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PUTIN’S BARBARIC ANSWER TO PEACE
When a Proposal to End the War Is Met with Demands for Submission
An Analytical Political, Legal and Moral Critique
Under the Scientific Editorship of Doctor of Philosophy Mayer Meir Kaltenbrunner
IN LIEU OF A PREFACE
A PEACE THAT MUST NOT BE REPLACED BY CAPITULATION
There are moments in history when a state leader’s genuine attitude toward peace is determined not by speeches, diplomatic formulas, or statements made by official representatives.
It is determined much more simply:
What does that leader do when a real opportunity to stop the war actually appears before him?
At the beginning of September 2026, precisely such a moment arose.
President of the United States Donald Trump sent his representatives, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, in another attempt to move the Russia–Ukraine war out of the realm of armed confrontation and into the realm of diplomatic settlement.
On 4 September, Trump publicly stated that there was a “concrete proposal” for ending the war, although the full contents of the document were not disclosed. On 5 September, Witkoff and Kushner arrived in Moscow and held talks with Vladimir Putin. Following Moscow, the American representatives continued their contacts with the Ukrainian side.
On 8 September, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated that some of the ideas presented by the American mediators deserved further consideration and confirmed Ukraine’s readiness to continue the negotiating process. Possible further meetings, questions concerning energy infrastructure, grain supplies, and exchanges of prisoners of war were discussed. No breakthrough, however, was achieved.
It is precisely here that the central question of the present study arises.
What does the word “peace” mean today in Vladimir Putin’s understanding?
Peace as an end to the killing of human beings?
Peace as an end to the destruction of cities?
Peace as a mutual political compromise?
Or peace as a condition in which one side, through military force, obtains from the other what it was unable to obtain through voluntary political agreement?
These are fundamentally different things.
International law does not permit them to be conflated.
Political philosophy should not do so either.
And human conscience even less so.
The present article deliberately uses the word “barbaric” in its title.
But this word does not refer to the Russian people.
It does not refer to Russian culture.
It does not refer to the Russian language.
It does not refer to the millions of citizens of the Russian Federation who did not make the decision to begin the war and who do not determine the conditions of negotiations.
It concerns something else.
It concerns a political method according to which human life may be sacrificed to geopolitical objectives.
It concerns the notion that military superiority confers the right to dictate the political future of a neighbouring state.
It concerns an attempt to transform the result of the use of force into a basis for subsequent legal and diplomatic recognition.
That is what the present study calls barbarism.
Not a people. A method.
I. WHEN DIPLOMACY CONFRONTS THE LOGIC OF FORCE
The very fact of a new American diplomatic initiative is significant.
It cannot be assumed in advance that every American proposal is just.
Nor can the opposite be assumed.
Since the full text of the September proposal has not been made public, it would be intellectually dishonest to attribute to Washington conditions whose existence has not been reliably established.
The object of the present critique, therefore, is not an unknown document.
Its object is the political response to the possibility of bringing the war to an end through diplomacy.
And here a fundamental contrast emerges.
On the one hand, American mediators speak of a concrete proposal.
The Ukrainian side publicly states that some of the ideas may be discussed.
On the other hand, hostilities continue.
On 11 September, Russian strikes against Kyiv and other Ukrainian regions once again resulted in casualties; at the same time, Ukraine continued to carry out strikes against targets on Russian territory. Reuters noted that both sides continued an intensive aerial campaign.
This means that the diplomatic process continues to exist in parallel with the logic of military coercion.
And it is precisely here that the danger arises.
If a party enters negotiations not in order to modify its own position, but in order to secure, through negotiations, the other party’s acceptance of demands already formulated in advance, diplomacy changes its purpose.
It ceases to be a search for compromise.
It becomes the continuation of pressure by other means.
II. PEACE IS NOT SYNONYMOUS WITH SUBMISSION
Not every termination of war constitutes a just peace.
This statement may appear paradoxical.
If the shooting stops, is that not a good thing?
Of course it is.
Ending the killing of human beings is in itself an immense value.
But law is obliged to distinguish between:
ending a war through agreement
and
ending one side’s resistance as a consequence of coercion by the other.
In the first case, there is an agreement.
In the second, there is submission.
Peace presupposes that both parties retain their status as subjects.
