates that at least 4,000 civilians have been killed. The real total is undoubtedly significantly higher. A report recently published by a team of independent legal experts concluded that Russia’s atrocities in Ukraine are tantamount to genocide.
And yet there is a growing school of thought in the West that the victims must negotiate with their killers and accept more bloodshed and occupation in the name of giving Russian President Vladimir Putin an “off-ramp.” It is an offensive and dangerous delusion.
Speaking at Davos, Henry Kissinger recommended that Ukraine could end the war by reverting to the “status quo ante.” In other words, Ukraine must cede the territory of the Crimea and Donbas that Russia has already seized, as a reward for unleashing three months of carnage and causing Europe’s largest refugee crisis since World War II.
The realpolitik practitioners need to understand that Ukraine does not just fight for territory like a game of Risk but for the people that live there. The name of the Kyiv suburb Bucha will be forever remembered as a site of heinous war crimes committed by the Russian occupying forces after only a few weeks.
From every location that Putin’s army has taken, we have a gut-wrenching list of torture, rape, murder and enforced disappearances. Civil and critical infrastructure is targeted deliberately and whole cities like Mariupol have been rendered uninhabitable. Such misery has been sown in a few months; one can barely imagine what would unfold over years. When Ukrainians hear that they must give up territory, it means abandoning our compatriots.
And the terror does not stop when Russian forces have “liberated” a town. This invasion was never about securing territory. It is full scale social engineering by a regime that does not believe in the existence of Ukrainian identity or statehood.
Videos posted to Telegram channels filmed in the now-occupied regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia show terrified residents forced to recite forced confessions and confirm that they have completed a full course of de-Nazification. This grotesque experiment is reminiscent of the brainwashing of Uyghur Muslims by the Chinese government in Xinjiang concentration camps. But apparently some want Ukraine to hand over our people to these tormentors for the sake of a non-existent “negotiated settlement” with Russia.
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After almost a hundred days into Russia’s unprovoked assault on Ukraine, the U.N. estimates that at least 4,000 civilians have been killed. The real total is undoubtedly significantly higher. A report recently published by a team of independent legal experts concluded that Russia’s atrocities in Ukraine are tantamount to genocide.
And yet there is a growing school of thought in the West that the victims must negotiate with their killers and accept more bloodshed and occupation in the name of giving Russian President Vladimir Putin an “off-ramp.” It is an offensive and dangerous delusion.
Speaking at Davos, Henry Kissinger recommended that Ukraine could end the war by reverting to the “status quo ante.” In other words, Ukraine must cede the territory of the Crimea and Donbas that Russia has already seized, as a reward for unleashing three months of carnage and causing Europe’s largest refugee crisis since World War II.
The realpolitik practitioners need to understand that Ukraine does not just fight for territory like a game of Risk but for the people that live there. The name of the Kyiv suburb Bucha will be forever remembered as a site of heinous war crimes committed by the Russian occupying forces after only a few weeks.
From every location that Putin’s army has taken, we have a gut-wrenching list of torture, rape, murder and enforced disappearances. Civil and critical infrastructure is targeted deliberately and whole cities like Mariupol have been rendered uninhabitable. Such misery has been sown in a few months; one can barely imagine what would unfold over years. When Ukrainians hear that they must give up territory, it means abandoning our compatriots.
And the terror does not stop when Russian forces have “liberated” a town. This invasion was never about securing territory. It is full scale social engineering by a regime that does not believe in the existence of Ukrainian identity or statehood.
Videos posted to Telegram channels filmed in the now-occupied regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia show terrified residents forced to recite forced confessions and confirm that they have completed a full course of de-Nazification. This grotesque experiment is reminiscent of the brainwashing of Uyghur Muslims by the Chinese government in Xinjiang concentration camps. But apparently some want Ukraine to hand over our people to these tormentors for the sake of a non-existent “negotiated settlement” with Russia.