What Russia has done is, and continues to do — "Russia," by which I mean the dictatorial regime of Vladimir Putin and his cronies — what they have done is more than blatantly illegal, it violates the trust upon which Ukraine became the only nation in the nuclear age to demilitarize — that is, to destroy its nuclear capacity, to actually divest itself of nuclear weapons.
No other nation has done that. No nation that has obtained possession of nuclear weapons has ever divested itself of nuclear weapons.
The United States has not done anything so radical with its nuclear arsenal.
Neither has Russia with all its weapons from the former Soviet Union.
The Ukrainians handed over their weapons to the Russians in exchange for these guarantees regarding their borders and territorial integrity. The newly independent nation of Ukraine disarmed itself of what was then the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world, and agreed to live peacefully next to neighboring Russia — a heavily armed nuclear power that had a long history of aggression (and even attempted genocide in the Stalinist era) against the Ukrainian people. Ukraine obviously regarded the Budapest Memorandum as a serious and permanent commitment by Russia, underscored by meaningful guarantees of protection by the United States and Great Britain.
Not surprisingly, in the time following Ukrainian independence, Russia attempted to control the Ukrainian political leadership and hold Ukraine back from any movement toward integration with the European community. And then 12 years ago, when Ukrainians rose up — in what they called so beautifully the "Revolution of Dignity" — against manipulative pro-Kremlin, pro-Moscow politicians in order to choose its own free government, Putin took this as a pretext to seize Crimea, even though Crimea was within Ukrainian borders that had been previously guaranteed. Then Putin and his cronies saw fit to "stir up" (or perhaps even fabricate) supposedly anti-Ukrainian "separatist groups" in the eastern regions of Ukraine: Donetsk and Luhansk. And, of course, the Russian military then went in to help "liberate" these areas.
Thus, the present war actually began 12 years ago in February 2014.
This situation was met in a totally inadequate fashion by the Budapest Memorandum's other "guarantors" of Ukraine's borders, the United States and Great Britain. Once again, I stress that "Budapest" was an agreement of such consequence in the nuclear age that it should have been regarded as inviolable. As it turns out, however, it has set a bad precedent for pursuing nuclear disarmament by diplomatic means, which may have dangerous ramifications for the future.
In any case, this agreement was fractured in February of 2014, and we watched this happen. Then-Senator Marco Rubio eloquently reminded his colleagues of the precise details of the issue in a speech from the U.S. Senate floor. (We have seen, however, that "political memory" is awfully vulnerable in the current circumstances of the U.S. regime.)
This new imperial aspiration was something Vladimir Putin had made clear in his vision of Novorussia, or "Greater Russia," which was, of course, a Muscovite vision, a vision from the perspective of Moscow. In an immediate sense, it is a desire to restore the coherence of the "great power" stature and "security" that had been practiced by the Soviet Union.
But the Soviet Union, in spite of its communist elements, never escaped the the deep desire of Muscovy that was born in the divisive circumstances of the 15th century and the emergence of Muscovite rulers who assumed the ancient title of "Caesar" (Czar) and declared Moscow to be "the Third Rome" (replacing Constantinople which fell to the Turks in 1453). This was to be the basis of a sacred "manifest destiny" that grew into a vast empire that for hundreds of years absorbed many nations that have since become independent.
Ukraine, the more ancient and foundational land of the "Rus" which flourished prior to the 13th century Mongol invasion, has always been coveted by its more recent northern Russian neighbors, and it was incorporated into the Muscovite Russian Empire for some 300 years leading up to the twentieth century. But Ukraine maintained its own identity, language, and culture through all this time and in the Soviet era that followed.
The neo-Soviet imperialism of Vladimir Putin rejects Ukraine's independent national identity, and refuses to be bound by previous agreements of Ukrainian independence by the Russian Federation (including, apparently, the unprecedented terms of the agreement spelled out in the Budapest Memorandum, and long ago fulfillment by the nuclear disarmament of Ukraine). Putin made all of this clear in a speech he gave in 2022 a few days before the full scale invasion began. Putin made it clear that his ideological goal was to eliminate the existence of Ukraine (and there is no evidence that this goal has changed).
He began his war to conquer the whole of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. It was supposed to be a quick and easy "special military operation" by overwhelmingly larger Russian forces.
But Ukrainians bravely fought back in these days four years ago. They surprised everyone. They fought for their cities.
Kiev drove back the Soviet — I'm sorry, the Russian — invaders. (As an old man, I continually make the mistake of calling the Putinists "Soviets" — I remember too vividly the "flavor" of that old regime. It's a slip of the tongue and/or the typescript that takes me back to an all-too-familiar geopolitical behavior that I recognize from a time that does not need to return in any way.)
In some instances, when the Russian forces invaded, they committed horrible atrocities and war crimes, which are being documented and are quite clear in certain cases.
Four years later, here we are.