An ultimatum presupposes that one party determines the conditions while the other is left merely with the possibility of accepting them.
Particularly dangerous, therefore, is a situation in which military operations are used to create a new factual reality, after which that reality is presented as an argument at the negotiating table:
“The realities on the ground must now be taken into account.”
But international law was created precisely so that a fact produced by force would not automatically become a right derived from force.
III. THE UN CHARTER AND A PRINCIPLE THAT CANNOT BE ABOLISHED BY ARTILLERY
Article 2(4) of the Charter of the United Nations establishes one of the fundamental principles of the post-war international order: states must refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of another state.
This principle does not exist for ideal times.
It exists precisely for those moments when a powerful state believes that it can achieve a result by military means more quickly than by diplomatic means.
If law operates only when nobody wishes to violate it, then it performs no protective function at all.
Its true value becomes apparent when the temptation arises to replace a legal norm with the advantage of superior force.
That is why the question of Ukrainian territories cannot be reduced to the formula:
Russia wants one thing.
Ukraine wants another.
Let us divide the disputed object in half.
The territory of a state is not the subject of an ordinary commercial transaction.
The applicable principle of international law is that territorial acquisitions resulting from the threat or use of force must not be recognised as lawful.
The Secretary-General of the United Nations has expressly reiterated this principle in relation to Ukraine, referring to the 1970 Declaration on Principles of International Law.
IV. CAN WAR CREATE LAW?
Let us consider an extremely dangerous logical construction.
State A wants to obtain part of the territory of State B.
State B refuses.
State A uses armed force.
Several years later, part of the territory is under its effective control.
State A then declares:
“The realities on the ground must be taken into account.”
But how did those realities arise?
If they arose through war, the following chain emerges:
first, a violation of law creates a fact;
then, the fact exists for a sufficient period of time;
then, the duration of that fact creates political pressure;
then, that political pressure is used to demand legal recognition.
If such a formula is accepted, aggression potentially becomes a mechanism for producing new law.
One need only be sufficiently powerful.
One need only withstand sanctions.
One need only continue the war for sufficiently long.
And eventually an unlawful fact begins to be treated as a circumstance that “cannot be ignored.”
This is precisely the mechanism capable of destroying the post-war international order.
V. “REALITIES ON THE GROUND”: FACT IS NOT YET LAW
A diplomat must, of course, take the factual situation into account.
Negotiations cannot be conducted as though military operations had never occurred.
The positions of armed forces cannot be ignored.
Control over territories cannot be ignored.
Millions of displaced persons cannot be ignored.
But there is a fundamental distinction between:
taking reality into account
and
recognising that reality as lawful.
Occupation of territory is a fact.
But occupation in itself does not confer sovereign title.
Control of territory is a fact.
But control is not synonymous with lawful sovereignty.
That is why a ceasefire can be achieved without the final recognition of changes to state borders.
There may be a ceasefire line.
There may be a temporary zone of separation.
There may be an international monitoring mechanism.
There may be long-term negotiations concerning status.
But ending the killing of human beings does not necessarily require transforming a military seizure into a lawful territorial acquisition.
This is one of the most important distinctions that future negotiations must preserve.
VI. IF AGGRESSION PAYS DIVIDENDS
Imagine that a state begins a war.
As a result of that war, it obtains something it did not possess before.
Even if the price is enormous, a potential future aggressor will analyse primarily the outcome.
It will ask:
Did the state obtain territory?
Did it acquire a strategic advantage?
Did it succeed in changing its neighbour’s foreign-policy orientation?
If the answer is yes, an extraordinarily dangerous lesson emerges:
military aggression may prove to be an effective instrument of state policy.
This concerns far more than Ukraine.
Small states throughout the world are watching what happens.
For a large nuclear power, international law is important.
For a small state, international law is existential.
A small country may not possess an enormous army.
It may not possess nuclear weapons.
It may not possess strategic depth.
Its principal shield is the principle that a border does not cease to exist merely because a more powerful neighbour is capable of crossing it.
If that principle disappears, the sovereign equality of states becomes a fiction.
VII. BARBARISM IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY CAN BE HIGHLY TECHNOLOGICAL
Barbarism is often imagined as something primitive.
