Grigory Yavlinsky’s web-site, 2.12.2025

Photo: President Donald Trump meets in the Oval Office with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron, Finnish President Alexander Stubb, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte following a telephone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin, 18 August 2025 // Photo by Daniel Torok

Any peace initiatives aimed at halting hostilities between Russia and Ukraine continue to provoke strange, hysterical reactions from all sides. For instance, the head of European diplomacy, Kaja Kallas, recently declared that “a very swift path to peace is not advantageous for Ukraine” – in other words, let people continue to be killed and let the destruction of energy infrastructure carry on through the winter.

A BROKEN CORE

Western media report that the latest version of “points” developed by the US and Ukraine is being concealed from EU representatives to prevent further “leaks”, discussion of which displaces the original subject from the information space. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio refuses to travel to Brussels for a NATO foreign ministers’ meeting in the midst of the crisis. Politicians on all sides make clumsy statements that are subsequently corrected and retracted. The effect of chaos intensifies.

It’s time to speak of political dementia: a significant deterioration in all the cognitive functions crucial to international politics and diplomacy (qualification, logic, historical memory, responsibility, intuition, and situational awareness).

The characteristics of a government formed by the catastrophic failure of 1990s reforms are clear (https://www.yavlinsky.ru/en/article/russia-2022-underlying-causes/ ). However, the political and diplomatic behaviour of European leaders, accompanied by the Western press, raises ever more questions. In the current critical situation, the deviation of European policy from core European values is becoming increasingly apparent.

A persistent impression is emerging that the fundamental meaning, the highest value, the central pillar of all European politics after the end of World War II – the preservation of human life – has been broken.

Human life is ceasing to be the priority goal and criterion for assessing political actions, yet it was precisely on this foundation that post-war Europe was built. Perhaps this departure from a value system where human life is paramount represents one of the key reasons for the political disintegration of democratic Europe.

The collapse of the Istanbul agreement in spring 2022 – preliminary but nonetheless the first official arrangements that could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives – is, oddly enough, still assessed positively by many European politicians.

Already in November 2022, we, the Yabloko party, approached influential Europeans confidentially but directly with a proposal to facilitate the immediate conclusion of a ceasefire agreement. In early February 2023, we made this appeal an official and public political demand. In response, we were subjected to a smear campaign, accused of “playing into the Kremlin’s hands”, whilst European politicians declared the necessity of unconditionally continuing hostilities until “victory on the battlefield”. What all this has led to is now common knowledge.

Since Donald Trump returned to the White House with his peacekeeping ambitions (not without populism), the topic of a ceasefire has become a common theme in political rhetoric. However, oddly enough, key European leaders, whilst verbally aligning themselves with the American President and calling for a ceasefire, are in practice doing everything to prevent it from happening. Western media are selflessly assisting them in this, provoking and inflaming further escalation.

Even now, European politicians are attempting to literally bury the so-called “Trump peace plan” for Ukraine, gutting the plan’s content with various “alternatives” and other truncated or modified versions, deliberately reducing it to variants already tried and demonstrably failed.

Europeans fear Trump’s anger and publicly agree with him in general terms, but simultaneously throw spanners in the works. The media and the “quasi-political public” are actively talking the topic of a genuine ceasefire agreement to death, discussing anything and everything – any gossip – except the essence of the matter, except how to stop killings of people. In reality, all these conversations amount to a flimsy screen barely concealing the desire to continue the war.

A CHANCE FOR THE FUTURE

European politicians are striving with all their might to create the appearance of the former American-European partnership, at least publicly demonstrating readiness to tune to the current US President. However, tuning to Trump is akin to adapting to chaos, and the outcome will be the same (https://www.yavlinsky.ru/en/article/trump-wins-even-in-defeat/ ). Ultimately, this is searching for a more comfortable cabin on the Titanic as it approaches the iceberg (https://www.yavlinsky.ru/en/article/there-is-only-one-solution/ ). Rather than attempting to adapt to chaos, it is necessary to formulate and construct a vision of the desired future – to identify goals worth striving for, outline pathways and find means of advancing towards them.

