It is clear that Ukraine does not desire peace and has made no notable contribution in achieving it. This is evident in the Kiev regime’s brazen denunciation of veteran US diplomat Henry Kissinger’s proposal to pursue negotiated peace with Russia in order to reduce the risk of a devastating world war. Kissinger, who is a geopolitical consultant and former United States Secretary of State and National Security Advisor under the Ford and Nixon administrations, has been subject to unwarranted castigation and censure over calls to peace and acknowledging Russia’s contributions to the global equilibrium in an opinion piece published in the Spectator Magazine in the United Kingdom. 

The rationales presented by Kiev for denouncing the proposals can be construed as hollow, narrow and parochial. Kissinger’s analysis acknowledges the need to build on strategic changes which have been accomplished and integrating them into a new structure through negotiations that lead to peace. He flags the fact that the preferred outcomes for some are a Russia rendered impotent by war which he disagrees with given its global nuclear reach. There is little if anything to suggest that such calls are not based on principles of conflict resolution and de-escalation which is crucial for peace to take its course and return to Eastern Europe. Yet erroneously, the Ukrainian establishment has labeled such calls as ‘appeasement’ towards the aggressor, when history clearly suggests that Kiev’s nefarious designs contributed significantly to the current quagmire, the lingering humanitarian crisis and the global effects of the war on populations across the world. 

One such example, which is not promoted by Western media outlets is the negative, regressive and controversial role played by Ukraine’s ‘Azov Battalion’ which is a unit of the National Guard of Ukraine and is created to fight Russian forces in the Donbas region. Its notoriety stems from Ukraine and its allies inability to reign in the group despite its continuing association with far right groups and neo-Nazi ideologies. Their controversial orientation dates back to 2014 while a 2016 report from the United Nations accused the organization of violating international humanitarian law by citing timeframes from November 2015 to February 2016, where its cadre embedded weapons and forces in civilian buildings and displaced residents after looting civilian properties while fighting against Russia. Harrowing details of torturing and raping detainees in the Donbass region has also been documented, while its purported beliefs align with white supremacist terrorist, Brenton Tarrant’s rationale for massacring 49 Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand in 2019.  

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Yet the regiment operates in Mariupol with impunity and Russia’s claims of ‘De Nazifying’ Ukraine carries significant merit. After being incorporated into the Ukrainian government’s state structures in 2014, partisan warfare from the Azov has continued in 2022. This debunks the narrative promoted by Kiev of Henry Kissinger appeasing the aggressor. Furthermore, Ukraine’s contribution to the war is it’s receipt of advanced weaponry ranging from the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) from the United States as well as confirmations from Washington D.C. that Ukraine will be transferred Patriot Air defense missile systems as part of a $1.85 bn military aid package. All this amounts to prolongation, not diffusion of the conflict. The Patriot Air defense missile system is also part of an advanced surface to air defense system which is capable of striking aircraft and cruise missiles. For Presidential aides such as Mykhailo Podolyak to claim that peace agreements with Russia amounts to negotiating with a ‘terrorist regime’ or appeasement of Nazi Germany as Zelensky stated himself, Kiev is sidestepping its own contribution of prolonging the war. 

Despite his polarizing nature, few can question the merits of Kissinger’s diplomacy. The former US Secretary of State was instrumental in pursuing détentes with China in 1971 and the 1969 negotiating strategy during the Vietnam War to have the United States and North Vietnam withdraw from the South to ensure that a coalition government prevails in the country. His credentials of promoting peace and diffusing heightened tensions have been acknowledged even in the United States where he is often viewed as a controversial and divisive figure. Ukraine on the other hand is parroting the same narrative of refraining from negotiations with Russia despite the fact that armed conflict has not yielded the desired results for stakeholders and the international community in the form of economic slowdowns, supply side shocks and heightened tensions akin to Cold War 2.0.  

As Zelensky visits Washington D.C. the mantra emanating from Kiev is the same. Prolong the war, turn a blind eye to neo-Nazi tactics, build up advanced weaponry to fuel the conflict and deny space for dialogue or negotiations to take place. By ignoring Kissinger’s prescription, what Kiev is actually doing is turning a blind eye to the harrowing possibilities of a nuclear conflict which has ironically been cited by Zelensky’s own officials as an existential threat. Kissinger in fact warned Ukraine and those calling for escalating the war against Russia, that Moscow’s military setbacks have not eliminated its global nuclear reach. He is not wrong. 

In many ways, ignoring strategic wisdom is also heightening tensions on the nuclear front, particularly as global security remains in peril. Denuclearization efforts and the spirit of the Non-Proliferation Treaty has already been threatened by toxic security pacts such as AUKUS between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States with nuclear-armed submarines in the Asia Pacific, now becoming a reality that the international community has to contend with. 

AUKUS aside, what is more evident is the fact that Ukraine is now a net contributor to war and has conveniently bypassed Kissinger’s prescriptions of peace. That is not a recipe for success.