But modern barbarism may possess satellites.
Nuclear warheads.
Universities.
Diplomatic academies.
Precision-guided weapons.
Artificial intelligence.
Modern communications systems.
Technological development is not synonymous with moral development.
The degree of civilisation of a state is determined not only by what it is capable of doing.
It is also determined by what it consciously refuses to do because it recognises the limitations imposed by law.
A legal order begins with the proposition:
“We are physically capable of doing this, but we have no legal right to do it.”
If capability itself becomes the basis of permissibility —
“We can, therefore we have the right” —
law disappears.
Force remains.
VIII. THE CIVILIAN POPULATION IS NOT AN INSTRUMENT OF NEGOTIATION
International humanitarian law draws fundamental distinctions between combatants and civilians, and between military objectives and civilian objects.
The duration of a war does not abolish these rules.
Military necessity is not a universal justification.
The issue of energy infrastructure is particularly complex.
A power station is not merely concrete and cables.
A hospital depends on electricity.
Heating depends on it.
Water supply depends on it.
The storage of medicines depends on it.
Communications depend on it.
Schools depend on it.
The lives of elderly and ill people depend on it.
An assessment of attacks against infrastructure must therefore examine not only the military function of the object but also the foreseeable consequences for the civilian population.
In 2024, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for several senior Russian military and political officials — Sergei Kobylash, Viktor Sokolov, Sergei Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov — in connection with alleged international crimes, including alleged attacks against civilian objects and the alleged infliction of excessive incidental harm upon civilians.
It is important to be legally precise: these are proceedings involving allegations and findings by the Court that there were reasonable grounds to believe certain crimes and forms of responsibility had occurred; they are not final judgments of conviction.
Such legal precision is essential.
We cannot defend international law while disregarding the principles of fair justice.
But the very existence of such proceedings demonstrates that the methods by which this war has been conducted have become a matter of international criminal-law assessment, rather than merely political controversy.
IX. CHILDREN ARE THE MOST TERRIBLE MEASURE OF WAR
There are statistics of war:
missiles;
tanks;
square kilometres;
front lines;
numbers of destroyed military vehicles.
But there is another kind of statistic.
A child who has lost a home.
A child who has lost parents.
A child who hears an air-raid siren instead of a school bell.
A child does not determine the foreign policy of a state.
A child does not decide questions of military alliances.
A child does not determine borders.
A child does not begin a war.
Yet it is precisely that child’s life that decisions of state can destroy for decades.
On 17 March 2023, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova. The Court stated that there were reasonable grounds to believe that they bore responsibility in connection with the alleged war crimes of unlawful deportation and transfer of Ukrainian children from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.
Again, it must be emphasised: an arrest warrant is not a judgment of conviction, and an accused person retains procedural rights.
But beyond the legal question lies a deeper moral one.
What generation is this war creating?
How will a Ukrainian child perceive Russia twenty years from now?
What will Russian children be told twenty years from now about the causes of this war?
What memory will remain after the politicians themselves are gone?
War ends sooner than the memory of war.
X. RUSSIA IS NOT PUTIN
This point must be repeated precisely here because it is fundamental.
One cannot oppose the idea of collective responsibility while simultaneously attributing collective guilt to the Russian people.
Russia is far greater than its current leadership.
Russian culture existed before Vladimir Putin.
It will exist after Vladimir Putin.
Millions of Russian citizens hold very different views.
Some support the war.
Some oppose it.
Some avoid political questions.
Some have left the country.
Some have themselves lost loved ones.
Therefore, severe criticism of Russian state policy must not become hatred based on nationality.
On the contrary.
One of the most important questions raised by this war is the damage that Kremlin policy has inflicted upon Russia itself.
How many people have died?
How many have suffered serious injuries?
How many young professionals have left?
How many resources that could have been directed toward education, healthcare, infrastructure, science and regional development have instead been consumed by war?
What will Russia’s place in Europe be after the conflict ends?
How long will it take to rebuild trust?
This, too, is part of the price of war.
XI. A GREAT POWER AND GREATNESS ARE NOT THE SAME THING
What makes a state great?
The size of its territory?
The number of its missiles?
The size of its armed forces?
Its nuclear capability?
These are indicators of power.
But power and greatness are not synonymous.
