Sometimes we are surprised, not to say amazed, by the assumptions and reasoning with which we refer to the Ukraine conflict. Two days ago, the London government declared that Kyiv troops could hit targets in Russia with British weapons: in such situations, Boris Johnson or whoever would have been better off shutting up and avoiding making an argument of the genre. There is no doubt about it. However, the Kremlin’s response was in some ways even more absurd and surreal. Putin’s response was a series of threats, saying that if Ukrainians used Western weapons to attack Russian territory, Moscow would not rule out hitting targets in NATO countries. Aside from the fact that if Kyiv followed the same crazy logic, it could theoretically also target Iran or China, countries from which the weapons supplied by the former Red Army come, what is most striking is the arrogance, almost the bullying the Russian position: the “aggressor” country demands that the “attacked” country wage war only within its borders, it must not respond with blows on enemy territory. In short, he must sketch.
A claim that gives an idea of how, in the Moscow regime’s mentality, Ukraine is a predestined victim that can only succumb: Russia can commit crimes there with impunity or bomb cities without having to fear consequences on its own territory. In fact, the Kremlin’s risk map for war games only includes Ukraine. For Putin, reactions on Russian soil would therefore not have the legitimacy of acts of war, but would violate the inviolability of the empire.
It is an argument that makes you smile in its asymmetry, but at the same time it is striking because it shows that the Kremlin does not recognize any dignity of the Ukrainian nation and its resistance. That people are treated like fodder for slaughter: Unfortunately, this applies to war as well as to negotiations. On this front, too, Russia has so far not dealt with it, but has made proposals that it does not see as a basis for compromise, but simply requires their acceptance.
So it’s not going anywhere. And the first to understand it should be the supporters of negotiations at any price, which are very similar to the surrender of Ukraine under any conditions. Short-sighted logic, because the question does not only concern Kyiv: if the tsar is not convinced that he is in fact not omnipotent, one risks big problems in the future. Sometimes our soulless pacifists conjure up the third war world nightmare to convincingly demand a negotiation with any outcome, even leaving Ukraine to its fate (so far it’s the only avenue left open by Moscow). Well, you must have studied the history of the Bignami: The last world war stemmed from a unilateral negotiation that then-British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain attempted with Adolph Hitler after Germany’s aggression against Czechoslovakia and Poland. . Western democracies sinned in unison and it resulted not in peace but in war. Putin is certainly not Hitler, let’s not joke: it is he, however, who bears the burden of proof.