Donald Trump’s peace initiatives, imbued with such substance, represent a real chance to achieve a ceasefire and save people’s lives, and in this sense mean an attempt to turn away from the path leading to chaos onto the road towards a secure future.

And this chance must be seized. It’s important to understand that this is merely the very beginning of a lengthy settlement process. During this time, parameters will be revised, leaders and conditions will change, but crucially – during this time people will not be dying and a road to the future will appear. This is precisely what should now constitute the main task of responsible politicians who think not of personal gain and immediate objectives, but of the future. This is precisely why any window of opportunity that opens must be used. In the current situation, this could become genuine therapy for the establishment’s political dementia.

It is fundamentally important to learn lessons even from very recent mistakes. In autumn 2022 through spring 2023, there was a real window of opportunity to halt the bloodshed between Russia and Ukraine. But none of the parties noticed or wished to see these possibilities. The inability and unwillingness came at a very high price. And today, neglecting new opportunities will result in the continued killing of people, continued destruction and further escalation of violence. Western media, citing intelligence data, report that Russia produces more long-range missiles daily than it expends. Meanwhile, increasingly sober assessments of the real situation in Ukraine are appearing more frequently in the same Western press.

Understanding such prospects, it seems strange to sabotage peace negotiations over the impossibility of Ukraine joining NATO (given that this impossibility is obvious even within NATO itself). Discussions about deploying limited French and British military contingents in Ukraine appear even more absurd now, given that other NATO members have no intention of doing so. Discussions about vague prospects for Ukraine’s reconstruction at the expense of Russian assets also raise questions about their appropriateness at this stage. These and many other positions should be discussed after signing a ceasefire agreement. Turning these questions into priorities only impedes progress towards halting hostilities. Another instance of “getting stuck” in details, searching for some ideal and most likely non-existent constructions, only drags one deeper into the quagmire of a war now approaching its fifth year. All of this threatens the loss of the future.

THE KEY THREAT

Nevertheless, the details of non-public negotiations about the so-called peace plan involving the US, Russia, Ukraine and European countries that are being leaked to the press, place particular emphasis precisely on territorial questions, the size of the Ukrainian army, and EU countries’ involvement in Ukrainian affairs. In reality, however important these questions may be, none of them is decisive.

The key problem, essentially the key threat, is the repeated declarations by officials from European states about the inevitability of war with Russia and the escalation of armed conflict that follows.

Given Russia’s characteristics, this represents a genuine movement towards the deployment, in one form or another, of nuclear weapons. Precisely such a development in the event of military confrontation between Russia and NATO would be most probable. We see how the parties increasingly boast about new types of weapons. Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump are seriously discussing the possibility of resuming nuclear tests. There is a return to nuclear arms racing. Given the continuing hostilities between Russia and Ukraine, in which NATO countries play no small role, the threat of nuclear war is becoming increasingly real.

The world is moving rapidly towards a dangerous threshold. The extremely low level of political diplomacy among world leaders has brought the world to this brink. On one hand, NATO countries leaders are discussing questions of transferring missiles to Ukraine that could potentially carry nuclear warheads (Tomahawks), whilst literally on the eve of the nearest already-announced negotiations between US representatives and Vladimir Putin in Moscow, statements are published (https://www.ft.com/content/dbd93caa-3c62-48bb-9eba-08c25f31ab02 ) by NATO Military Committee Chairman Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone about the possibility of a pre-emptive strike against Russia. On the other hand, various elements in Russia enjoying Kremlin support are calling for a “limited tactical strike”. All of this is a prologue to nuclear catastrophe.

The West considers calls sounding from Moscow be a bluff. Perhaps this is why European political leaders sometimes permit insane and hysterical statements, believing that Russia will not dare to use nuclear weapons.

Such an assessment is a fatal mistake. Those who reduce the context of global nuclear danger to a “Kremlin bluff” are simply ignoring an inconvenient reality where there are no advantageous populist answers. The scale of the questions being ignored is irrelevant; the main thing is not to discuss what brings no immediate benefit.