The genuine greatness of a state lies in its capacity to create things that humanity wants to use and value.
Science.
Literature.
Medicine.
Music.
Technology.
Education.
Culture.
Legal thought.
It lies in the ability to create such political and cultural attractiveness that a neighbour wishes to cooperate voluntarily.
It is much easier to make a neighbour fear you than to make that neighbour respect you.
Fear can be created by a missile.
Respect cannot be created by a missile.
Territory can be seized.
But artillery cannot make a person love the state that destroyed his or her home.
And herein lies one of the gravest strategic consequences of Russian policy.
Even a potential territorial victory may be accompanied by the historic loss of an enormous sphere of political and human trust.
XII. A NUCLEAR POWER DOES NOT ACQUIRE ADDITIONAL RIGHTS OVER ITS NEIGHBOURS
Russia is a nuclear power.
For that very reason, the war has global significance.
The international community is objectively compelled to take the risk of escalation into account.
But an extremely dangerous strategic trap exists here.
If possession of nuclear weapons effectively allows a state to wage an offensive war under the protective shadow of fear of nuclear escalation, a new principle emerges:
a nuclear arsenal becomes not merely an instrument of defensive deterrence, but also an indirect shield for offensive policy.
This is extraordinarily dangerous for the nuclear non-proliferation regime.
Other states may draw the following conclusion:
international guarantees are insufficient;
treaties are insufficient;
the only genuine guarantee of independence is one’s own nuclear bomb.
For humanity, such a lesson would be catastrophic.
A sustainable peace in Ukraine is therefore also a question concerning the future of the global nuclear order.
XIII. THE RIGHT OF SELF-DEFENCE MUST NOT BECOME A DUTY TO WAGE WAR FOREVER
The UN Charter recognises the inherent right of individual and collective self-defence in the event of an armed attack.
But it does not follow that diplomatic settlement constitutes capitulation.
On the contrary.
The right of self-defence gives a state the ability to defend itself.
It does not prohibit that state from seeking peace.
Likewise, the defence of international law does not require war to the last human being.
It is here that the most difficult moral problem emerges.
On the one hand, the use of force must not be rewarded.
On the other, the human cost of continuing the war cannot be ignored.
Every additional month means more deaths.
More injuries.
More families without parents.
More destroyed homes.
Serious diplomacy must therefore find space between two extremes:
capitulation before force
and
endless war in pursuit of absolute legal purity.
That is the task of genuine statesmanship.
XIV. THE AMERICAN PROPOSAL IS NOT A SACRED TEXT
The American peace initiative must be studied seriously.
But it must not be accepted automatically.
The United States pursues its own interests.
Russia pursues its own.
Ukraine pursues its own.
European states pursue their own.
Every concrete provision of any future agreement must therefore be analysed separately.
What security guarantees are offered to Ukraine?
How is the ceasefire regulated?
How is compliance verified?
How are territorial questions addressed?
How are sanctions regulated?
How are the return and exchange of prisoners of war and civilians addressed?
What provisions concern children?
Which provisions are temporary?
Which are final?
What happens in the event of a violation?
Until the full text of the American proposal is published, it is impossible responsibly to declare it just or unjust in all its details.
But the very existence of a diplomatic alternative to war demands a serious response.
On 4 September, Trump spoke of a concrete proposal, and several days later Zelenskyy stated that some of the ideas put forward by the American mediators deserved discussion.
This means that a diplomatic window exists.
And that is precisely why Moscow’s response acquires particular significance.
XV. IF PUTIN GENUINELY WANTS PEACE, PEACE CAN BEGIN BEFORE A FINAL TREATY
Peaceful intentions can be tested.
It is not necessary to wait for a final hundred-page treaty.
One can begin with limited reciprocal measures.
For example:
a cessation of strikes against energy infrastructure;
expanded prisoner exchanges;
the return of the seriously wounded;
the establishment of mechanisms for investigating violations;
the introduction of international technical monitoring;
the protection of specified civilian objects;
humanitarian corridors.
On 14 September, Zelenskyy stated that Ukraine was prepared to halt strikes against Russian targets if its partners could guarantee an end to Russian strikes against Ukrainian energy facilities, infrastructure and food-supply routes. He called for concrete and reliable guarantees rather than vague promises.
