Sham Cease-Fires versus Lasting Peace

Ending the Bloodbath in Ukraine

I am an Air Force combat veteran of the Vietnam War. During the Vietnam War, President Lyndon Johnson declared 16 bombing halts to encourage the North Vietnamese to negotiate sincerely for peace. The North Vietnamese used all 16 of these bombing halts to build up and reinforce their manpower, munitions, and supplies to continue their invasion of South Vietnam. This included increasing the number and quality of antiaircraft guns and radar. Thus, Lyndon Johnson’s bombing halts resulted in a stronger enemy and increased U.S. and South Vietnamese casualties. USAF and Navy aircraft crews engaging new and improved North Vietnamese antiaircraft systems along the Ho Chi Minh Trail experienced as a consequence more losses and casualties. I suspect my own Purple Heart experience was related to intensified North Vietnamese antiaircraft tcapabilities following a bombing halt.

In the history war, at least since Muhammad (570-632) made it a doctrine of survival and Jihadic conquest, truces and cease-fires have often been used to avoid defeat and gain time to build up forces and weapons to defeat an enemy.

Thus, treachery rather than peace is often the objective of one and sometimes both sides in cease-fires and truces.

Unfortunately, treachery on the part the Ukrainian government regarding the Minsk II peace agreement of February 2015, which was condoned and encouraged by French, German, British, and American leaders stands in the way of Russian willingness to declare a cease-fire without first having a general agreement for a lasting peace. I will explain in later paragraphs, the real beginning of the Ukraine War in 2014, the civil war that followed, and the importance of the Minsk II agreement that should have ended it.

First of all, it is extremely important to be aware that not everyone within the borders of Ukraine, when it declared independence on December 1, 1991, identified as an ethnic Ukrainian. Only about 60 percent consider Ukrainian their native language. About 18 percent were ethnic Russians and another 22 percent considered themselves mixed Russian and Ukrainian. The Ukrainian Constitution of 1991 established Ukraine as a neutral, unaligned state. The Russian and mixed Russian-Ukrainian 40 percent have been inclined to favor pro-Russian connections and policies.

The Russian and mixed Russian and Ukrainian population  is concentrated in eastern and southern Ukraine with voting majorities of 60 to 90 percent. The most concentrated Russian areas are the two  Donbas states of Donetsk and Lugansk, which tried to secede from Ukraine following the 2014 coup ousting former Donetsk Governor Viktor Yanukovych, who had been elected President of Ukraine in 2010.

There were two official languages in Ukraine before the coup: Ukrainian and Russian. Actually, most Ukrainian speakers used Russian as a secondary language. Both are East Slavic languages;  and 62 percent of the Ukrainian language is similar to Russian.

The coup that drove Yanukovych out of office in February 2014 was ordered by U.S. President Barack Obama, overseen by then Vice President Joe Biden, and engineered by Asst. Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and recent National Defense Advisor Jake Sullivan using the CIA, British MI6, and funding from USAID and George Soros, and using extreme Ukrainian nationalist semi-military political organizations centered in western Ukraine. It was called the Maidan Revolution for the Maidan Square in Kyiv, where 91protesters, police, and security troops were killed and over 500 wounded during organized demonstrations February 18-20, 2014. Many of these were police, security troops, and demonstrators shot by radical Ukrainian nationalist snipers operating from Hotel Ukrainia, according to Ukrainian-Canadian Professor Ivan Katchanovski.   

On February 24, 2014, the new Ukrainian government eliminated Russian as an official language and began a campaign of cultural cleansing of anything Russian in order to make Ukraine more Ukrainian. Even names of predominantly Russian cities and towns were given non-Russian names.  

On May 2, 2014, 46 Russian-speaking anti-Maidan protestors were killed by pro-Maidan mobs in Odessa. Forty-two of the deaths occurred when pro-Maidan mobs drove anti-Maidan protestors into a building and set it on fire. Over 200 were injured. By May 10, secession movements were underway across southern and eastern Ukraine, strongest in the Donbas region and Crimea. Open civil war broke out in the two newly declared Donbas republics eventually resulting in 14,000 deaths, concentrated in Donetsk. A Minsk I agreement for a cease-fire beginning in September 2014 was an utter failure, most frequently violated by Ukrainian Army artillery.

Minsk II, in May 2015, was a negotiated peace agreement between Ukraine and the two Donbas republics, Donetsk and Lugansk. It was arbitrated by France and Germany. Both Donetsk and Lugansk initially applied for accession to Russia, but Russian President Putin thought at first that leaving Ukraine with a large Russian minority in a federalized system with more state autonomy on language, cultural, economic, and political issues might bring more stability to Ukraine and reduce the impact of Western-driven anti-Russian politics in Ukraine. The Russians were not arbitrators of Minsk II but had advisory influence on Donetsk and Lugansk. The U.S. and UK were not official arbitrators of Minsk II, but they had tremendous influence over Ukraine, France, and Germany.

Crimea, which is overwhelmingly Russian and never wanted to be part of Ukraine, had an overwhelming vote for secession from Ukraine and accession to Russia and was immediately accepted by the Russian Duma. Crimea, with its major Black Sea Russian naval base in Sevastopol (since 1783) is vitally  important to Russian national security.  During the civil war beginning in 2014, most Ukrainian Army units in the Donbas and Crimea were predominantly Russian ethnics. These units went over to the “Separatist” or pro-Russian side within days taking over 90 percent of personnel  weapons, munitions, and supplies with them. This caused the Ukrainian government to bring  in fanatical anti-Russian units from western Ukraine, who treated “Separatists” like terrorists.  

