There can be no compromise between Russian genocide and Ukrainian freedom

Ever since Vladimir Putin’s troops first crossed the Ukrainian border on February 24, there has been no shortage of Western commentators seeking to explain why Ukraine really has no choice but to offer Russia land in exchange for peace. Despite a series of Ukrainian military successes and mounting evidence that the Russian invasion has run out of steam, calls for a compromise peace continue.

The self-styled foreign policy realists behind these calls tend to overlook the fact that the land they are so eager to give away is actually home to millions of Ukrainians who would face a desperately bleak future under prolonged Russian occupation. Such arguments reflect a fundamental failure to grasp the unrepentant imperialism at the heart of modern Russian identity and the genocidal objectives underpinning the invasion of Ukraine.

Many in the realist camp remain convinced that the roots of the current conflict lie in NATO enlargement and Western encroachment into Russia’s traditional sphere of influence. They typically approach today’s war as a wholly rational geopolitical dispute and insist that Putin’s actions, however brutal, are a more or less inevitable response to the West’s own provocative policies in the decades following the Soviet collapse.

This Kremlin-friendly narrative has never really stood up to serious scrutiny. After all, even the most rabid of Russian propagandists recognizes that the entire notion of a NATO attack on Russia is pure fantasy. Even if NATO did genuinely harbor plans to invade Russia, why would they not simply use the Baltic states, which offer the same geographical proximity as Ukraine and have been members of the alliance for almost two decades?

The events of the past six months have further undermined the credibility of Moscow’s NATO mythology. Senior Kremlin officials now freely acknowledge that the current Russian invasion would continue even if Ukraine were to rule out NATO membership altogether and officially embrace neutrality, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has suggested.

Meanwhile, Russia has accepted neighboring Finland’s recent decision to join NATO with barely a murmur. This meek response to the fast-tracked Finnish membership bid has made a complete mockery of the Kremlin’s earlier protestations over the unacceptability of a growing NATO presence on Russia’s borders.

In reality, of course, Putin understands perfectly well that NATO poses no security threat to Russia. He has simply used the issue to his advantage. The Russian dictator has exploited lingering Western divisions over the wisdom of the alliance’s post-1991 enlargement as a convenient way of disguising and legitimizing his own historic mission to destroy independent Ukraine.

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

Putin is the latest in a long line of Russian rulers who have sought to eradicate Ukrainian identity and wipe Ukraine off the European map. This dark history provides essential context for anyone wishing to make sense of today’s war. Indeed, the current invasion is the latest link in an unbroken chain of imperial oppression stretching back for more than three hundred years.

For centuries, successive Russian regimes ruthlessly suppressed Ukraine’s independence aspirations while imposing wave upon wave of russification. Generations of Ukrainians were robbed of their past and banned from using their own language. The nadir was reached in the earlier 1930s when millions were starved to death in a genocidal famine engineered by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin to eradicate Ukrainian national identity in its rural heartlands.

While Ukraine officially achieved independence in 1991, Russia never came to terms with this separation. Instead, Moscow sought to keep independent Ukraine firmly within the Kremlin orbit and viewed Ukrainian efforts to embrace a democratic European future as an existential threat to authoritarian Russia that must be prevented at almost any cost.

Throughout his reign, the need to either control or crush Ukraine has dominated Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy thinking. His pivot from early cooperation with the West to Cold War-style confrontation came about as a direct response to Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution. Ten years later when millions of Ukrainians took to the streets once again in defense of their European choice and fledgling democracy, Putin went one step further and ordered his military to intervene. The 2014 seizure of Crimea and occupation of eastern Ukraine set the stage for this year’s full-scale invasion and illustrated Putin’s readiness to make remarkable sacrifices in order to resolve the Ukrainian question.

While advocates of appeasement may well be genuinely unaware of Russia’s true intentions, Ukrainians are under no such illusions. They are painfully familiar with Russia’s deeply entrenched culture of denial regarding their country’s right to exist. They also noted how Russian rhetoric toward Ukraine grew increasingly radical in the months leading up to the invasion. Putin himself published an unhinged 5,000-word historical essay in July 2021 that many likened to a declaration of war on Ukrainian statehood.

As the outbreak of hostilities drew closer, Putin’s obsession with the destruction of Ukraine became increasingly obvious. He proclaimed Ukraine an inalienable part of Russia’s own history, culture, and spiritual space, while at the same time denouncing the present Ukrainian state as an illegitimate “anti-Russia” that could no longer be tolerated.

