Stop The Rhetoric of War.

The war in Ukraine is slowly escalating to more dangerous levels. Before this war started there were already “military operations” from both sides, in fact the first mistake probably was when Ukraine was — long ago — created as a country with some clear division between the East and West side already recognisable by the use of Latin writing version Cyrillic writing. So there are prolongations of different cultural roots existing probably some more individualistic (right wing) versus more group oriented (left wing); anyway such cultural differences have not lead to real wars before. Now the argument about the treaty specifying no growth of NATO in the East direction is heard a lot but on the other hand it is usual for sovereign countries too decide their political (social and military) choices independently, thus the choice for them to join NATO is theirs and theirs alone so not a choice of Russia or NATO itself. Now thesituation is rather clear? Ukraine cannot defeat Russia in an all out war, so their demands fro more and heavier weaponry to the West, say NATO, is understandable but not necessarily morally good. There are international laws but when the rhetoric of war gains terrain those laws do not necessarily seem to hold anymore, the situation of old treaties is even weaker. We have not learned from earlier wars.

If you look at the richesses of the Donbas area — just look at the lists of precious ores and the ranking of the Donbas area in the world’s production of these — it is clear why Russia wants to have the control of it, the stories about fighting the Nazi’s are obviously just a weak excuse to invade a country with a “military operation” which now can only lead to very excessive loss of lives .What is the population of the Donbas region now feeling about the evolution of the conflict. There has been some referendum organised by the Russians asking whether they wanted to stay in Ukraine or not.The reaction of the West was that that referendum was manipulated, perhaps but anyway the way out is to have areal referendum in that area . I cannot imagine that the majority of the population wants to have the onslaught among their brothers,sisters, nephews and nieces to continue and result in some genocide. How many children have to die before one decides it has been enough! When the West will provide modern tanks then anti-tank weapons will be popular too,the next step is modern fighter planes and anti-aircraft artillery, and the next step bombs of some terrible type. The only result is more devastation,more death and the almost total destruction of the Ukrainian infrastructure and societies. We cannot believe, even now, that NATO or Russia will at some moment go into a total war about Ukraine. Meanwhile the whole world is paying a price, except the arms industry, they do very well and the shareholders are happy with the dividends. All of this is happening at the moment of some ongoing pandemic and the real problems of climate instability and pollution are not first priority anymore; the development of poor countries is under pressure because of certain shortages of food and energy appearing plus the high inflation all over the world. Spending more on weapons means less for health care, education, cultural activities,etc… . Instead of talking about weapons all the time one has to talk about peace more seriously. It is unbelievable that so many leaders of countries and institutions are standing up shouting for more weapons to be send to Ukraine, few are talking about a possible peace agreement. So let me propose the following core of some peace agreement.

Ukraine grants temporary autonomy to the Donbas region and Russia withdraws its army from the Ukrainian territory and the Donbas region in particular. After some period of diplomatic offensives and a necessary period of calming down areal democratic referendum is organised in the Donbas region,under supervision of involved parties plus neutral countries. the result of such referendum will be accepted by Ukraine and Russia , possibly there will be economic treaties between Ukraine and Donbas in case the region becomes independent, if not the influence of the other party will be put in some three party treaty Ukraine-Donbas-Russia.

This seems to be a humane way out of the conflict and it leaves the final decision to the people who have to live in the Donbas region. In the name of humanity and the value of life, please leaders of the world ,stop your rhetoric of war and give peace a chance!