Even if Kyiv is Forced to Sign Peace Accord, Ukrainian People Unlikely to Accept It – and War will Go On

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 21 – Both Washington and Moscow believe that if they are in agreement on a peace plan for Ukraine and can compel either Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky or some successor to sign it, that will be enough to end Ukrainian anger about Russia's behavior and the war itself, Yury Fyodorov says. But they are deeply mistaken.

            The Ukrainian people will reject any accord that they feel is unjust, the Russian security analyst now in emigration says; and they will continue to resist Putin’s aggression one way or another possibly with a partisan war like the one they fought against Stalin after 1945 (echofm.online/opinions/pozicziya-ukrainskogo-obshhestva-igraet-reshayushhuyu-rol).

            Consequently, the view of the Ukrainian people rather than the signing of any agreement the they are likely to view as unjust will “play a decisive role.” Other than a just peace, not now on offer, there is only one thing that could change that: the complete discrediting of Kyiv by playing up corruption in the Ukrainian government.

            That is precisely what Moscow is playing up and a story line Western media have followed. It is certainly true there is massive corruption in the Ukrainian government, but its democratic institutions are rooting it out; but in reporting this both Moscow and the West often ignore there is more corruption in Putin’s regime and his dictatorship is blocking any similar housecleaning.

            Some observers are pointing this out (mostmedia.org/ru/posts/pochemu-ukraine-udajotsja-borotsja-s-korrupciey-dazhe-nesmotrja-na-vtorzhenie-rossii), but most are not, the latest case of the double standards Western observers often adopt with regard to other countries, holding those making progress to higher standards than those that aren’t.

            The classic discussion of this, of course, and the one from which the whole notion of such double standards comes, is Jeane Kirkpatrick’s November 1979 Commentary article in which she contrasted how the West at that time adopted differing positions to ordinary dictatorships and totalitarian ones (commentary.org/articles/jeane-kirkpatrick/dictatorships-double-standards/).