Peace should be our goal in Ukraine

What would be a fair peace in Ukraine?

Ukrainians are a separate people entitled to their own nationality, but it does not follow that the boundaries of the Ukrainian SSR which declared its independence in 1991 coincide with the boundaries of Ukrainian ethnicity. Those boundaries, established by Soviet treaty in 1922, were deliberately designed to mix peoples in order to discourage national separatism. In the southeast was the largely Russian-speaking Donbas, in the northwest Polish provinces annexed by Stalin. Crimea, which had nothing to do with Ukraine, was added by Kruschchev for administrative convenience.

Immediately after Ukraine left the Soviet Union, Russia pressed to renegotiate boundaries, arguing that the 1922 treaty was abrogated. Early Ukrainian governments took care to respect Russian rights, but those following the Maidan uprising were overtly hostile. In 2014 when Kiev announced it would not renew the lease of Russia’s historic Black Sea naval port at Sevastopol, Russia annexed Crimea with the overwhelming approval of its inhabitants. If Ukraine had the right to declare independence in 1990, did not Crimea enjoy a similar right to leave Ukraine in 2014?

Nothing excuses Russian violence or its disruption of the peace of Europe. But peace ought to be our only goal, not the punishment or vindication of anybody. A peace settlement that granted Crimea to Russia and a degree of autonomy to Donbas would be just. In addition, wisdom and world peace have always urged that NATO stay out of Ukraine.