by John F. Hall Jr.
Ukrainian servicemen sit atop of an armored personnel carrier as they patrol in Donetsk region on September 16, 2014.
President Petro Poroshenko has led a valiant fight, since the day that he was inaugurated, to combat Russian President Vladimir Putin's overwhelming and illegal neo-Soviet aggression against Ukraine. Yet, in conciliatory European and Western fashion, Poroshenko has now boldly advanced in the Ukrainian Parliament a bid for peace against the destruction of Ukraine by Putin and his armies, comprised of the mafiosos of the Donbas and "vacationing Russian soldiers," who have been sent to kill loyal Ukrainians. In return for Poroshenko's generous olive branch, Putin has offered . . . bupkis.
Poroshenko has now legislated unprecedented autonomy for the Ukrainian Donbas, including amnesty for the criminals who now hold Eastern Ukraine and its residents at gunpoint, and he has even scrivened in law all that any Russian national living in the Donbas could ever have hoped-for.
In Ukraine's Parliament "Rada" appeared bills to abolish the special status of Donbass and Amnesty of militants. Sept. 16 2014.
Still, it's not enough for either Moscow, nor for its mercenaries in Ukraine. This should have been expected, of course. Moscow's objective is not greater "self-determination" in Eastern Ukraine. It never was. It is, instead, pure conquest. In Putin's mind, Crimea must return to Russia; Ukraine must return to Russia. That's the objective. It's the same as it was in Georgia 6 years ago. Putin's territorial ambitions are determined by his own pathological and self-preservationist objectives. They are not bounded by reason. Perhaps we're all just too stupid or forgetful to recognize Putin's patterns of behavior. Perhaps we just don't wish to believe that anyone could have such dark designs on his peaceful neighbors in the 21st century. Or, perhaps, we should all just wake-up.
Poroshenko is doing his best to preserve the territorial integrity of his beloved Ukraine, in the absence of any meaningful assistance from NATO or the European Union, while seeking to minimize the appalling loss of lives of both Ukrainian civilians and soldiers occasioned by Putin's unceasing aggression, invasion, rearmament, and renewed aggression by Donbas rebels through Russia's thinly-disguised violations of Ukraine's sovereign borders, its cynical "relief convoys", and its other feints. Poroshenko is dealing, as best he can, with a tragic Hobson's Choice, I suppose. This is all unfortunate.
However, until Poroshenko surrenders Kyiw to Moscow's rule, neither Putin nor his henchmen in the Donbas will be satisfied, it appears.
There is another path, however. It is a path upon which the freedom-loving nations of the world can tread, arm-in-arm, with the Ukrainian people. Poroshenko has forced deep, painful concessions within the Ukrainian Parliament to Moscow and to the criminals of the Donbas. It is time, now, for the Free World, for NATO, and for the EU -- but especially for the United States and Great Britain -- to force Russia to honor its two-decade-old commitments to Ukraine's territorial integrity in return. It is time for them to insist upon Russia's exit from Ukraine, and to lead with truly meaningful support for Ukraine and its independence, with crushing sanctions upon Moscow, and with the kind of advanced military support for Ukraine that will enable a valuable partner in freedom to reclaim its sovereignty from Putin's vacationing soldiers and abusive henchmen, who have, thus far, shown themselves adept only at downing civilian aircraft, beating-up the locals, trampling-upon voting rights, . . . and not much else.
For those who've missed out on the history lesson, Russia has violated -- and continues to violate -- its obligations to the United States, Ukraine, and Great Britain in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, through its unprovoked invasion and illegal annexation of Ukraine's Crimea, and by its further invasion of the Ukrainian Donbas. These are monumental acts -- acts of war in any other context. These violations by Russia have not only sowed sorrow and devastation among the once-fertile fields and tranquil homes of Ukraine's Donbas, they have also accompliced the senseless murder of hundreds of innocents aboard MH-17 over Ukraine's peaceful skies by Russia's mercenaries, lest we forget that important fact.
In the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, Ukraine performed a remarkably peaceful act, an act which no other state has since done, nor which any nation will henceforth undertake in the future. It gave-up its nuclear weapons in order to secure its sovereignty, its borders, and its freedom.
Nuclear launchers once present in Ukraine. Will ever regain status of a nuclear power remain an open question though Ukraine still has all the technological means needed to create a nuclear arsenal.
In return, Ukraine was promised recognition and respect for its borders -- by the United States, Great Britain, and Russia -- not a single one of which has honored its own obligations to defend those commitments. Among the signatories to this monumental pledge, Russia promised to "refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine", but that seems to have totally escaped the attentions of Vladimir Putin.
Instead, Ukraine has been made to pay for its naïveté. It has been made to pay dearly -- with the blood of thousands of its soldiers and citizens in the defense of its freedom and sovereignty, of whose safety and security it believed itself assured. Why? Because Vladimir Putin wants to contain the contagion of a democratic and freedom-oriented Ukraine on his doorstep.
Putin's disregard for Ukraine has implications for the rest of the world, however.
What we must now come to appreciate is that there will never -- ever -- be another nation on this planet possessing nuclear arms that will willingly give-up its nuclear weapons. They won't. Why would they?
They've all seen what happens when even a responsible nation, like Ukraine, elects to do so.
Not North Korea, not Iran, not Pakistan, nor anyone else.
Those states which now possess or seek to acquire nuclear weapons will take their lead from Ukraine's folly and they will hold-on, fastidiously, to their own nuclear threats and ambitions until they are taken from them by force alone. Until the Ukrainian nation is made whole, all others will know that those bold promises made two decades ago were simply worthless and foolhardy. And we will all pay for it. If the leaders of the Free World hope for true success in their grand nuclear non-proliferation efforts, then Ukraine has now become the point-of-departure. Honor -- and defend -- that which was promised in 1994, . . . or be prepared for chaos.
It is a false and misleading notion that the distinction between right and wrong can be determined by power alone -- even by Putin's corruptly-secured power, by the unlawful invasion of his neighbors, or by the number of innocents, such as those on MH-17, that can be slaughtered without apparent consequence to Putin and his minions in the process. It cannot, and it is reprehensible to acquiesce in such double-standards. The world cannot survive by such dual-standards. Does anyone really believe so?"
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John F. Hall, Jr., is an international lawyer in Washington, D.C.
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