Dear Rotarians! I am very grateful to those of you and clubs with solid commitment to Peacebuilding ideas, especially — for their help to Ukraine! Daily I communicate with Rotarians, who put their efforts into supporting people in need here. Thank you, friends!
I took Jim"s first video (2023-01-01, The pathway to peace in Ukraine https://youtu.be/A7pemYbbZBI ) as a presentation of the position of kremlin maniacs, as it was overfull with putin"s lying and historical bullshit. His second video was the same, although it included fewer lies, maybe as it takes less time. The biggest mistake is he mixed Gorbachov"s period Russia and current russia, Devil" land.
1) Ukraine has thousands years of its history and is blessed by The Lord with black soil, many rivers, huge forests, pleasant climate and working-hard population to work on this land. For thousands of years, our grain and other agro products are the food for millions of people around the Globe.
Ancient Rus (pre-Ukraine) had its kings, currency, academies, and almost any of the current European royal families have a bloodline from Kyiv. Ukraine, as a fruitful Mother, for centuries has shared with other countries its sons and daughters, who became a good citizens in other countries.
And being so rich, Ukraine was very peaceful, hardworking, and generous. Almost 30 years ago, in 1994, Ukraine trusted Russians, and US, UK when signed the Budapest memo (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum ) and then a lot of other agreements on de-militarization. Do you know that now russians shell our cities with the rockets we gave them out in the 90s?
Only because we believed in PEACE future we started to refuse our nuclear weapons, tanks, aircraft, artillery; we canceled military divisions and infrastructure during that period, having trust in Peace idea (https://ssp.mit.edu/publications/2022/a-1994-defense-concept-for-ukraine)
At the same time, we started to build a new — democratic governance, finding its traditions in historical memory of our Kyiv, Lviv, Chernihiv, and other ancient Rus cities and deeply back in Trypillia communities (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trypillia )... We were highly opened...
Do you know that the most significant investments into Ukrainian industry since 1991 were russian? Do you know that the most considerable number of tourists on the Crimea shore were from russia? They had easy, "no border control" to enter Ukraine, and millions had small businesses in cross-countries trading. The border was opened at all. They quickly bought thousands of houses, agricultural lands, banks, electricity companies etc., in democratic and liberal Ukraine since 1991. Russians had direct routes to Crimea: for example, gas pipeline to Odesa Ammonia Plant or, vice-versa, titanium rolled products, plates — from Crimea to Ural Boeing Manufacturing (https://site.ua/rostyslav.lukach/titanovii-skandal-nazrivaje-i7ek1q7 ). There was NO need to kill thousands of innocent people to get to Crimea! And nobody threatened them from our side!
And now, when those vandals have come to our beautiful country in the center of Europe, we will NOT give up defending our families, our land, and our right to have Freedom to Choose.
HATE is not a word to describe our familiar feeling now. Maybe "astonishment" and "deep pity" — we must stop them, anyway. Of course, some families who lost their relatives and loved ones need particular therapy. We have a state program focusing on that (https://mon.gov.ua/ua/news/golovni-pidsumki-realizaciyi-nacionalnoyi-programi-psihichnogo-zdorovya-ta-psihosocialnoyi-pidtrimki ). Some of our clubs provide related local projects, and MBBI delivers a training course for local specialists...
Kremlin junta puppets don"t understand what exactly they have touched. Since 2014 and especially last year, we have become ten times stronger; they fell five times. And they never understood us. Do you know they planned to be in Kyiv for the first three days? Ha-ha! :) Now they lost more than 80,000 soldiers and six months trying to get into small town in the East of Ukraine :)
We have a robust international Ukraine Peace coalition of countries who value Truth, Fairness, Liberty, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (does it look familiar? :) This Rammstein Coalition now includes more countries than the Anti-Hitler Coalition had because any wise man can see the exact historical reiteration in that and current situations. And it"s easy to remember that you shall never trust maniacs and terrorists! Putin destroyed dozens of international laws and inter-countries agreements, and they broke all the truces since 2014. Each "calm agreement" they used to strengthen their military power.
It"s a pity to say, but during their 23 years of ruling the federation, putin"s KGBsts dehumanized millions of russian population. Russia now is NOT that Russia of Mikhail Gorbachov"s Perestroika period. You can now see millions of russians who hate Americans, Ukrainians, Juwes, Europeans, and NATO on their meetings and TV channels. They taught their children to write "To Berlin!" and "We can do it again!" on puppet tanks in their May 9th demonstrations. And they started to gather special commercial troops from criminals, telling them to go to kill Ukrainians and, in that way, to receive freedom from their crimes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagner_Group)
The world saw what that Tolkien"s monsters made with women, girls and babies in occupied Ukrainian towns and villages. We have thousands of military crimes inspected by international crimes commissions after de-occupation our territories (https://iwpr.net/global-voices/russian-soldier-accused-rape). And it was the same as what they did earlier in Chechnia, Syria and other occupied lands.
Old Germans may also remember Red Army soldiers in their inhabited cities in 1945-1946 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_during_the_occupation_of_Germany ).
And if now the Democratic World would NOT stay with Ukraine against that maniacs, the next day, you will see other idiots with "dirty bombs" etc., in your streets and near your kindergartens.
2) We have A LOT OF WORK to transfer those millions back to Humanity and Peaceful, DEI life. Of course, when the aggressors (russia and bilorus) will stop their horrible attacks in Ukraine and return to their homes, we will be ready to negotiate with the NEW leaders the New Peace conditions, international judgment, punishment for military criminals, future peace guarantees, nuclear stability, reparations plan etc.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky has already announced 10 points of the Peace Agreement (short video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OlVVkDoYHE&t=20s)
These 10 points were discussed and agreed upon by the governments of the world"s leading countries" parliaments. I don"t know what we could add or discuss here.
3) Of course, we should paid attention to The Next Russia Project, and I see a big pole for negotiating activity here. From the Ukrainian side, I see Rotarians, public figures, veterans, journalists, and other symbols of today"s Ukraine.
From the "Next Russia" side, you may invite the current leaders of the Russian opposition, such as Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Garry Kasparov, Ilya Ponomarev, Mark Feigin, Gennady Gudkov, Yulia Latynyna, and other intelligent Russians. Also, Rotarians, maybe.
These negotiations could have been better organized — in one of the neutral countries.