There is nothing complicated, really, about this. What Putinist Russia has done is wrong, and what they are still doing is wrong. The Ukrainian people are fighting in self-defense. War is horrible, and there is no way at this time to evaluate everything they have done in the course of their efforts to defend themselves, but I can only say that the need for self-defense remains the only cause in today's world that can (at least in principle) justify the enormous risk of using the means of physical force that we have at our disposal today through our immense technological power.
Insofar as the Ukrainians are defending themselves against a brutal invasion, they are involved in a war. But they are not the instigators or perpetuators of the violence of this war. They are its primary victims. That is why I can never accept, no matter how long this goes on, I will never be able to classify this as a war "between Russia and Ukraine," a conflict that "broke out" between two equally irresponsible participants, both of which have their desires, their wants, and their unwillingness to compromise.
That is not a realistic perception of what is happening. What is happening is that the Putinist regime is trying to impose its power upon an independent people, the Ukrainian people who have only further solidified their national identity through the past four years.
And the nations of Eastern Europe and Northern Europe are deeply aware of the behavior of today's Putin-Russia, as following a pattern that they saw during Czarist times, that they saw with vengeance in the Stalinist era, and that constituted the Soviet Union and its dominance over Eastern Europe until 1989. Poland is concerned. Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia are concerned, and they are rightly concerned. The Scandinavian countries are concerned. Finland and Russia have had their share of conflict in the past. None of the nations that are near the present borders of Russia are sanguine or comfortable with that proximity.
They fear that they may be next in line for a Russian invasion. The result of the invasion of Ukraine was several nations joining the NATO alliance. The NATO alliance is something complicated in itself. Its aims in the post-Soviet era are sometimes difficult to parse out, but certainly it is an alliance of nations committed to defend one another against the threats of attack.
Yet now, the most powerful member of the NATO alliance - the United States - has abdicated its role entirely. The United States, under its current regime, has suddenly decided to become an agent of chaos within the context of an allegedly "diplomatic" approach to the "Russian-Ukrainian" conflict.
It is precisely the leadership of the United States which is attempting to cast this as a conflict between two nations equally at fault, which can be solved by some sort of compromise, some sort of deal, some sort of transaction, in which Russia will receive as a reward for Putin's invasion, a certain amount of the territory that they wanted.
I cannot see how this will result in a just and lasting peace.
Dialogue is important. The dialogues that are taking place certainly have potential, but there must not be games being played by the most powerful member of the NATO alliance, independently of the rest of NATO, and in direct engagements with Russia that until recently did not include Ukraine.
The U.S. and the Russians have had all kinds of obscure "talks," — of course I am referring to the current regime in the United States which seems to have "complex intentions" in its relationship with Putin's regime. Often, the leader of our current regime seems friendly to Putin and antagonistic to the Ukrainians. And then "the switch" takes place in which he turns on Putin. There is no reasonable pattern to these changes; indeed, they often seem grounded on the whims of the chief executive, on tangential personal expectations or grudges he entertains, or on his sense that a "peace deal" is near at hand that he can use to embellish his own self-image.
This is, of course, chaotic. No one knows where the loyalty of the United States to the NATO alliance is going, nor whether the U.S. has the needs of Ukraine — as the victim of Putinist aggression — at heart. The idea of having a specific frame of reference with which to view this conflict is thrown up in the air. And we are left with real estate agents and multinational corporation leaders negotiating on the ground. One cannot help suspecting that they have a great interest in financial gain, that rather than a just peace, a financially lucrative situation for themselves is what they're seeking.
And unfortunately, the leader of the American regime is very much connected to these financial interests. He has given no evidence of being honest or dependable in such matters.
I'm being as "generous" as I can with these statements. It is still difficult to avoid the sarcastic tone that creeps in. Trying to take the current U.S. regime seriously as a constructive political force in any respect only ends up underscoring further what an unprecedented mess it is. Led by a former casino owner, the present U.S. regime has turned current events into a crap shoot. Does the world feel lucky?
But I digress...
The war in Ukraine is an abomination. It is a violence against a free people. We must pray for peace. We must pray for dialogue. Dialogue does not necessarily need to be limited to those who are in power right now. Are there other forces anywhere in the Russian Federation today? Are there others who think differently, who might think differently? Other "places" where certain constructive dialogues and certain proposals might be initiated? Any such dialogue would have to be extraordinarily discreet. Perhaps it is already going on, carefully, unbeknownst to us.
I also know that there have been other visions of Russia's future.
A great man named Alexei Navalny dared to think differently and envisioned a democratic, personalistic society — what he called "the Beautiful Russia" of tomorrow. He was deeply patriotic, but at the same time, with an intelligence and fairness that recognized when the war in Ukraine broke out, that it was immoral and wrong for his own country.
By then, of course, Navalny was in the prison system from which he would never be released, ultimately to die mysteriously in February of 2024. There is some evidence that he was poisoned (again, after surviving a prior effort by the FSB).
