Dr. Myroslav Marynovych, Member of the First of December 1 Initiative Group, Advisor to the Rector of the Ukrainian Catholic University, stated that he is following the current “peacemaking initiatives” with lots of concern, as there is practically no word about bringing to justice and punishing the Putin regime.

This was his key message at the 17th Annual Kyiv Security Forum “UA: UNITE AGAIN TO DEFEAT THE GLOBAL AGGRESSOR, organized by the Arseniy Yatsenyuk Foundation “Open Ukraine”.

“To me, it all sounds like deja vu, because communist crimes were not punished in their time. We saw that their seeds remained in the ground, the seeds of crimes, sprouting again and being incarnated today in the Putin’s regime. If we make the same mistake again and fail to bring the aggressor to liability and justice, the tragedy will repeat itself. I do not know when, but it will definitely repeat itself,” he emphasized.

Myroslav Marynovych added that today the idea of punishing Russia causes a sort of a “quiet panic” in the West.

“A veto on a military campaign against Russia is well imposed. It is, as they say, in the subcortex of Europeans. Ukrainians are unable to convince Europeans that instead of rejecting the possibility of Russia’s disintegration a priori, it is better to make such a disintegration a controlled process. Many Western politicians prefer to keep Russia afloat in order to preserve the current geopolitical balances and prevent China from gaining strength,” the Advisor to the UCU Rector believes.

In addition, according to him, the West fears the collapse of Russia. This may result, they say, in nuclear weapons falling into terrorist hands. 

“The world must finally shape its vision of how this war should end. After all, Putin has not changed his attitude towards Ukraine one iota. Both the Ukrainian state and the Ukrainian nation must disappear, according to Putin,” explained Myroslav Marynovych.

In his opinion, there are three possible options. One assumes that Western democracies will completely renounce their values. The second option is to postpone the resolution of this issue to some time future, in which case the Ukrainians would be doomed to face aggression again. The last option assumes that a just peace is not achieved at the cost of renouncing the truth, but at the cost of ethical defeat.

Myroslav Marynovych noted, in particular, that little attention is paid in the world to the fate of the Crimean Tatars. Typically, world-wide many believe the Kremlin propaganda about the Crimea as an integral historical part of Russia.

“Although the Russians owned Crimea for lesser time than its indigenous people, the Crimean Tatars. Today, the Ukrainians are encouraged to come to terms with the loss of occupied territories, forgetting this 20% of Ukrainian territory means 100% to the Crimean Tatars. And why give our land to Russians? Accepting losses of territories, modern peacedealers tell Crimean Tatars “you are too small a people for us to consider your national interests. We don’t care of your fate in the occupied Crimea. Negotiate with the Russians on your own.”

So, aspirations for Ukrainians to regain their territories remain impossible without same aspirations for the Crimean Tatars,” Mr. Marynovych argued. 

The Kyiv Security Forum, organized by the Arseniy Yatsenyuk “Open Ukraine” foundation, is the main platform in Ukraine to discuss issues of war and peace, national and global security.