There is an important principle here:
action in exchange for action.
Not trust in exchange for a promise.
Not capitulation in exchange for a ceasefire.
But a reciprocal, verifiable measure.
That is how a gradual reduction of violence can begin.
XVI. PEACE REQUIRES GUARANTEES, NOT FAITH
After years of war, asking the parties simply to trust one another is psychologically meaningless.
Peace treaties exist precisely because trust is insufficient.
Law replaces trust with mechanisms.
It is necessary to know:
Who monitors compliance with the regime?
How are violations recorded?
How quickly are they investigated?
What evidence is used?
Who determines whether a violation has occurred?
What are the consequences?
How is escalation resulting from an isolated incident prevented?
Law does not require friendship.
Law requires predictability.
That is why a future agreement must be capable of surviving independently of the personalities of political leaders.
After Trump.
After Putin.
After Zelenskyy.
States outlive presidents.
Peace must therefore be stronger than the biographies of the people who sign it.
XVII. PEACE CANNOT BE A PAUSE BEFORE THE NEXT WAR
A ceasefire answers the question:
When does the shooting stop?
Peace answers another:
Why will the shooting not begin again?
These are entirely different questions.
If the parties use an armistice to rearm;
if the political contradictions remain essentially unchanged;
if the agreement is perceived as a temporary respite;
if effective guarantees are absent;
if every violation creates a threat of immediate escalation,
then the ceasefire is not peace.
It is an intermission.
A sound agreement must therefore make compliance with peace more advantageous than a return to war.
This is an extraordinarily difficult task.
But it is precisely what distinguishes a historic settlement from a temporary piece of paper.
XVIII. UKRAINE IS NOT EXEMPT FROM THE LAW EITHER
A principled position requires the same standard to be applied consistently.
Russian civilians do not become lawful targets because of decisions taken by the Russian government.
A Russian child possesses the same human value as a Ukrainian child.
A Russian civilian object requires the same legal assessment as a Ukrainian civilian object.
On 11 September, Reuters reported both Russian attacks against Ukraine and Ukrainian attacks on Russian territory in which people were also killed.
If we demand observance of the principles of distinction, proportionality and precautions from Russia, the same legal rules must apply to Ukraine.
This does not imply moral or legal equivalence as to the causes of the war.
It means the universality of international humanitarian law.
Law ceases to be law if it applies only to those whom we support.
XIX. A VICTORY THAT MAY BECOME RUSSIA’S HISTORIC DEFEAT
Let us imagine the scenario most favourable to the Kremlin.
Russia achieves some of its territorial objectives.
Hostilities end.
The Russian leadership declares victory.
But what will a historian ask fifty years from now?
What was the price?
Did Russia become safer?
Did its relations with its neighbours improve?
Did its political influence increase?
Did the Russian economy become more modern?
Did Russian society become more attractive to specialists?
Did international trust increase?
Or were several territorial acquisitions accompanied by years of strategic isolation and profound alienation from Ukraine?
History contains many military victories that later proved to be political defeats.
A state can gain territory and lose a generation.
It can win a battle and lose the trust of a continent.
It can force a neighbour to sign a document and permanently lose that neighbour’s voluntary goodwill.
That is why the question should not merely be:
How much territory is Russia capable of taking?
It should also be:
What kind of Russia will this war leave behind after Vladimir Putin?
XX. WAR CANNOT BE MEASURED ONLY IN KILOMETRES
On a military map, the front line moves several kilometres.
For an analyst, it is an arrow.
For a general, it is an operational achievement.
For a president, it is a political argument.
But for a soldier, every kilometre may mean life or death.
Law has no formula according to which one square kilometre equals a certain number of human lives.
Morality has no such formula either.
A leader who continues a war therefore bears a particular responsibility for every day on which a realistic opportunity existed to reduce the scale of violence but was not used.
This does not mean that every proposal must be accepted.
A bad agreement may create an even more destructive war.
But it does mean something else:
every rejection of a genuine opportunity for peace must have a justification commensurate with the human price of that rejection.
XXI. CAN A DEMAND THAT ONE STATE CHANGE ITSELF UNDER PRESSURE FROM ANOTHER BE CALLED PEACE?
This is one of the fundamental questions raised by the Russian position.