Alexei Navalny is a light for the future of Russia, and this matters greatly because we also care about the future of Russia. Russia has a great historical mission. Muscovite Russia — in spite of its schismatic origins and its devolution into an atheist, materialistic totalitarian society for most of the 20th century — still has a great distinctive civilization that has expressed profound truths in its history. The nation has vast, as-yet-unimagined possibilities that may yet blossom and bear fruit in the "Beautiful Russia" of the future. It has vast regions of territory and opportunities to develop in ways that will be constructive for a more profoundly united Europe and a “sign” for all the world.
Has it not been promised that "Russia will be converted..."?
If it puts aside its passion to be a superpower; if it puts aside its sense of condescending hegemony; if it takes upon itself responsibility for the violence of the 20th century, which it inflicted, especially through the reign of Stalin, and if it formally apologizes and renounces forever the violence of Stalinist imperialism... Russia could grow into something new and great for the whole world.
Solzhenitsyn, while still a dissident within the Soviet Union, had called for the future of Russia to be one of penance, one of inwardness and the acceptance of limitation. He made this courageous declaration with great love for Russia, but also because he knew that Russia had to take a moment to come to grips with its past in order to grow more deeply in its own national identity. This recommendation from his 1973 open letter to the Soviet Politburo still seems to me to ring with a certain truth and express a certain prophetic vision that perhaps Solzhenitsyn in his later years lost sight of (which was understandable given the multitude of new problems that arose for Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union, problems that became the preoccupation of his final years).
The Russian Federation faced serious social and economic difficulties in the 1990s, but these difficulties do not absolve the Russians from adhering to the international agreements that they made in those years. And it is incontestable that in 1994, they agreed to respect the integrity of Ukraine's borders in exchange for Ukraine divesting itself of nuclear weapons. I cannot think in the modern world, in the world we live in today, I cannot think of an agreement that would be more absolutely binding than an agreement that involves divestment of nuclear weapons in the international sphere. Such an agreement creates obligations above and beyond the basic requirements of international law.
Needless to say, Ukraine’s rights as a nation would still stand firmly even without the Memorandum, but its violation by Putin’s Russia adds the note of “betrayal” to an already unjustifiable and ruthless invasion. It is an example of the many broken promises that Russia has made to Ukraine as pretenses for “peace agreements.”
So on the fourth anniversary of Russia's full scale invasion, many Ukrainians are suffering and dying for something very concrete.
All Vladimir Putin needs to do is stop. All the Russians need to do to bring peace is to withdraw their troops. I realize we're probably not going to get that. And that is a shame to Russia. If a "negotiated settlement" brings them any gain at the expense of Ukraine, it will only be a temporary gain. And they will have to face the shame of having stolen land and territory from an independent people. They will not grow from this gain. They will not grow in a human realization of their national identity. Rather, they will continue to live the errors of their predecessors. They will continue to embody the Stalin approach, which they have not yet sufficiently renounced and condemned.
Russia needs to condemn the errors of Stalin, to repent of them, and to make some sort of historic reparation for them. This is as necessary for Russia as it was for Germany after the violence and death perpetrated by Adolf Hitler. The Germans succeeded in the tasks of repudiation, renunciation, and reparation during the years of the buildup of West Germany in a remarkable way. Not perfect, no doubt, but in a remarkable way.
Nothing even remotely comparable has been seen in post-Soviet Russia. Yet it is necessary, not for revenge but for healing. Healing will not come if there is not the giving and receiving of forgiveness. It is not sufficiently effective for forgiveness to be proffered if it is not also received. And the Muscovite Russian nation cannot be healed until it acknowledges its errors and takes responsibility for them.
It is especially important for the international community to hold accountable the criminals in the Russian regime; they should be tried and given some sort of punishment. Without these things, there will not be true peace. There will only be temporarily discontinued friction. Further resentment will brew and new wars of aggression will follow in a continued cycle of violence. Russia will learn nothing, and it will continue to expand its violent activity. The nations of Eastern Europe are duly afraid of this. And a country like Poland is not going to sit by and watch. Nor, it seems, are the other countries of NATO.
The United States, of course, has introduced a dizzying and dangerous ambivalence into the current problem due to the instability of its chief executive and the incompetence of its diplomatic group.
Let us pray for peace.
Let us pray for the people of Ukraine. From their sufferings, we pray something else might begin to emerge, something beautiful and exemplary for the whole world. May God bless and help Ukrainian people on this terrible fourth anniversary of the full-scale invasion of their nation.
May God have mercy on Ukraine, and console the sorrows of its people. May God have mercy on Russia and free them from a suffocating autocracy and its systematically violent ways. May God have mercy on the perpetrators of violence and on those who sow confusion in places where the focus of other nations must be solidarity and the search for a genuine peace.
May God have mercy on me, an old fool who writes these inadequate words and searches for some light to lead us forward.
May God have mercy on us all.
