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Barely weeks into the quagmire unleashed by the February 2022 Russian military intervention in Ukraine, Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke of the importance of making the current era an era of peace and not of war, standing side by side with President Putin of the Russian Federation. At that early stage of the conflict, both Russia and Ukraine were ready for peace based on the status quo. Sadly, the UK and the US were not, and they dangled the poisoned chalice of abundant military and other assistance to President Zelenskyy of Ukraine, and he accepted rather than ignored the offer. Since then, a conflict that harms both Ukraine and Russia has ground on. The present stage is that Ukraine seeks an immediate and unconditional ceasefire to replenish losses in personnel and materiel, which Russia has rejected. Putin does not want an invigorated Ukraine to once again do battle with the Russian military, and wants additional territory besides a cast iron assurance that Ukraine will not join NATO. Now, while the UK under Starmer is as keen on the conflict continuing as Boris Johnson was in 2022, the US made a profitable deal in which it sells weapons to Ukraine that are paid for by the Europeans. Sir Keir, Chancellor Merz, President Macron and other European leaders appear to be determined to press forward with a war that from the start has been impossible to win for Ukraine. In the meantime, those who voted them into power have been living with rising costs of living with more and more asking why money that ought to have been spent on them is going towards feeding the Ukrainian war machine. Were there to be an election, the odds are high that Zelenskyy would lose to a genuine peacemaker, instead of a one-time comic who came to power promising peace with Russia and soon became the warmonger-in-chief of Ukraine.
Cutting off supplies with Russia is exacting a high cost on backers of the war in Europe, to the benefit of China. Macron, the most fervent backer of the war in western Europe, is losing the grip of France in country after country, Madagascar being the latest. At the same time, he wants the EU to have a seat at the table in any discussions about Ukraine, clearly in order to act the spoiler of any peace effort save on Zelenskyy’s terms. Peace is indeed better than war, including wars caused by a country eager to climb up the ladder of success on the backs of much of the rest of the world. Such ascents were characterised by the period of European colonisation, including the long lasting phenomenon of elite capture of a country by a predatory power.
But what happens when the elites lose control of a country? Buying a few of the privilegentsia is easy, but winning over the rest of the population in a country is not, especially for those looking to profit from the misery of the many. Supporters of the Ukraine war in Europe are once again looking at using Russian assets frozen in European banks to fund a war which is conservatively estimated to cost $40 billion in the coming year. The Swiss had a reputation for neutrality which they did not lose in the war of 1939-45 pitting the Allies against the Axis of Nazi Germany, Japan and Italy. Unwisely for them, they opted to back the Ukraine side in the war against Russia. Should Switzerland consent to permitting Russian assets held in its banks to fund the war, such a shift would massively affect trust in Switzerland as a safe destination for funds from various countries.
Despite the darkening shadow of war, it does not seem long before its boosters tire of funding an unwinnable war. Within the European countries, the only gainers from the war are the extreme elements on both the left and the right, which are by now too big to get passed off as “fringe” groups. Interestingly, almost all such “fringe” parties in Europe are opposed to the Ukraine war. Perhaps that stance is among the strongest reasons for their success. When European pro-war leaders press forward in the expectation that Russia will tire and retire from the conflict, they forget that Moscow faced the onslaught of Berlin under Hitler during 1941-45 and did not fold even after most of European Russia was lost and millions of soldiers were taken prisoner by the Wehrmacht.
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Adolf Hitler fed the fantasy that Germans were a superior race, when nature was clear that given equal opportunity, all ethnic groups are equal. In a country that was defeated in the 1914-18 war, where an extraction of reparations from the Allies resulted in mass unemployment and even starvation in some cases, such a reassurance was embraced with enthusiasm. Germans were the (fictitious) Master Race while Russians were Untermensch (inferior). By the close of 1943, the so-called Untermensch had begun to break the back of the German armed forces, and by the middle of 1944, rout them across the Eastern Front. Being sent to the Eastern Front by the Wehrmacht was tantamount to a death sentence, which is why German soldiers did whatever they could to remain on other fronts. It was the Russian (then Soviet) armed forces who destroyed the Wehrmacht, leaving a tattered remnant for US and UK armies to do battle with.
During most of 1939, Stalin several times asked for permission to cross Polish territory in order to create a unified front with Britain and France, and each time the Poles under Sikorsky refused, to the cost of Poland when the country was invaded. Today a descendant of Sikorsky is Foreign Minister of Poland, and leads the anti-Russian chant of some of the EU countries and of course the UK. Not just the Bourbons in France but the Sikorskys in Poland appear to be forgetful of history. And hence an exhausted Ukraine is goaded to fight on, to even greater losses in men and territory than that stricken country has already endured.
The only remedy is the selection by the Ukrainians of a leader who does not have the vested interest Volodymyr Zelenskyy has in prolonging a futile war. The world has suffered enough by the von der Leyen delusion that the West is still fighting Cold War 1.0 with Moscow when the actual war is with Beijing now that Cold War 2.0 has begun.