If peace presupposes that Ukraine must alter its strategic orientation, renounce certain foreign-policy choices, recognise changes to its borders and accept restrictions formulated as a consequence of war, one must ask:
Where does compromise end and political submission begin?
State sovereignty has meaning only when a state is capable of making decisions that its neighbour dislikes.
Otherwise, sovereignty ceases to be sovereignty.
If a more powerful neighbour acquires the right to determine the permissible foreign-policy orientation of a weaker state, what emerges is a system of spheres of influence characteristic of a much earlier era of international relations.
Modern international law is based upon a different principle — the sovereign equality of states, enshrined in Article 2(1) of the UN Charter.
A large state possesses greater resources.
But it does not possess a greater quantity of sovereignty.
XXII. RUSSIAN SECURITY IS A LEGITIMATE CONCERN, BUT NOT A UNIVERSAL LICENCE
A fair critique must acknowledge that Russia has legitimate security interests.
So does Ukraine.
So does Poland.
So does Germany.
So does the United States.
So does every other state.
A sustainable architecture of European security cannot be created by completely ignoring the security of Europe’s largest state.
But there is a fundamental boundary.
The right to one’s own security does not confer a right to deprive another of security.
This is where many political arguments become untenable.
If Russian security is ensured through the effective restriction of Ukrainian sovereignty, Ukraine inevitably asks:
Who, then, guarantees our security?
Conversely, if a future system is constructed exclusively around military encirclement and a permanent threat to Russia, stability cannot reasonably be expected.
A long-term peace must therefore create a situation in which the security of one side does not presuppose the permanent vulnerability of the other.
That is extraordinarily difficult.
But no other sustainable solution exists.
XXIII. EUROPE AFTER THE WAR
Even if peace were signed tomorrow, European security has already changed.
Russia will remain.
Ukraine will remain.
NATO will remain.
Geography will not disappear.
The idea of a permanent European architecture built exclusively upon hatred and mutual fear is therefore a dead end.
But it is equally unrealistic to demand that states that have experienced war simply forget what happened.
A new European order must combine two objectives:
credible deterrence against renewed aggression
and
preservation of the possibility of future normalisation of relations.
This may take a generation.
But a policy that leaves no path whatsoever back to normal relations risks turning Europe into a continent permanently waiting under arms.
XXIV. PUTIN MUST ANSWER NOT TO TRUMP, BUT TO HISTORY
Political leaders tend to think in terms of periods of office.
History thinks in generations.
Today, the President of Russia may evaluate the situation according to the front line.
History will evaluate it according to its consequences.
By the number of dead.
By destroyed cities.
By a transformed Europe.
By the fate of Ukrainian and Russian families.
By whether it was possible to stop the war sooner.
The question raised by the present American initiative therefore extends far beyond the relationship between Trump and Putin.
The question is not whether Vladimir Putin likes Donald Trump’s proposal.
The question is whether the leader of a state, at a moment when war can still continue, is capable of choosing self-restraint for the sake of his country’s future.
Continuing a war can sometimes be easier.
The mechanism is already operating.
The military-industrial system is functioning.
A command structure exists.
A propaganda rationale has been constructed.
Political commitments to one’s own system have been created.
Stopping a war means accepting responsibility for compromise.
And compromise is almost always more difficult than a victory speech.
XXV. A BARBARIC ANSWER TO PEACE DOES NOT MEAN REJECTING ANY PARTICULAR AGREEMENT
A fundamental qualification must be made here.
Russia’s mere disagreement with an American draft cannot itself be described as “barbarism.”
Russia has the right not to accept a particular proposal.
Ukraine has the same right.
No state is obliged to sign a document unknown to it merely because a mediator describes that document as a peace proposal.
Barbarism begins elsewhere.
It begins where negotiations are used as part of continued military coercion.
Where human life becomes a means of improving a negotiating position.
Where the logic becomes:
“If we continue applying pressure for several more months, the other side will be forced to concede more.”
If this becomes state strategy at a moment when a realistic opportunity exists to reduce violence, the moral problem becomes evident.
A human being becomes a negotiating resource.
A soldier becomes an instrument for changing a map.
The civilian population becomes a factor of pressure.
Infrastructure becomes an instrument of political influence.
