By Owei Lakemfa.
Peace in Ukraine is fragmented in pieces like a broken Chinese enamel in the sun. Ukraine is where Europeans have been engaged in a senseless slaughter for eleven years now.
To Western Europe, peace has assumed an urgency as the deliberate moves of the United States, US in pulling the plugs, has exposed that part of the world as being vulnerable like a typical neo-colony.
As late as February 14, 2025, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was still bragging that there will neither be a ceasefire nor negotiations as long as there are Russian troops on Ukrainian soil and President Vladimir Putin remains President of Russia. Last week he adopted the hare-brained Western European leaders insistence that even if there is to be a ceasefire, it must cover only the air and sea, not the battle fields on the ground.
However, on Tuesday, March 11, 2025, Zelensky agreed to a ceasefire on all fronts for at least a month if Russia agrees. In a joint statement with the US in Saudi Arabia, Ukraine: “expressed readiness to accept the US proposal to enact an immediate, interim 30-day ceasefire, which can be extended by mutual agreement of the parties, and which is subject to acceptance and concurrent implementation by the Russian Federation.”
A ceasefire to which from all indications, Russia will accede, is the easiest step to mending peace in Ukraine. The peace in that country was broken on February 22, 2014 when the extreme right overthrew elected President Viktor Yanukovych. This second coup in four years against democratic elections was baptised “Revolution of Dignity” The first was called the “Orange Revolution” Both coups which stopped the same President Yanukovych, were staged when pro-Western elements in Ukraine, realised that they could not win democratic elections against pro-Russian Ukrainians.
After the second coup, the Crimea Peninsula held a referendum in 2014 to opt out of Ukraine and join Russia. The pro-Russia regions of Donetsk and Luhansk which have been winning the democratic elections, decided that either the constitutional order be restored or they would opt out of Ukraine. The Ukrainian armed forces was unleashed on them. Also, to carry out the ethnic cleansing of the pro-Russian Ukrainians, a special neo-Nazi army called the Azov Battalion, was created in May, 2014.
This is the origin of the Ukrainian Civil War which rages until today. Also, irregular Russian forces had crossed the border to fight on the side of the rebels.
In September, 2014 both Ukraine and the separatists signed a 12-Point Peace Agreement in Minsk which provided for a ceasefire, prisoners exchange, deliveries of humanitarian aid, withdrawal of heavy weapons and agreement on co-exististence. But the agreement broke down and the civil war continued.
To stop the conflict, Germany and France brokered a second peace agreement called MINSK II. This 13-point agreement, signed by Ukraine, Russia, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe , OSCE and the leaders of Donetsk and Luhansk provided for immediate, comprehensive ceasefire, withdrawal of heavy weapons, OSCE monitoring and dialogue on interim self-government for Donetsk and Luhansk, in accordance with Ukrainian law, and acknowledgement of special status by parliament.
The other points in the agreement were pardon and amnesty for fighters, exchange of hostages and prisoners. humanitarian assistance, resumption of socioeconomic ties, including pensions, Ukrainian restoration of control over state border, and withdrawal of foreign armed formations, military equipment, mercenaries. It also provided for constitutional reform including decentralisation, with specific mention of Donetsk and Luhansk, elections in both regions and, the intensification of the Trilateral Contact Group’s work which included representatives of Russia, Ukraine and OSCE.
However, the Kyiv government refused to implement the agreement, preferring to press with its advantage of a regular military and heavy weapons being supplied by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, NATO.
Given the massacres in the separatist regions, Russia cried out repeatedly to Western European leaders especially Germany and France that had played pivotal roles in the making of MINSK II. Both countries reacted positively. The then German Chancellor Angela Merkel cried herself hoarse asking the Ukrainian authorities implement the peace agreement, but was ignored.
Russia kicked over the years against the massacres in Ukraine to which most of the world appeared indifferent. When it threatened to intervene in the civil war, Macron flew to Moscow to talk with Putin and tried to give assurances.
On February 23, 2022, seven years after MINSK II, Putin announced Russia’s recognition of the rebel regions of Ukraine and its decision to intervene.
He told the world: “ one cannot look at what is happening there without compassion. It was simply impossible to endure all this. It was necessary to stop this nightmare immediately – the genocide against the millions of people living there, who rely only on Russia, hope only on us. It was these aspirations, feelings, pain of people that were for us the main motive for deciding to recognise the people’s republics of Donbas.”
Putin also announced ‘a special military operation’ in Ukraine. He said: “Its goal is to protect people who have been subjected to bullying and genocide by the Kyiv regime for eight years. And for this we will strive for the demilitarisation and denazification of Ukraine, as well as bringing to justice those who committed numerous, bloody crimes against civilians, including citizens of the Russian Federation.”
The Next day, February 24, 2022, the Russo-Ukrainian War commenced. On February 28, 2025, President Donald Trump met Zelensky in the White House with the former asserting that the Zelensky insistence against a ceasefire and peace agreement with Russia was unacceptable to the US.
This week’s acceptance of a ceasefire with Russia opens the road to peace in Ukraine. But the more difficult issues are actual negotiations and a possible agreement.
Since the conflict began, Russia has seized a fifth of Ukraine. So a major challenge is what happens to those areas or, would the Ukrainian borders be redrawn? What happens to the separatist areas of Ukraine? Would their peoples be allowed full or limited autonomy?
One of the objections of Russia is its virtually being hedged in from various sides by an ever expanding NATO. So, will Ukraine agree not to join it?
A positive in the expected negotiations, is that they can build on the foundations of the MINSK II Agreements.
Whatever happens, once a ceasefire is agreed and it holds, the avoidable slaughters in Ukraine will cease and some ten million Ukrainians would be free to return to their homes and start rebuilding their lives. Also, the possibility of a nuclear war, would greatly diminish.
The road to peace in Ukraine, even if it be bloody and paved with broken bones under an asphalt of shattered dreams, is worth taking