During the first six months of the invasion, Russia’s genocidal intentions have become even more explicit. Regime officials have routinely questioned Ukraine’s continued existence, while debates over the desirability of genocide in Ukraine has become an everyday feature of Kremlin-controlled Russian TV. Meanwhile, state media has helpfully clarified that Putin’s promised “de-Nazification” actually means the “de-Ukrainianization” of Ukraine.

These chilling words have been more than matched by deeds. The advancing Russian army has employed massive artillery bombardments to destroy entire Ukrainian towns and cities along with their civilian populations. Tens of thousands are believed to have been killed in Mariupol alone as Russian forces methodically destroyed the Ukrainian seaside city.

In regions under Russian occupation, Putin’s troops have systematically engaged in mass murder. Groups of victims have repeatedly been found in liberated areas with hands bound and showing signs of torture. Millions of Ukrainian civilians have been forcibly deported to Russia, including thousands of children. Those left behind are subject to terror tactics including abductions and hostage-taking. The Ukrainian language has been removed from every aspect of public life, while parents who refuse to subject their children to Russian indoctrination have been warned that they risk losing custody.

Given openness of Russia’s plans to extinguish the Ukrainian nation, it is hardly surprising that an overwhelming majority of Ukrainians firmly oppose any kind of land-for-peace deal with the Kremlin. They recognize that a negotiated settlement which cedes parts of Ukraine to Russian control would condemn the residents of those regions to genocide while paving the way for the next Russian invasion once Putin’s battered military regroups and rearms. Rather than accepting this dismal fate, there is a determination to continue fighting until a decisive victory can be secured. Faced with the destruction of their nation, most Ukrainians believe they have no other choice.

Media portrayals of the war in Ukraine often depict it as a struggle between Russia and the West but this geopolitical framing is misleading. What we are currently witnessing is actually the latest chapter in Europe’s longest independence struggle. As long ago as 1731, French thinker Voltaire was moved to write, “Ukraine has always aspired to be free.” This epic journey may now be entering its final stages.

Thanks to the remarkable courage and resilience demonstrated over the past six months, the Ukrainian nation is currently closer to securing true freedom than at any time in its long and troubled history. It is vital that the democratic world now remains united behind Ukraine as the war enters what is likely to be a decisive period. There should be no more talk of concessions or compromises. Partial genocide is not an option. Instead, the only way to achieve a lasting peace is by helping Ukraine to win the war.

Nolan Peterson is the author of Why Soldiers Miss War. A former US Air Force special operations pilot and a veteran of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Nolan is now a conflict journalist and author whose adventures have taken him to all seven continents. In addition to his memoirs, Nolan has published two fiction collections. He lives in Kyiv, Ukraine, with his wife, Lilya.

The decade plus old claims of ‘genocide’ between Russia and Ukraine.

Long been utilized as this 2014 can substantiate....

‘Crying Genocide: Use and Abuse of Political Rhetoric in Russia and Ukraine’
https://carnegieendowment.org/2014/07/28/crying-genocide-use-and-abuse-of-political-rhetoric-in-russia-and-ukraine-pub-56265

Hmmmm...board of directors for the Atlantic council includes. among others....

former CIA head Leon Panetta

Condaleeza Rice

Henry Kissinger

General James N. Mattis. retired

Bill Clinton's secretary of defense, William J. Perry

Aaaannnddd, the Atlantic Council's Chairman of the Board is Goldman Sacchs'
CEO, John F.W. Rogers

President and CEO, Frederick Kempe , spent 30 years at the Wall Street Journal.

So basically, the Atlantic Council carries the Deep State's water while posing as a foreign policy think tank. So the Deep State wants us all to think that the Ukraine, and the billions fellow corruptocrats like Biden have sent it, are winning the war, and they want your donations....no refunds when you realize they're lying.

And who exactly would be powerful enough in Western or Central Europe to invade Russia through Ukraine?

The Dutch?

The Norwegians?

The Czechs?

Seriously, you’re making ridiculous excuses. It’s not an invasion they fear.

So, IOW, you would be fine with a China-Mexico “defensive alliance,” with Chinese troops, tanks and nuclear missiles arrayed along our southern border?

Okay, got it.

For Russia, this ongoing scenario with Ukraine is actually worse, because America was never invaded from the south in a genocidal war of extermination, with dozens of cities and towns burned, and millions of Americans killed.

This did happen to Russia, in living memory, and the invasion by an alliance of Europeans, led by Germany, came through Ukraine.

If they had made it 100 more miles, to the Caspian, they would have cut off the oil and won the war outright.