It is this logic that the present study describes as barbaric.
XXVI. PEACE MUST BE JUST ENOUGH TO SURVIVE
There will probably be no perfect peace.
Every side will remain dissatisfied with something.
And perhaps that itself will be one indication that a genuine compromise has been reached.
But an agreement must possess a minimum degree of legitimacy.
Ukrainian society must be capable of living with it.
Russian society must be capable of living with it.
European states must regard it as sufficiently reliable to build a new security architecture upon it.
If peace is perceived by one side exclusively as temporary humiliation, it already contains the seeds of the next war.
The experience of Versailles in the twentieth century reminds us how dangerous a peace can be when it formally terminates a war but politically produces revanchism.
This is not to draw a mechanical comparison between contemporary Russia and Germany after the First World War.
The historical circumstances are different.
But the general lesson remains:
peace must end conflict rather than preserve a desire for revenge.
XXVII. WHAT CAN BE DONE NOW
Even if a final political agreement cannot be achieved tomorrow, measures exist that can reduce the human cost of the war.
A reciprocal cessation of strikes against energy facilities.
Protection of nuclear facilities.
Expanded prisoner exchanges.
The return of civilians.
International monitoring of specific agreements.
Direct military communication channels to prevent accidental escalation.
A mechanism for investigating incidents.
Humanitarian agreements concerning children.
None of these measures resolves the territorial issue.
But they can save lives.
And if the parties refuse even limited reciprocal measures, that refusal becomes an important indicator of their genuine attitude toward peace.
XXVIII. THE PRINCIPAL TEST FOR THE KREMLIN
Rhetoric means nothing without verifiable action.
If the Kremlin genuinely wants peace, it does not need to convince the world through words.
It can take a step that cannot reasonably be interpreted in two different ways.
Agree to a specific reciprocal measure.
Permit international verification.
Comply with it.
Then agree upon the next one.
Peace does not necessarily have to be built through a single grand treaty.
Sometimes it is built through a hundred smaller agreements, each of which reduces the probability of another death.
This is where Moscow can demonstrate that the word “peace” does not mean the capitulation of Ukraine.
But rather the genuine, gradual termination of war.
XXIX. THE PRINCIPAL TEST FOR THE WEST
Responsibility does not rest with Russia alone.
The West must also decide what it wants.
If the objective is the indefinite strategic weakening of Russia at any cost, that is one policy.
If the objective is the restoration of Ukrainian sovereignty and a sustainable European peace, that is another.
These objectives may partly overlap, but they are not identical.
Policy must have an end state.
What does Europe look like after the war?
What does Ukraine look like?
What does Russia look like?
What relations between them are possible?
What guarantees exist?
How is revanchism prevented?
How is renewed aggression prevented?
If there are no answers to these questions, there is a risk that the armed conflict will simply continue under the force of its own inertia.
XXX. THE PRINCIPAL TEST FOR UKRAINE
Ukraine has an evident right to defend its own existence.
But the Ukrainian leadership will also have to make extraordinarily difficult decisions.
Any agreement may require practical compromises that will be painful for society.
For that very reason, such decisions must possess domestic legitimacy.
Peace cannot be imposed upon Ukraine exclusively by external states.
An agreement that Ukrainian society regards as capitulation risks becoming politically unstable.
This does not mean that public opinion should prevent every compromise.
It means that sustainable peace requires society to understand its price, its alternatives and its guarantees.
XXXI. IT IS NOT RUSSIA THAT MUST BE DEFEATED — IT IS THE LOGIC OF THE RIGHT OF THE STRONG
The objective of a rational peace policy should not be the destruction of Russia.
A chaotic, humiliated and unstable nuclear power would not make Europe safer.
Nor can peace be built upon the destruction of Ukrainian sovereignty.
The strategic objective must therefore be different:
to make war an unprofitable instrument of foreign policy.
So that after this war no leader — Russian, European, Asian, or otherwise — can draw the conclusion:
“If I possess a sufficiently large army and sufficient patience, I can change my neighbour’s border and then compel the world to recognise the result.”
That is the principle that must be defeated.
Not Russia.
Not Russians.
Not the Russian language.
Not Russian culture.
The principle that force creates law.
