Both Kyiv and the West want a full and stable truce with Moscow – as soon as possible. Why and how the Ukrainian national interest now contradicts the ceasefire with Russia is clear: Kyiv’s problem in negotiations with Moscow is that the agreement with the Kremlin will not lead to the full restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity. Nor will it protect Ukraine from the continuation of Russian imperialism and anti-Ukrainianism.

In the opinion of most Ukrainians and other Eastern Europeans, talking to the current Russian government about a convenient arrangement is a waste of time. Only after the crushing defeat of Russia is a solid understanding between Moscow and Kyiv possible. As in previous periods of tsarist and Soviet history, a military catastrophe can provoke fundamental internal changes in Russia.

Western countries, like the rest of the world, face a different dilemma. Perhaps they are more ambiguous about Putin’s idiosyncrasies, about the future of Russia and Ukraine’s sovereignty. Western capitals are perhaps less concerned than Kyiv about the long-term prospects of a ceasefire or peace agreement. Election cycles in democracies suggest that politicians seeking public office are looking for quick fixes today rather than engaging in years of confrontation.

Defying the cynics

Many in Washington, Brussels, Paris or Berlin – not to mention the capitals of Asia, Africa or Latin America – may view the Russian-Ukrainian war as a regional, post-Soviet and/or distant Slavic dispute. Some politicians continue to openly declare that this Eastern European confrontation is of little concern to them. Ukraine is indeed distant geographically, culturally, historically and politically from the countries of most Western players. This could mean for their governments that financial, military and political investment in the defense, security and reconstruction of Ukraine should be limited or even stopped. It may also mean that a bad but quick peace is now better than a noble but protracted military confrontation.

But even politicians and governments that do not care about justice, freedom and self-determination cannot separate their behavior towards Moscow and Kyiv from issues of global stability and security. Ukraine, like Russia, is an integral part of the world political and legal order. It is a full member of the international community of states.

Already in the period 1945-1991, the Ukrainian Soviet Republic was, unlike the Russian Soviet Republic, a non-sovereign member of the UN. After gaining independence in August 1991, Ukraine became not only a full member of the UN, but also a fully sovereign state. Currently, it is also a permanent member of the Council of Europe, the OSCE, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, as well as many other international organizations, regulations and agreements.

Kremlin glove

For this reason, Russia has created, starting with the illegal annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea in 2014, a fundamental problem for the international community of states – including those governments that do not care about the fate of the Ukrainian people and the state. Moscow insists that the Ukrainian nation and state do not have completeness. However, the structure, logic, and functioning of the international order, security system, and cross-border cooperation suggest that this is so.

Eight years after the armed seizure of Crimea, Moscow doubled down on its position of denying Ukrainian statehood. Again, illegally and even more shamelessly, Russia annexed four more regions, which are now located in the southeast of mainland Ukraine. This is yet another demonstrative violation of international law, as well as the escalation of Moscow’s campaign of terror against the civilian population of Ukraine, which began on February 24, 2022, has raised the stakes. The course, duration, outcome and consequences of the war are becoming more and more disastrous not only for Ukraine, but also for the strength of the order of sovereign states on the planet.

Nine years ago, the Kremlin’s story regarding the allegedly disputed status of Crimea was partially accepted by the international community. However, today few politicians, diplomats and experts can accept the Kremlin’s odious excuses for Russia’s scandalous behavior in Ukraine. The Kremlin continues to explain why Ukraine has no right to exist, at least within its internationally recognized borders. Moscow continues its selective presentation and outright falsification of history, law, politics, culture, etc. Ukrainian All this is intended to reinforce the Kremlin’s thesis that Ukraine does not actually exist.

International order, goodbye?

The problem of the Kremlin’s disinformation campaign is not so much factual inaccuracies and selective selection of events in Ukrainian history. Moscow’s deeper challenge to its narrative about Ukraine is that rhetorically similar narratives can be told about many other countries. Most states and territories around the world have had tangled histories, conflicting alliances and strange episodes in their ancient and recent past. Some of them have disputed territories and ambiguous identities to this day. All the countries of the world did not exist at one time like Ukraine. All of them were once not real nations and, like Ukraine, had different borders.

Despite Moscow’s explosive behavior toward the international system of states, the Kremlin insists that Pandora’s box is empty. Worse, Russia in this sense is not just any country in the post-Cold War world. It inherited from the Soviet Union a permanent seat on the UN Security Council (UNSC) and the official status of a nuclear-weapon state under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).

The Russian Federation is one of the five members of the Commonwealth of Nations, which have special rights and obligations regarding the maintenance of state order, world security and international law. By its actions, Moscow is undermining the fundamental principles of the UN Charter. Russia is overturning the logic of the world nuclear non-proliferation regime and the exclusive status of the five states that officially possess nuclear weapons. In the hands of Russia, the UN Security Council and the NPT have become instruments not of stabilization, but of undermining the international order. – Read the entire article and comment on contributors.ro