This is not hypothetical to Russians. It happened in living memory.

So let me end by reiterating the question: You would be fine with a China-Mexico alliance that saw Chinese troops, tanks and missiles along our southern border?

Yes, or no?

“It’s not an invasion they fear.”

Same question to you as above. You would be fine with a China-Mexico alliance, with Chinese troops, tanks and missiles along the Mexican border.

Yes, or no?

The difference being, America was never invaded from the south in a war of extermination.

Russia was, in living memory.

So, please answer the question. You would be fine with a Communist China-Mexico alliance, with Chinese troops, tanks and missiles along the Mexican border.

For Russia, this ongoing scenario with Ukraine is actually worse...This did happen to Russia, in living memory, and the invasion by an alliance of Europeans, led by Germany, came through Ukraine.

So explain moron, why Putin, who according to you is so terrified of NATO expansion, said its okay for Finland and Sweden to join NATO and that its "not a threat"? Why because NATO invading nuclear Russia is NOT going to happen.

Putin sees no threat from NATO expansion, warns against military build-up

President Vladimir Putin said on Monday that there was no threat to Russia if Sweden and Finland joined NATO

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-calls-finland-sweden-joining-nato-mistake-with-far-reaching-consequences-2022-05-16/

There was ZERO chance of an invasion of Russia through Ukraine.

ZERO.

Why can’t you just take the L on this bizarre idea like a man?

No one is EVER going to invade Russia through Ukraine from Western or Central Europe. No one. Ever.

A China-Mexico alliance? You’re so ill-equipped to debate about Russia-Ukraine you have to create absurd analogies from a twilight world that doesn’t exist.

And let me remind you that reducing the Nazi German invasion of the USSR to “gee, they invaded Russia through Ukraine” is utter nonsense since the Germans actually invaded the USSR (there was no independent Russian state) through POLAND which had been occupied by the Soviets in 1939 along with their Nazi allies. https://www.military-history.org/feature/operation-barbarossa-map-1941.htm

This is not about Soros, Globohomoism, De-Nazification or any other Russian protagonists’ distractions. This is about Russia invading and annexing Ukraine and killing its people. You throw up .gifs of events going back over 300 years to justify Russia’s actions yet in the last 20 years:

-Russia invaded and annexed Chechnya.
-Russia invaded and annexed Georgia.
-Russia invaded and annexed Crimea.
-Russia invaded and is attempting to annex Ukraine.
-Russia invaded and annexed LPR.
-Russia invaded and annexed DPR.
-Russia has declared its intention to invade and annex Moldova.
-Russia has declared its intention to invade and annex the Baltic states -NATO members.

NATO is correct to arm Ukrainians to fight Russia in Ukraine to avoid nuclear war when Russia attacks the Baltic States.

Russia’s conventional forces are vastly inferior to NATO’s which compels it to first-use nuclear weapons when attacking NATO countries.

Putin is pushing an “I win or everyone loses” strategy. NATO and the rest of the world has had enough.

You reach back 300 years to justify Russian aggression and territorial conquest. Your premise is amoral. What’s good for Russia is “good” what’s bad for Russia is “bad”.
You are grossly biased. You offer no reasonable argument based upon morality. You have lost all credibility on this forum

The Germans, along with their French (Charlemagne Division SS), Scandinavian (Viking SS), Spanish (Condor Legion), Romanian etc European allies invaded Russia via Poland then through Belarus and UKRAINE.

This is an historical fact. This was in living memory of millions of Russians, and tens of millions of their offspring.

So, you think that Russia should just sit back while Ukraine joins NATO, with full Article V guarantees, and NATO puts nuclear-tipped missiles in Kharkiv Oblast, with a 4 minute flight time to Moscow? Russia should just passively accept this?

If your answer is yes, Ukraine can do anything it wishes, then why is my China-Mexico analogy not apt? Why would you permit nuclear NATO missiles in Kharkiv Oblast, but not CCP missiles along the Rio Grande? If Mexico joins an alliance with Communist China down the road, what would be your objection?

For Russians, the situation is much worse, because in living memory they did suffer an extermination invasion from Europe that came through Ukraine, and came within 100 miles of a Caspian oil fields knockout punch, which would have been followed by a Nazi extermination of Russians.

This happened in the living memory of millions of Russians.

But now you expect them to just passively accept NATO nuclear missiles minutes from Moscow in Ukraine.

Then by what rationale would you object to Communist Chinese nuclear missiles along the Rio Grande?

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