August 5, 2026
A Just Peace or a Realistic One

There is no such thing as a just peace, because everyone has different ideas about who is right. What does exist is a realistic peace—a compromise.

It seems to me that Russia has lost the war, whose objective was to create a friendly and allied Ukraine. Instead, for the next century, Ukrainians will almost certainly remain sworn enemies of the Russia they have come to hate.

So let Russia keep that narrow strip of territory, now almost entirely devastated, so that it can at least maintain the illusion of having gained something. It seems that anyone who advocates this realistic vision of peace—the only possible one—is immediately branded an agent of Putin, of dictatorships, of aggression, and so on; in short, an agent of evil.