How strange. We talk about Ukraine sometimes with greater, sometimes with lesser intensity. Yet it is precisely there that a momentous game is being played. I remember the daily bulletins of the first year of war, the updates on the positioning and advance tactics of the troops of the two sides, the cities conquered, lost or reconquered, the strategic evaluations on the weight of one territory over another. Mariupol, Kehrson, Kharkiv, more important the north or the south, Zaporizhzia or Melitopol, the role of the Dnipro River, the bridges linking the mainland to Crimea. Advances and defeats. Battles and retreats. For many months, or perhaps since what I remember being announced and described as ‘the Ukrainian spring counteroffensive’, almost mythological, which then became summer, and then became nothing at all, it seems to me that we have hardly moved geographically. It was 2023. Everything seemed already defined then. And even then, like today, it was of relative importance. What has happened since then? Nothing.
And even before that, the attempts at negotiations in Istanbul that fell in the water due perhaps to cross-propaganda or someone else’s interests. It was March 2022. But you know, Russia’s conquering of eastern Ukraine territories is only a very partial reason, little more than a pretext. Russian-speaking regions yes, where there has been a more or less heated guerrilla warfare for years, lands that are not easy to manage, lands that serve to justify the real desire.
Hence the stalemate. Pushing further ahead useless and harmful, retreating equivalent to losing authority and negotiating weight. So the balance is held, at the cost of thousands of lives. Until the moment is ripe. For everyone.
I remember the news saying that Prigozhin was marching towards Moscow, it was June 25th 2023. I remember thinking, that day but also before, that Ukraine could no longer, nor would it be of any real benefit for them, regain the lost territories of the Donbas, let alone Crimea, which was Russian and Russian wanted to be. But that was not the point.
But is it really like that? Really has nothing happened anymore. Have the last two years been pointless…or not? Both, because if it is true that the frontline has not moved much, if it is true that the war could have been frozen and at least interrupted on the status-quo of 2023, saving lives, it is also true that this is utopian thinking, because it does not take into account the functioning of human beings themselves. And of the process required to arrive at an outcome that is not only feasible, but also accepted and stable… and for this, geography is not enough, nor politics. Emotions are needed.
So what really has happened in the last two years is the progressive evolution of everyone’s thinking, and especially that of the Ukrainians.
I also remember the daily narrative, of Zelenski, claiming not only that Ukraine would win, but also that it would regain all the lost regions, including Crimea. This narrative was clearly a major obstacle to the opening of a viable path towards stopping the war. This narrative was obviously serving various other purposes, such as the management of internal and external balances of power, or maybe it was the most blatant symptom of an unwillingness or possibility to understand reality? Both. Did he really believe this, Zelenski and the others with him? I suspect that the answer is ambiguous, that there was an overlap of dream and convenience, of political calculation and ideological myth, of external pressures and intrinsic convictions, of propagandistic demonstrations of strengths and utopian certainties. On the one hand, the need to preserve the role and image as a leader, on the other, the impossibility of saying to his own people and fighters ‘thank you very much, we’ll stop here, we can’t go anywhere anyway, believe me it’s better for everyone’.
You know, no one wants to believe certain things, there is an emotional block that prevents us from accepting certain ideas a priori. They are considered opinions, conspiracy theories, attempts at manipulation. We must reject them, laugh at them, invalidate them, or at least verify them. This is not simply a whim, but a necessary process and mental evolution to arrive to admit them. Without this process, and without a few tens of thousands of redundant deaths, we would not get to an acceptance of reality. And in any case, if the Ukrainians had stopped and said “enough, let’s not try to break through the front line anymore”, there would not have been anywhere a great sense of satisfaction.
The Russians would have almost been forced to advance further into Ukrainian territory, without perhaps really wanting to do so in that very moment. We might have almost found ourselves faced with a paradoxical situation.
So have the last two years been useless? In this sense, no. We had to get to the point of sealing on the ground the lack of desire, the lack of convenience, or the lack of possibility, to continue further. It was necessary to reach that state of individual and collective mental maturity necessary to make possible, politically but above all emotionally possible, an effective step forward and an awareness of the reality.
Was Ukraine unrightfully invaded? Yes
Should expecting that the entire world recognizes and admits such abusive invasion be a condition for moving forward? No
Ukraine should act as a self-aware Land, who does not need anybody’s approval nor permission in order to exist, and certainly not Russia’s. But also face Reality. Pretending Russia’s admission of culpability and excuses, in order to feel justice has been done, is an unrealistic expectation. Stubbornly persisting with the need to be universally considered to be “right”, despite understandable, is not going to bring any advantage. It is never possible to set the base for a new chapter by holding on a “right and wrong” approach. This is true between people as well as between nations.
Bering able to take a step back, as painful and unfair as it can be, is necessary to allow for a step forward.
Donbas and Crimea to Russia, no NATO for Ukraine, but a guarantee of protection, an outlet to the sea, a European perspective, strong reconstruction efforts, and a neutral but still independent State.
Are Ukrainians ready for peace?
