-OpEd-
KYIV — I recently had a very interesting and, in my opinion, revealing conversation with a Western journalist. His questions, as well as his reaction to my answers, are a perfect example of a new “peacemaking” line that is beginning to develop in the Western information space.
I will not claim that journalists deliberately become collaborators of the Russian narrative campaign. But the fact that this new line works primarily in Russia’s favor is an indisputable fact.
While discussing the events of the war, I said that Ukraine would never sit down at the negotiating table with the murderer of more than 500 Ukrainian children and that we, in turn, are indignant and cannot fathom how other countries can countenance communicating with a war criminal.
The journalist in question objected, arguing instead that the continuation of the war would lead to even greater casualties. For him, it was important to remember that Vladimir Putin could, at any moment, make use of his nuclear arsenal.
As a result of such “logical” reasoning, the journalist insisted that the most obvious necessity was finding a compromise.
Comfort and safety
My first answer to such an idea was that if the world had reacted in time to Hitler’s attack on Poland in 1939, there would not have been some 20 million victims of World War II. You cannot compromise with an aggressor; they must be punished without equivocation.
The object of condemnation is not the aggressor, but the victim.
But, and this is perhaps most important, such questions and reasoning regarding Putin’s potential use of nuclear weapons are highly manipulative. They imply that a country that does not possess nuclear weapons cannot and should not resist one that does.
According to this logic, a country that is the object of an attack by a nuclear state provokes the threat of a nuclear apocalypse with its very resistance. And in such a case, the object of condemnation is not the aggressor, but the victim.
What they are saying is: “Surrender and do not resist. We do not need your Freedom, we need our comfort and safety.” They will try to popularize this opinion in order to refuse support to Ukraine, which, through its actions, turns out to be actively “provoking” Russia.
Misleading logic
You can say that this is delusional and nonsense, but such an approach is characteristic of a certain number of representatives of the Western political sphere, which, fortunately for us, is still in the minority. But this idea, I believe, will now be actively promoted by the Kremlin.
In order to prevent this false and misleading logic from becoming dominant, we must tirelessly, firmly and consistently refuse to accept any nuclear blackmail.
We are not afraid of the so-called “world’s No. 2 army,” nor Putin, the bunker rat, and his nuclear club.We are afraid of only one thing — to lose freedom and we will go to the end in the fight for it.
Not just Kyiv’s problem
The world watched for a long time and, if it did not deliberately help, it did not hinder the growth of the Russian leviathan. Ukraine was forced to hand over the world’s second largest nuclear arsenal to Russia, to arm the Russian army of rapists with our own cruise missiles.
Our task is to create a mechanism that will protect humanity from the threat of nuclear madness.
The world was a donor of modern technologies, a buyer of oil and gas, which became the basis of financing Putin’s authoritarianism. The international elites became corrupt and the doors to the Russian oligarchy swung open.
Ukraine did not feed this monster in Moscow. But this is already a matter of history, and the task for modernity is to create a mechanism that will protect humanity from the threat of nuclear madness.
The Kremlin’s nuclear insanity is therefore not only a problem for Ukraine, but for the world, too.
