From: Joe Reiners — There’s been a lot of discussion recently about an end to the war here in Ukraine. As an American living in Ukraine, I’ve been baffled by both the substance and tone of much of that discussion. It seems like some basic facts are being forgotten or ignored. If we’re going to talk about how this war will or should end, we need to understand how it began and why it continues.
-This war began because Russia wanted something that wasn’t theirs, and decided to take it through violent force. Ukraine did not “get itself into this war.” Ukraine was invaded against its will.
-This war continues because Russia continues to wage it. Day after day. they kill Ukraine’s best and bravest along the front lines and terrorize and murder civilians through drone and missile strikes. Just today we took our daughters to a doctor’s appointment at a children’s hospital here in Kyiv. Some of the windows are still boarded up after a Russian strike. The air raid sirens sounded while we were there.
-This war would end if Russia would stop waging it. If they simply turned around and went back to their side of the border, this would all be over. Russia has the ability to stop fighting this war and remain Russia. If Ukraine stops fighting, there won’t be a Ukraine anymore.
With those facts in mind, why is so much of the focus on what Ukraine and the rest of the world must offer Russia to end this war? Why are the Americans meeting with Russia before Ukraine? Russia alone started it and Russia alone can end this. If Russia is allowed to invade Ukraine and then be treated as an equal (or more than an equal) at the negotiating table, the end of this war won’t be an end at all, but a break in the middle of the war. Russia will have learned that they can take the time to renew their strength and come back to carve off another piece of Ukraine whenever they’re ready.
On a personal note, I’m alternately angered, saddened, and exhausted by how casually people from outside Ukraine have begun to suggest that Ukraine needs to be “realistic” about the fact that they will never get back the territory that has been stolen from them. For the casual observer, this might just be about lines on a map. For the more engaged observer, this might be about control of economically and militarily valuable resources. For a Ukrainian, they are those things and so much more. On the other side of one of those lines on the map, there’s a house that my wife grew up in, and where we’d be planning to visit her parents with their granddaughters if Russia hadn’t stolen it by force. Maybe you can read everything I’ve written here and come to a different conclusion about how these conversations should be going, but I hope, at the very least, that you’ll understand that you are asking Ukrainians to give up something priceless. This war is more realistic for them than it is for anyone else.
Voice of Ukraine 