Remember, at the very beginning of the 20th century, mass use of automobiles with internal combustion engines began, the aeroplane was invented, telephone, telegraph, radio and cinema entered people’s lives. At the same time, drugs became widespread and chemical weapons appeared. As we now know, against this background Europe was moving somnambulistically towards a great war. True, nuclear weapons did not yet exist then, but the existing military and industrial technologies sufficed for millions to die first in World War I, and then, as a consequence of erroneous decisions, for all this to escalate into World War II.

Today humanity is again experiencing a technological boom: digital technologies, artificial intelligence, the Internet and social networks, quantum computers, autonomous transport and aviation means, and robotics are rapidly changing the reality. At the same time, extreme political populism is blurring the boundaries of what is permissible, negating human values, turning everything upside down: white becomes black, and good becomes evil. The combination of unbridled technical progress with clouded consciousness increasingly resembles events of the beginning of the last century.

Against the background of an approaching catastrophe no smaller in scale, and probably greater, one must acknowledge that current European politicians do not recognise responsibility even for the fate of their own citizens, let alone for the future of all Europe. In the event of direct confrontation between Russia and NATO, that is with the US, Moscow will immediately deploy nuclear weapons, since forces in such a confrontation would be unequal. At minimum, this must be understood.

But such understanding does not exist. Ochlocracy transforms politics into populism, and populism does not permit solving real problems and confronting contemporary challenges, being distracted by secondary questions. The anticipated scale of economic difficulties in a number of Western countries is currently such that some of their leaders may attempt to resolve problems through escalation of war, naively hoping for safe crossing of “red lines” in balancing on the brink of nuclear conflict.

The threat of nuclear catastrophe has returned in its most ominous form: in the disintegrating post-war model of world order, nuclear weapons are not merely a cudgel for intimidating neighbours and maintaining power domestically, but a more than real danger.

It is important to understand that every day of continuing hostilities between Russia and Ukraine not only claims new human lives but brings closer confrontation between Russia and NATO, and consequently increases the threat of nuclear conflict, which will not be limited but will undoubtedly escalate into a global one.

All sensible political forces of West and East today must work towards the immediate cessation of bloodshed. This is the only way to avoid catastrophe. Any plan – of 28, 19 or even one point – that will lead to a ceasefire and halt the war must be supported and advanced.

WHAT REALITY IS

Yes, this is not yet the conclusion of peace. Peace is still very far away. The peace initiatives being discussed today with American assistance are not yet peace and not rules for future life, but a necessary first step, a condition for starting complex and lengthy negotiations about organising a ceasefire, then about an armistice, and only afterwards, should results be achieved in eliminating the causes of what happened (which, incidentally, are scarcely discussed yet), about the first foundations of future peace.

If negotiations based on the so-called “Trump plan” are now rejected, hostilities will continue. This will only exacerbate the current situation and have an extremely negative impact on prospects – both immediate and distant. Therefore, the implementation of any plan aimed at halting hostilities is necessary.

The main thing to understand is this: Europeans and Americans will assure of their support, will embrace and smile, but behind beautiful and seemingly friendly gestures will follow only those actions which, firstly, correspond to their political understanding of what is happening and the prospects, and secondly, appear advantageous to them.

Western countries’ policies have always been built exclusively on their own understanding of what is happening, on their own vision of the immediate prospects and on their own direct interests. Today, against the background of crisis phenomena in Europe, the West sees no prospect for the development of the situation in Ukraine and Russia, and therefore acts primarily in accordance with its present understanding of its own advantage and security. Such is reality. This is how one must conduct oneself – understand one’s own key goals and objectives, independently and realistically assess one’s own capabilities and make independent decisions accordingly. Certainly, whilst doing so, cordial, friendly and neighbourly relations must be maintained with the West. This is the only prospective path forward and genuine advancement towards possible peace and preservation of the future.

Source: https://www.yavlinsky.ru/article/o-politicheskoj-terapii/