Anthony Blinken has apparently said that a lasting peace deal in Ukraine can’t occur if it’s territorial integrity is not respected. His exact words were “It will open a Pandora’s box around the world” and I’m sure a lot of people agree to this. Putin has to actually give up on his notion that Ukraine is not its own country. This was remarked by Anthony. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a new interview with NPR that there’s a slim chance of Kyiv and Moscow reaching a peace deal as long as Russian President Vladimir Putin behaves as if Ukraine is not a real country.
“Vladimir Putin has to give up on his notion that Ukraine is not its own country, that it needs to be erased from the maps and subsumed into Russia. He’s already failed at that. But he seems to continue to believe that that’s what he’s trying to achieve. And unless he’s disabused of that notion, it’s hard to see how peace can really move forward,” Anthony Blinken said. Putin in September last year, had gone against the law and annexed four Ukrainian territories. But Russian forces do not fully occupy these regions, and in some places, they have even lost ground to Ukraine in the time since Putin announced the annexations, so to speak.
Now the Russian leader’s decision in order to annex the Ukrainian territories made the possibility of negotiations to end the fighting extremely and extremely unlikely. Moscow now claims these regions as part of Russia while the Ukrainian government has been adamant that even if all hell broke loose, quite literally, it would not agree to any peace deal requiring it to cede territory to Russia in the end. Blinken also told NPR that any peace agreement would need to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity, otherwise it would not be “just peace and a durable peace.” “If we ratify the seizure of land by another country and say ‘that’s okay, you can go in and take it by force and keep it,’ that will open a Pandora’s box around the world for would be aggressors that will say, ‘Well, we’ll do the same thing and get away with it,'” Blinken remarked.
Western leaders and officials have repeatedly warned that if Russia wins in Ukraine it could inspire other world leaders with imperialistic ambitions to tread on the same path with the same vigour and a perpetual will to conquer. The top US diplomat’s comments came as Russia continues to push for gains in eastern Ukraine as the war inches toward the one-year mark. It’s a shame, nonetheless. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said last Monday that Russia has already begun a highly-anticipated new offensive, warning that Putin is willing to endure high casualties in order to exhaust Ukrainian forces. This is both sad and demeaning. Dehumanising, just as much, not to forget. Let’s hope this war ends with both the nations going back to how they were.