XXXII. CONCLUSION
PEACE AS THE DEFEAT OF A BARBARIC LOGIC
Today the world faces no simple choice between war and peace.
The real choice is far more difficult.
How can the war be stopped without transforming aggression into a profitable instrument?
How can Ukraine be preserved without creating a system of permanent war with Russia?
How can Russia’s security be ensured without turning the security of its neighbours into a matter requiring Russian permission?
How can the killing be stopped now without creating the conditions for an even greater war five or ten years from now?
There is no simple answer.
But there are principles.
The first:
human life must not become expendable material for geopolitics.
The second:
military superiority does not create additional sovereignty.
The third:
a territorial fact created by force does not automatically become a lawful right.
The fourth:
peace must be founded upon reciprocity and verifiability, not credulity.
The fifth:
international humanitarian law applies to all parties.
The sixth:
responsibility must be individual, not national.
And the seventh:
a sustainable peace must not humiliate peoples, but it must subject state power to the limits of law.
That is why the American initiative of September 2026 matters regardless of whether it is ultimately implemented in its present form.
It has once again confronted the parties with the question:
Does the political will to stop the war exist?
On 14 September, that question assumed an even more concrete form. Ukraine stated its willingness to consider a reciprocal cessation of strikes against critical infrastructure, provided reliable guarantees existed for equivalent Russian conduct.
This is not yet peace.
It is not even a comprehensive ceasefire.
But it is precisely the kind of verifiable reciprocal measure from which, in principle, a path from war toward diplomacy can begin.
Actions now matter more than words.
Vladimir Putin may continue to regard military pressure as a means of improving the terms of a future settlement.
Russia possesses the resources to continue the war.
But the ability to continue a war does not create a historical necessity to continue it.
Here lies one of the most important boundaries of state leadership.
Sometimes strength manifests itself in the capacity to begin an operation.
Sometimes in the capacity to win.
But there is a rarer form of strength:
to stop when it remains technically possible to continue.
To recognise that the next kilometre of territory may cost hundreds of human lives.
To recognise that every new grave matters, even when it can be explained in terms of state interests.
To recognise that a neighbouring state possesses its own dignity, its own history, and its own right to make decisions.
And finally to understand that the history of a state is measured not only by how far its army once advanced.
It is also measured by what kind of peace that state was capable of leaving behind.
Barbarism in the twenty-first century does not necessarily wear animal skins or burn books.
It may sit at an enormous table.
It may employ modern technologies.
It may possess a nuclear arsenal.
It may speak in impeccable diplomatic language.
It may declare its commitment to peace.
Barbarism begins at the moment when a human being becomes an instrument for achieving a state objective.
When the life of a soldier becomes a number.
When the life of a civilian becomes an acceptable collateral circumstance of political pressure.
When another state’s sovereignty is regarded as an obstacle that can be corrected through force.
When an agreement is offered not as reciprocal movement, but as the legal registration of the outcome of military pressure.
When the question is formulated not as:
“How do we stop the killing?”
but as:
“How much more can we obtain before we stop?”
That is why today’s dispute extends far beyond Ukraine.
It concerns the very idea of international law.
If force is capable of producing law, the Charter of the United Nations gradually becomes a declaration of good intentions.
But if law is capable of imposing limits upon force, even the most powerful state remains a member of the international community rather than the master of its neighbours.
The true response to the present crisis must therefore be clear:
not peace through capitulation;
not peace through political humiliation;
not peace through the abandonment of international law;
not peace as a temporary pause before the next war;
but a peace in which ending the killing of human beings is the first condition, international law is the foundation, reciprocal guarantees are the mechanism, and human dignity is the ultimate purpose.
And if Moscow genuinely wishes to demonstrate that it seeks peace, the best answer to the American mediators is not another speech.
Not another historical lecture.
Not another catalogue of demands.
But a concrete step after which fewer people will die the following day than would have died without it.
Then the word “peace” will once again begin to mean peace.
Until then, for as long as military pressure is used to compel a neighbouring state to accept a dictated outcome, we remain confronted with the same ancient formula, merely dressed in the clothing of the twenty-first century:
the strong demand; the weak must submit.
Humanity has already paid far too high a price for this formula.
And that is precisely why it must not become the foundation of peace in Ukraine.
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