A year of war in Ukraine

 
A year of war in Ukraine

A year of war in Ukraine. Cartoon from 25 February 2023 in CTXT.

As an analyst of international conflicts I have no future, when the invasion of Ukraine began I said (or rather I wanted to believe) that it would all be over before the summer.

Although I am not usually very optimistic, I usually leave room for good thoughts and a peace agreement was one of those. But on this trip the pacifists and many of the "No to war" people have mysteriously disappeared, and I am aware that even the most pacifist could end up wielding a rifle if war came to their doorstep without warning.

I know that no war is going to end up watering it with flowers any more than flooding it with millions of tons of weapons, each one bigger and more powerful than the next.

You can paint it any way you like, but it is a war of aggression with obvious imperialist motives for annexing territory thrown in for good measure, although the whole conflict cannot be reduced to this, this is where we are now. Moreover, it is impossible to feel sympathy for guys who make these arguments.

Putin accuses the West of attacking its youth, its culture, its church, of destroying the family, identity. "Paedophilia becomes a norm of their life and priests are forced to bless homosexual marriages."

And this is not an anecdote or a one-off outburst, it is official discourse.

The winners

But the West remains adamant that any solution must involve arms and that they must continue to be sent in buckets. In one year, the US has sent more than $30 billion worth of arms to Ukraine. We already have the winners of this and all wars, those who manufacture the weapons, because all this military hardware now has to be replaced.

According to TVE, just a year ago the US intelligence services warned that Russia was going to invade Ukraine. Now they are warning that China may give Russia weapons. That's the thing about arms escalation, my friend. That's why it's called escalation. And we all know how these things end, he who throws the biggest cucumber and kills the most people wins.

There is a lot of talk about everything here. About money and power and not so much about putting the focus on achieving some kind of peace. Nor are the main protagonists the displaced(half of them children), the dead, the wounded and the cities turned into wastelands. At the moment it is difficult to assess the material, and impossible to assess the human.

China is proposing a ceasefire through a twelve-point peace plan for Ukraine, but the West and Russia remain committed to a military solution and NATO and the EU think that it is not a plan, that they are "suggestions".

Macron has announced a trip to China in April, so it is assumed that such a peace plan will most likely be discussed.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg dismisses the Chinese peace plan as "not very credible" because"China has not been able to condemn the illegal invasion of Ukraine" (1).

This is how the outlook is looking. Whether I am Chinese or Murcian, I will continue to believe that a peace plan is possible that will put an end in the most rational way possible to the ultimate expression of all human misery that is war, and that more countries will focus on achieving it.

In the meantime, I would also like to be able to send some of these armchair warmongers to the frontline for two or three weeks to give them a little more perspective.


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