Ukraine Missile War. The Killing Must Stop

Not only is there now an exchange of missiles between Russia and Ukraine, but also a war of words about them and what might come next.

This is a moment to step back and take stock. As regular readers know I have been against this war from the very beginning, because  the end would never justify the lives which it would cost.  Moreover I have always said this is a war among Russians in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

It is not an attack upon NATO or the West. It is a direct consequence of a failure to engage with Russia and draw her into the European family, of which she is a critical part, after the end of the Cold War. I have written extensively about this elsewhere, in particular in my 2009 book 2010 a Blueprint for Change . So I will say no more now.

I have also refuted from the beginning this notion that Russia started the fight. It was Ukraine that allowed mass demonstrations of west leaning parties to overthrow the east leaning democratically elected president. When the  ethnic Russian speaking eastern provinces took fright at what was happening in Kiev and declared themselves independent, the Ukraine Army was sent in.

This led to Russian volunteers arriving to help what they saw as their fellow countrymen. We know the rest. As for Crimea. This has been Russian from the dawn of modern history. If you want to argue that Russia illegally annexed it, I would argue that the illegal bit was Khrushchev gifting it to Ukraine (he was Ukrainian) to mark his seventieth birthday. At the time Ukraine was, like Russia, a part of the Soviet Union. But it was certainly not in the birthday gift box.

But whatever the arguments of the past, we are here now and we have to stop the killing, fix a peace and give the rising generation of both countries a future free of the threat of death on the battlefield. There are several possible compromises and nobody is going to be completely satisfied. But it can be done. Best to start with a fundamental that surely everyone agrees on.

Life is better than death.