Ukraine War Can Only Be Ended If Russia Desires It – OpEd

With over one year gone after the commencement of Russia Ukraine war, there is fatigue evident in Russia, Ukraine and world wide about this war. There is overwhelming desire across the world that this unnecessary and counter productive war with apparently no valid reason for the war should be ended forthwith. Now, who can end this war? This war can be ended only by Russia.

Russia started this war around a year back claiming that Ukraine wanted to join NATO and NATO would admit Ukraine, which would be a threat for Russia’s territorial security. NATO denied any move to admit Ukraine in NATO. However, this statement of NATO fell on the deaf ears of Russian leadership. Many suspect that Russia started this war against Ukraine deliberately to occupy Ukraine fully and completely, as part of it’s territorial expansion plan. Possibly, this was part of a move to restore Soviet Union as existed earlier. Russia said that NATO would admit Ukraine only as an excuse to start this war.

Obviously, Russia’s calculation have gone wrong and it’s expectation that it would quickly run over Ukraine has not materialised due to resilience by Ukraine leadership and support of the NATO and USA for Ukraine. Probably, Russia thought that it would occupy Ukraine in quick time before NATO and USA could respond.

But for the support extended by NATO and USA, Ukraine would have been part of Russia by now and Russia would have been holding on to Ukraine for ever. This would be similar to China entering Tibet around seven decades back and completely occupying Tibet for very long time now. The difference between Ukraine and Tibet was that in the case of Ukraine , NATO and USA actively supported it by supplying arms but in the case of Tibet , it was only a lip sympathy from USA, Europe and India and China had it’s way.

Today, Russia Ukraine war is taking place on Ukraine soil and Ukraine airspace and not that of Russia. While Russia is the offender, Ukraine is only defending itself to the best of it’s capability. While millions of Ukrainians had to flee Ukraine as refugees to other countries to escape from the Russian attack and hundreds of Ukrainians have lost their lives and infrastructure destroyed in Ukraine , nothing of this sort has happened in Russia.

Russia’s accusations against NATO and USA for providing arms to Ukraine is thoroughly unjustified, as Russia is attacking Ukraine with it’s superior military strength. What Russia wants is that it must be left free to attack Ukraine and take over Ukraine, while the rest of the world should only be observing the massacre done by Russian forces in Ukraine, with the world citizens sitting in the gallery.

There are some traditional critics of USA and NATO who say that USA and NATO do not want this war to be ended and so they are supporting Ukraine in variety of ways. Is not this argument baseless? Many NATO countries really want this war to stop as economy of NATO countries is getting disrupted. Several demonstrations have been seen in NATO countries by people demanding end of this war.