Playing at making peace while people die
A novel published during the First World War begins with the line: "This is the saddest story I ever heard." With apologies to readers still on vacation or about to return, sadly, to work, I'm going to offer you a story that might compete with Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier .
A friend who was recently in Ukraine told me this, and besides leaving me quite shaken, it reminded me of what Stalin said: a million deaths are a statistic, but a single death is a tragedy.
After months on the front lines, a 33-year-old soldier named Sergei Yefimenko was allowed to visit his family. He showed up unexpectedly at their home near Kyiv, and he, his wife, and son hugged each other like crazy. Days later, a Russian drone attacked their home. Sergei was unharmed. But his 27-year-old wife, Anna, died instantly, and his four-year-old son, Mark, was left with a shattered face. The boy lost an eye and had to undergo surgery to repair his tongue, which was split in half by the impact of the explosive.
I wonder what Private Sergei thinks of the "peace summits" Donald Trump has held in Alaska and Washington with Vladimir Putin, Volodymyr Zelensky, and various European leaders. How will he have reacted to the proposals floating around the White House about possible land concessions to Russia, security guarantees for Ukraine, and a trilateral meeting between Trump, Putin, and Zelensky to seal the end of a war that has claimed at least 1.5 million victims, including his wife, Anna, and son, Mark?
I suppose with a mixture of bitterness and cynicism, disgust toward Trump, boundless hatred toward Putin, and a hint of gratitude toward the Europeans, who, unlike the first two, possess the gift of compassion for the pain suffered by Ukrainians like him. Perhaps Sergei has understood that the supposed peace process Trump claims to lead, and which he promised to resolve "in 24 hours," is all a farce, yet another reality show to add to the long list (including the US presidency) that has marked his public life, without forgetting that a reality show is, by definition, unreal, more entertainment than reality.
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Let's take it step by step. "Cession of Ukrainian lands to Russia": Putin demands that Ukraine grant him territory that Russian troops haven't even conquered yet, which reveals the obvious fact that he doesn't want the war to end because he knows Zelenskyy won't be able to succumb to his demand, even if he wanted to. Why? For the simple fact that President Zelenskyy, unlike Putin, cannot act independently of public opinion, a democratic condition that doesn't exist in Russia. Zelenskyy cannot make such a major decision alone because he knows full well that if he tried, 80% of his compatriots, starting with soldiers like Sergei Yefimenko, would turn on him.
And another thing. It's all very well for Trump to talk happily about ceding land, as if it were just another of his real estate transactions, but there's one detail he lacks the emotional power to capture. That the aforementioned lands are not fields devoid of humans where cows graze and soybeans grow, but rather consist of towns and cities where hundreds of thousands of people live. Proposing that all these people submit to a Russian occupation means disregarding the three and a half years of sacrifice they have endured to avoid falling into the clutches of the Soviet totalitarianism that Putin has replicated—precisely the reason why Ukrainians in general continue to defend themselves tooth and nail. As one exiled Russian wrote in The New York Times this week, "accepting the cession of unconquered lands would be a crime in which Trump is asking Zelensky to become an accomplice."
The supposed peace process for Ukraine that the US president claims to be leading is a farce.“Security guarantees”: Amid a fleeting burst of European jubilation, Trump declared last weekend that he liked the idea of such guarantees, the sine qua non condition for Ukrainians before accepting the possible concessions necessary to achieve the lasting peace they dream of. They will have to keep dreaming. First, Trump offered no remotely concrete ideas on the matter, and second, he flatly ruled out the idea of stationing American troops in Ukraine. The common denominator of everything Trump has said about the famous guarantees is ambiguity, and ambiguity is precisely the opposite of a guarantee.
Considering the succession of treaties Russia has signed with Ukraine and betrayed, it's logical that Zelensky and his people would demand a Russian-proof agreement before laying down their weapons. Good luck with that. Ukraine has reason to view not only the word of the Russians but also that of its allies in the West with skepticism. Here in Europe, we prefer to forget what Ukraine always remembers: the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, in which Ukraine voluntarily gave up its nuclear arsenal (the third largest in the world at the time, inherited from the USSR) in exchange for—yes, you guessed it—“security guarantees.” Which countries signed the guarantees? The United States, the United Kingdom, France, China, and… Russia.
The common denominator of what Trump has said about the famous guarantees is ambiguity.“A trilateral meeting between Trump, Putin, and Zelensky”: Zelensky—a pragmatist, alert to the fragile narcissism of the orange president—has said he is willing to accept Trump's proposal, no matter how nauseating it may seem to him. The Russians, who sense that Trump is fundamentally on their side and see little need to suck up to him, have said they wouldn't even consider it. Well, they would only consider it under one condition: if it were to seal the defeat of Ukraine, which would mean achieving the ultimate goal of Putin's “special military mission,” the replacement of the Jewish “Nazi” Zelensky as president and the establishment of a Kremlin puppet government in Kyiv.
Hopefully, Sergei Yefimenko will one day explain all this to his son, Mark. Meanwhile, his stated mission in life is to "kill as many Russians as I can." Thanks to Trump, who is stupid but not cynical, and Putin, who is cynical but not stupid, Sergei Yefimenko will have the opportunity to kill Russians for a while.
lavanguardia