The 13 provisions of the May 2015 Minsk II agreement promised semi-autonomous status for Donetsk and Lugansk within Ukraine and changes in the Ukrainian Constitution, especially needed to assure fair treatment of the Russian-speaking minority,  free elections in Donbas, and disarmament of eastern Ukraine, as well as a complete cease-fire. No Ukrainian government effort to implement these ever took place.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was elected on a peace platform in March 2019, but immediately turned to an attitude of hostility toward the Donbas republics and Russia under pressure from Ukrainian ultra-nationalists and British and American officials. He then favored ignoring the February 2015 Minsk II agreement, which was supposed to have been implemented by the end of 2015. Rather than peace, he began advocating actions to restore Ukraine’s 2013 borders.

On March 24, 2021, Zelensky issued a decree to reconquer Crimea and the Donbas republics.

Zelensky is delusional in his territorial ambitions and is a severe handicap in negotiating a fair and lasting peace.  

According to British lawyer Alexander Mercouris, the mineral resources “deal” Zelensky has signed is extremely vague. Moreover, Ukraine’s mineral resources are highly concentrated in the Donbas and predominantly Russian ethnic states in southeastern Ukraine now occupied by the Russian Army.

According to former Swiss Chief of Strategic Intelligence Services, Jacques Baud, Russian intrusion into Ukraine on February 24, 2022, was precipitated by Russian public outrage over the suffering and cultural cleansing being endured by their fellow ethnic Russians in the Donbas region. In addition. the Ukrainians were massing troops near Donetsk and increasing bombardment of Donetsk civilian areas more than ten-fold. Hence the Western propaganda campaign that the Russian “invasion” of Ukraine was “unprovoked” is a monstrous cynical lie.

See Norwegian professor Glen Diesen March 14 interview of Jacques Baud: “The Origin and Solution to the Ukraine war:”

https://youtu.be/tqSztEQprgg?si=8816R1cNSGlNxiI4

This is long (92 minutes) but vitally important truth well documented in Baud’s recent books on the Ukraine War. Baud also mentions the April 24, 2019, Rand Corporation study for the U.S Defense Department, “Extending Russia,” apparently rejected by the Trump administration but immediately implemented by the Biden administration in 2021. The plan called for pressuring Russia into military actions in Ukraine in order to destroy the Russian economy by massive sanctions, resulting in an anti-Putin regime change and  breaking up and disabling of the Russian Federation as a competitive global military and economic power.   

Former President of France Francois Hollande and former German Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, who arbitrated the Minsk II agreement, admitted in late 2024 that Minsk II was only a delaying tactic for Ukraine to build up its Army and take back the Donbas republics and Crimea. Indeed, the U.S. and British had succeeded in making the Ukrainian Army the second largest in Europe by 2022, save only Turkey.  Ukraine was not NATO, but its military buildup was de facto NATO, closely tied to the U.S. and UK.

Despite completely unfounded reports of Ukrainian victories, the Ukrainian Army is collapsing in the Kursk area of Russia and running out of men and effective weapons everywhere. A cease-fire would allow them to survive a little longer and save lives. A sham cease-fire or truce might allow them to wage war again in a few years. But the war has already been so devastating to Ukraine that surely “fighting to the last Ukrainian” would be moral insanity. Most of Western media cannot break away from a completely false narrative on Ukraine. They frequently repeat Ukrainian fund-raising propaganda designed to empty the pockets of American taxpayers and keep block-headed politicians in office. The Russians have suffered significant casualties, but media and completely uniformed statements by clueless politicians that the Russians have suffered more than the Ukrainian forces are absurd. The overwhelming numbers and  power of Russian artillery, missiles, and airpower suggests that estimates of over one million Ukrainian military dead is probably accurate. The ratio may be more than ten Ukrainians to one Russian killed. It needs to be stopped, but focusing on public relations propaganda rather than reality will yield painful consequences rather than long-term peace.

Russian  President Vladimir Putin once placed his hopes on Minsk II, but that hope was betrayed. When Ukrainian forces started massing near Donetsk, and Ukrainian artillery increased its bombardment of Russian-ethnic civilian areas ten-fold,  Russian public opinion reflected in the Duma called for intervention to relieve the suffering of their Russian kinsman in Donbas. The great lie of the Ukraine War is  that the Russian intrusion into Ukraine on February 24, 2022, was an ”unprovoked invasion.”

The Russians have all the military face cards and some aces in a regional war at this point, but a cease-fire would save lives. The risk is another Minsk betrayal, which would mean a bigger continued war in several years. A shallow cease-fire could easily be another Minsk II style trick. American negotiators will have a tough time if they operate on the false narratives of the war that prevail in the media and much of Congress. They need to know the facts and history of Ukraine free of Cold War propaganda and recognize that regional ethnic differences within Ukraine, inflamed by extremely misguided cultural cleansing policies, were a major factor provoking Russian intrusion into Ukraine citing Article 51 of the United Nations Charter.

Ignorance supported by false narratives and propaganda is not strength. Truth is the only reliable road to lasting peace and prosperity.