Ukraine: A Just Peace or a Realistic Peace
Pubblicato da In dies Info agosto 2026
There is much talk about a just peace in Ukraine. The question at issue is not whether the Russians or the Ukrainians are in the right: we all say that the Russians are the aggressors. The Russians, however, argue, on the contrary, that the war broke out because they regarded Ukraine’s integration into NATO and, more generally, into the Western world—as was sought at Maidan—as a threat.
I am not a supporter of either side: I look only at the facts.
There are no such things as just peace agreements, because everyone has different ideas about who is right. There are realistic, compromise-based peace agreements.
It seems to me that Russia has lost the war, whose objective was to create a friendly and allied Ukraine. Certainly, for the next century, Ukrainians will be sworn enemies of hated Russia.
So, if we want a REALISTIC PEACE, let us leave Russia that strip of territory, now thoroughly devastated as well, so that the Russians can say they have obtained something.
Personally, I feel emotionally attached to Ukraine, where I once went with an association to provide humanitarian aid, and I see the tragedy unfolding in that country, which was already in a tragic situation. I very much wish this pointless and absurd conflict would come to an end.
Yet I constantly see the misconception whereby anyone who wants a REALISTIC PEACE is portrayed as pro-Putin, while people fail to realize that a JUST PEACE means continuing the war indefinitely.
This is not about abandoning Ukraine, but about making aid conditional on Ukraine accepting a realistic peace—not a just one, which makes no sense.
Instead, it seems that anyone who proposes the realistic perspective of peace—the only possible one—is regarded as an agent of Putin, of dictatorships, of aggression, and so on; in short, an agent of evil.
The fact that an idea is shared by Putin, Bin Laden, or Beelzebub does not at all mean that it is untrue. If a criminal or a madman says that it is hot, am I supposed to say that it is not true simply because otherwise I would also be a criminal or a madman?
It should also be noted that opposition to our involvement in this war is expressed across the political spectrum, from right to left, by Vannacci as well as Conte, Fratoianni, and so on.
Leaving aside the absurdity of thinking that Putin finances Conte, Vannacci, Fratoianni, etc., even if that were true, it would certainly not mean that they were wrong.
If, for example, we finance a campaign to help the starving people of Congo, this certainly does not mean that there are no starving people in Congo.
But the issue is not who is right or who is wrong. The issue is whether the war in Ukraine concerns us. It is an internal conflict within what was historically the Russian sphere, in which we have no part, whereas the prevailing idea is that the war in Ukraine is our war and that Ukraine is also fighting on our behalf. We therefore accept considerable sacrifices and hardships: just think of the energy crisis and Germany, which has been plunged into crisis.
The question, then, is whether or not Russia represents a danger to Europe.
I always ask the same question, and I have never received an answer: why on earth should Putin invade a NATO country, and even if he wanted to, how could he do it, when in four years he has not even managed to defeat Ukraine?
So far, I have never heard an even remotely convincing answer to this question.
At most, Russia might aim to reconstitute, even by force, the unity of the former USSR, but that is a very distant prospect at present. But even if the former Soviet state were ever reconstituted, perhaps by force, why should that be a danger to Europe?
I see no reason, but above all, for the time being, Putin’s objective was to have a friendly government in Ukraine, not to annex the country. Perhaps he will manage to annex a strip of territory devastated by the war, but he will have an implacable enemy in the Ukrainians after so many years of terrible war and massacres.
Putin has lost the war: that is the reality.
There is talk of an aggressive policy by Russia, and that is true. It is rightly argued that, in the conflict over Donbas, it is impossible to reclaim territories that have already been lost—for example, Germany reclaiming Danzig or Italy reclaiming Istria—because otherwise we would face a catastrophe of endless wars.
But the war in Ukraine is not so much a conflict between states, like the dispute over Alsace between Germany and France, as a consequence of the dissolution of a state, as happened with Yugoslavia, in the Balkans at the beginning of the twentieth century, and so on.
It is not that the Russians claim Donbas because it once belonged to Russia. Russia, as a nation-state, never existed; it was always an empire that brought together peoples and ethnic groups of the most diverse kinds, from Tatars to Germans from the Don region.
Putin does not claim Donbas because it once belonged to Russia, but because of an ethnic issue—which, moreover, is highly questionable. If Ukrainians want to establish their own state, why then does that state include Russians as well?
I would add that Ukraine’s borders extend far beyond the historical ethnic boundaries, and not only because of Crimea: a quarter, or perhaps a third, of Ukraine’s inhabitants are Russian-speaking.
On the other hand, this is true to some extent of all the former Soviet states, where people moved and married freely—rather like Northern and Southern Italy. In Milan, are there more southerners or more northerners?
We could use the example of the creation of Padania, as Bossi dreamed of it: what would its borders have been? It was said to extend from Romagna as far as Lazio. And would southerners living in the North have been Padanian or “terroni”? And what about the children of Padanian northerners and southerners?
It is likely that the disintegration of Italy would lead to clashes and wars, as happened in the former USSR.
As for reconstruction plans, of course, war is war and it causes destruction, in addition to deaths.
We should note, however, that the war in Ukraine is one of the very few wars of the last century in which the fighting has taken place mainly between armies, with civilian involvement very limited compared with other wars of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
The destruction concerns above all the territories where the fighting is taking place and which, presumably, will eventually become part of Russia.
So I wonder: what about the reconstruction of Ukraine, which is so often discussed? Would Russia be involved in it? Well, I wonder.
The Feared Russian Threat Also Leads to the Need for Rearmament
Since 1945, we have entrusted our security to the United States, and if the United States no longer wants to play this role—why should it? The communist threat no longer exists—then we have to take care of our own security.
Remaining unarmed in an armed world seems neither reasonable nor prudent.
Of course, it is not easy to make people understand this need. Nevertheless, a phantom Russian threat can be useful for propaganda purposes.
Russia does not want war, NATO does not want war: but is there a danger of war?
I believe there is: wars sometimes break out even when nobody wants them to, because of the automatic mechanisms of alliances. The First World War is an example: the insane assassination carried out by a nationalist plunged the whole of Europe into an immense tragedy on a scale never seen before.
In this situation, a miscalculation by either side, or a reckless incursion across a border, could be extremely dangerous.
Above all, believing that there is a Russian threat could actually lead to a conflict with Russia. If, for example, Ukraine were to collapse, NATO might enter the war directly if it were convinced that Russia really posed a threat: preventive wars are very common throughout history.
And we should also remember that nuclear weapons now exist. In the last century, there was no Third World War because it could have meant the use of nuclear weapons; now, in an open NATO–Russia conflict, both sides possess nuclear weapons.