Ukraine, Its Security and Sovereignty, and the Future

In addition to defeating and expelling Russia from Ukraine, the government of Ukraine is faced with an enduring long-term threat once the guns have silenced.

What should the free world leaders do with Moscow’s recidivist voracious desire for aggression and grabbing Ukrainian land even after a peace treaty is signed by representatives of Kyiv, Moscow, the European Union and other interested parties? It’s happened in the past regardless if a supposedly unbreakable treaty is signed or not. And the usual victim has been Ukraine.

While this topic is on the agenda of the peace talks, no one except for the representatives of Ukraine are treating this seriously.

Last summer, I wrote that Andriy Yermak, then head of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Administration replied to my question that the concept of a Ukrainian victory is not bandied about lightly in Kyiv. The government is not merely trying to save Ukraine but it is also fighting to defeat Russia, Yermak said.

Then a few weeks later, Ukraine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Andriy Sybiha, speaking with Ukrainian civic activists ahead of the 80^th Session of the UN General Assembly, reiterated similar comments, saying that Ukraine has already won the war. After more than three and a half years of fighting against the second largest army in the world, Ukraine certainly won such a distinction. However, he cautioned, Russia unfortunately will not disappear with the end of hostilities. Even in victory and peace, Ukraine will continue to face at times an aggressive Russia and at other times a vicious neighbor that has crossed the frontier into Ukraine. Consequently, Ukraine, with the help of the United States and the free world, must be eternally vigilant, prepared and armed to preserve its independence.

Yermak and Sybiha’s message one the hand is encouraging for all Ukrainians and people of good will everywhere. But on the other, with visions of historical Russian massacres of unarmed Ukrainian civilians and destructions of cities, towns and infrastructure, another gory specter materializes. Russia had brought death to Ukraine on swords and now it brings death on drones.

The war on the ground is hard fought. Russians capture one town only to be evicted by Ukrainian soldiers who are then expelled by the aggressors.

The saddest chapters are those that are written at night and the early morning, in the frigid cold, when Russian drones and missiles strike apartment buildings, peoples’ homes, ripping apart walls and exposing bedrooms and children’s toys, like they did in Ternopil a few weeks ago.

An explosion rocked Kharkiv’s Shevchenkivskyi district, Mayor Ihor Terekhov reported on December 3. “According to preliminary information, there are casualties as a result of the enemy strike on Shevchenkivskyi district,” Terekhov wrote on his Telegram channel. He later reported that the body of one deceased person was found under the rubble at the site of the explosion in Shevchenkivskyi district, and as of 14:32, two people were known to be injured.

Four people were killed and 40 wounded in a Russian missile attack on the eastern-central Ukrainian city of Dnipro on Monday, December 1, Ukrainian officials said.

The attack came amid an intensified diplomatic push to end the nearly four-year war, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visiting Paris on Monday, a day after his team held talks with US officials. Zelenskyy has been travelling to many national capitals to solidify support for this nation.

Vladyslav Haivanenko, the acting governor of the surrounding Dnipropetrovsk region, said on the Telegram messaging app that 11 of those injured in the strike were in a serious condition. He said the search and rescue operation had been completed.

Russian strikes against civilian targets are considered war crimes, a topic which Moscow insists cannot be covered in the negotiations. Ukrainians, including President Zelenskyy, feel otherwise. Ukrainian journalist and one of the country’s most prominent human rights activists, Maksym Butkevych, spent more than two years in Russian captivity. He told Euronews Moscow is deliberately trying to avoid inevitable responsibility.

When the first version of the US-Russia plan was leaked to the media two weeks ago, Moscow sought to include a specific demand: amnesty for Russian forces for all they had done since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022.

“All parties involved in this conflict will receive full amnesty for their actions during the war and agree not to make any claims or consider any complaints in the future,” the alleged 28-point plan suggested.

This demand caused significant outrage in Ukraine, where people and authorities have been meticulously documenting all of Russia’s alleged war crimes for further investigation to hold Moscow accountable.

“While I was still in captivity, my fellow prisoners of war would come to me and ask whether they would be able to testify, for example, before the International Criminal Court or other bodies that could bring those who had done this to us to justice,” Butkevych said.

Russian soldiers have also been executing unarmed Ukrainian prisoners of war, another barefaced war crime.

The rhetorical question of what to do with Russia persists? Why can’t President Trump and his team close the deal as they’ve said they could in a short time? As I have written in the past, Russia doesn’t care about a peace deal to end the war, it doesn’t care how many of its soldiers and citizens are killed, it doesn’t care about its public image. Moscow is holding fast to its goal, which is to ultimately enslave all of Ukraine and its people. Nothing else matters. Its leaders have unabashedly proclaimed this on numerous occasions though sadly President Trump and his team have failed to hear and comprehend the meaning.

As for why are the negotiations failures? The answer clearly is their ignorance of the issues involved and stubbornness to comprehend them.

During one of the roundtable sessions in Florida a few days ago, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was asked by the journalists to assess the talks and he demonstrated the Administration’s ignorance of the issues. Rubio replied, “This is about ending a war in a way that creates a mechanism and a way forward that will allow them to be independent and sovereign, never have another war again, and create tremendous prosperity for its (sic) people.”

This quote appeared differently in the news media but it’s the version that I also heard on television. I mention this here because of the word “them.” It’s not a mere lapsus linguae, a slip of the tongue. It underscores the ignorance of the issues and careless or premeditated disregard for them as well. Rubio’s wish to create a mechanism to allow Ukraine and Russia to be independent and sovereign means both countries are equal, both are guiltless, both have the same right to independence and sovereignty and both can create prosperity for its (sic) people.

This mindset will maintain false parity between aggressor and victim ad nauseam. It will show Moscow that the free world is not blaming it for this bloody war but actually supports the Kremlin’s demand to keep the Ukrainian lands it seized because, after all, the Russians fought and won it as Trump said.

This line of thinking disqualifies the Trump team from arbitrating peace between Ukraine and its age-old nemesis Russia.

A colleague and friend of mine, Serhiy Kvit, former minister of education of Ukraine and president of the ancient, storied Ukrainian institution Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in Kyiv, ventured an explanation why the talks have failed and why they will continue to fail: the United States is not a trustworthy friend and advocate of Ukraine.

“At the international level, the main indicator of Ukraine’s current and potential allies is not the political self-identification of their parties within national contexts, but the extent to which they respect Ukrainian sovereignty and understand Ukrainian national interests. It is not words that matter most, but actions – although words are important too, as they shape our reality. Mutual respect, from which trust grows, remains the key criterion for determining who Ukraine’s true friends are – that is, those who deserve respect and trust in return,” Kvit wrote in an article that will appear in the next edition of The Ukrainian Quarterly.

With major national elections coming up in 2026 and 2028, Ukrainian Americans can take this message of victory and Russian crimes to President Trump, their elected representatives and the entire Washington establishment.  If they don’t unequivocally support Ukraine, then surely Ukrainian American voters won’t support them.

Nobody wants the war to end more than the President of Ukraine and the people of Ukraine. Nobody wants Ukrainians to defeat Russians more than Ukrainians around the world. Nobody wants justice more than Ukrainians everywhere. Listen to them.

But Ukrainians, more than Washington and Moscow, want a just peace, one point that will see Russian cutthroats leave forever Ukraine.