Op-ed: Victory for Ukraine is the only option for the sake of peace

to “respect [Ukraine’s] independence and sovereignty” and to “refrain from the threat or the use of force against [Ukraine].” In doing so, the Russian invasion has done massive damage to nuclear nonproliferation; in exchange for these hollow promises, Ukraine forfeited its nuclear arsenal. Having seen the Ukrainian example, why would any nation choose denuclearization in the future?

Anderson

Content Warning: Discussions of sexual assault, extreme violence and genocide.

With the Russian war in Ukraine past the one-year mark, a small but vocal contingent in the West believes the time has come to explore peace talks. Some frame this as the humane option. The longer this war lasts — as the logic goes — the more suffering will be endured, and the more lives lost.

Even if well-intentioned, such arguments are fundamentally and frustratingly naive; the Russian regime does not negotiate for peace in good faith. In starting the war, Russia had already torn up the Budapest Memorandum, where it made a legally binding commitment

Furthermore, any belief that a Russian peace treaty would legitimately bring peace to the Ukrainian people — as was proposed in the Nov. 11 op-ed entitled “Vladimir Putin is becoming more aggressive with the Russian mobilization”— is entirely non-credible. The Russian regime has shown callous disregard for human rights and international law. In occupied areas, over 48,000 Ukrainian civilians have been forcibly conscripted to fight against their own homeland, an internationallyrecognized war crime. Tens of thousands of Ukrainian children have been forcibly separated from their families and deported to Russia for assimilation, meeting the definition of “genocide” of the 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention. And as Ukrainian forces liberate their land, countless horrors have been discovered. Dead civilians litter the streets and populate mass graves.

Some bear marks of torture; others were summarily executed to instill terror in the civilian population. The United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine has documented numerous crimes by Russian forces: deliberate murder of civilians, use of human shields, rape and sexual violence, torture and extrajudicial executions. How can any well-meaning person argue in favor of this? How can anyone — in good conscience and good faith — argue this is the “humane option”? What kind of people are we if we idly allow such war crimes and genocide?

What will be gained from such sheer human suffering? Any ceasefire will be inevitably short-lived. Violence is an inherent pillar of the current Russian regime; the brand of national chauvinism extolled by Vladimir Putin demands regular assertions of military prowess, rallying the population to a national cause to distract from domestic unrest. This well-worn playbook has been trotted out for the wars in Chechnya in 1994 and 1999, the 2008 war in Georgia and the 2014 invasion of Eastern Ukraine and Crimea. Each time, the international response was tepid; each time, the regime grew ever more emboldened. How many lives could have been saved if the world took a stand before this war? With every delay, the cost of confronting this regime grows ever greater. The international community cannot afford to make this mistake again. An unequivocal stand must be taken against such aggression.

This is the crux of the matter: Peace imposed on the aggressor’s terms is no peace at all. Those who argue otherwise would be well-served by a history lesson; their calls for negotiation echo the bitter irony of Neville Chamberlain’s proclamation that he had brought “peace for our time” just one year before the start of WWII in Europe, the most devastating war this world has ever seen. Instead of undermining the Ukrainian position, the world should support them in every way possible. The Ukrainian people are fighting like hell for freedom, for liberty, for the right to exist and to live in peace. They stand tall against the delusions of a dictator, showing the strength of free people. They stand on the front lines of the global war against tyranny everywhere. For the sake of peace, we cannot let them stand alone.

Zachar Hankewycz is a fourthyear computer science major and the president of the Ukrainian Cultural Club at Northeastern. He can be reached at hankewycz.z@northeastern.edu.