On "white flag" of legal world order defeat
The Pope finally discredited the very idea of peace talks by wrapping it in the "white flag" of capitulation of Ukraine.
His accomplices in the next series of forcing Ukraine to surrender to the Russians - from the Turkish and Chinese sides - at least did not use such vivid humiliating metaphors, obviously realizing in advance the opposite effect.
The Pope, who could not keep himself from using an artistic image, thus harming virtually all subsequent pseudo-peacemakers who would try to follow a similar path to fulfill Putin's whims.
In particular, the Pope actually ruined the potential mission of Trump himself if, after being elected president of the United States, he continued to fulfill his threat to "make peace in 24 hours" by bringing Ukraine to the negotiating table with Putin.
But Trump has another option. And if we don't waste time promoting hopes that his presidential actions will be more pro-Ukrainian than his election rhetoric, but look more broadly at the prospects for fulfilling Putin's whims, we will see the following.
Trump has already used the brakes on financial aid to Ukraine, and thus he has eliminated the future mechanism for weakening Ukraine on the battlefield.
The same with the threat of NATO's collapse, i.e. America's betrayal of Europe in the face of direct Russian aggression.
Europe, on the other hand, finally realized that GDP alone does not work. And GDP together with the military-industrial complex can do more than just GDP...
So this "package" of troubles from the potential US president has already worked. It looks like a false start, doesn't it?
Of course, this betrayal has not made Ukraine more inclined to surrender.
On the contrary, it reminded Europe of such virtues as dignity and honor and raised the question for many countries whether Orwell had not missed such a definition as " greatness is deep provincialism'" in his dystopia...
So what does the creator of "great America again" have to do for the next stage of cooperation with the "great" pu?
Undoubtedly, the most powerful option in Putin's arsenal of non-military strikes against Ukraine in the interests of the Kremlin is the fulfillment of the demand that he and the entire Kremlin gang have been endlessly emphasizing - the recognition of the "legal" annexation of the occupied Ukrainian territories by the Russian Federation.
Such an instantaneous issuance of a decree or even a declaration by the US president can be accomplished within the 24 hours he proclaimed.
Anything else takes much more time. Especially, as the good Johnson (Johnsonuk) (Johnsonuk is the nickname given to former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson by Ukrainians. Johnson's Instagram handle is borisjohnsonuk, which means Boris Johnson UK (United Kingdoms), but Ukrainians noted the similarity of the word Johnsonuk to a typical Ukrainian surname, such as Parasiuk or Stetsiuk, and began to humorously refer to Ukraine's great friend Boris Johnson by this nickname. - ed. note)) emphasizes, to try to get along with Putin, get disappointed, and then "give Ukraine everything."
And it cannot be ruled out that such an action has already been agreed upon by Trump and the Kremlin, including with the help of Orban, who, in turn, will clearly not resist participation in such an "international legal" divvy up of neighboring territory.
From this perspective, it becomes clear that it was to conclude the "Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact 2.0" that the Ukrainian territories temporarily visited by official killers from the aggressor's army were written into the so-called Constitution of the Russian Federation.
To ensure that external shareholders have formal grounds to define the boundaries of the territories whose annexation they will "recognize" without unnecessary hassle.
What other countries can join in recognizing the annexation of Ukrainian territories without Kyiv's consent?
Is it China, India, Turkey, Saudi Arabia? Is it the entire so-called Global South?
In fact, many, all those who have not directly joined the non-recognition policy, proclaimed in rather general terms even at the level of the UN General Assembly, but not specifically by each partner country, even among those with whom Ukraine signs so-called security agreements.
Of course, the first objection to the possibility of such a step on Trump's part may be Pompeo's Crimean Declaration.
It is precisely about the non-recognition policy. There is a corresponding law that was voted by Congress, incredible as it may seem, during the previous term of the "friend of all the world's authoritarians."
But there is nothing counterintuitive about it. On the contrary, as open sources showed at the time, both the Secretary of State's declaration and the Congressional bill were a kind of response-prevention precisely to Trump's statements-hints about Crimea's "belonging to Russia."
Just as the Congress recently voted, based on election rhetoric only, but before it is too late, a law stating that the US president alone cannot withdraw America from NATO.
But these warnings will only be effective if the entire political scenario after the fall American elections turn out to be mutually contradictory, that is, if a fully democratic Congress is formed under President Trump. In that case, they could possibly block decisions that undermine the foundations of the UN Charter.
But since Trump has already seized full leadership of the Republican Party, since the US Supreme Court has already sided with him, and since there is a systematic course of Trump and his team to chaoticize the so-called "deep state," it is still not worth relying on the system of checks and balances and a generally positive outcome for Ukraine after Trump's election.
A more effective way to secure such an "internationally legal" end to the war by surrendering Ukraine to the Russians would be an act of international non-recognition of the results of Putin's "elections."
And not only in the occupied territories but in general. In accordance with the resolutions of the PACE and the European Parliament, which have previously recognized Russia as a dictatorship.
If these guidelines, the appeals of the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as the undoubtedly useful calls of the Russian opposition, in particular Yulia Navalnaya, are implemented, after March 17, all countries, not only in Europe, should actually radically limit their diplomatic relations with the Russian Federation, since it is ruled by a dictator on the basis of a falsified constitution.
Accordingly, all kinds of territorial changes in that constitution are as illegal as the content of its other provisions.
And these norms, in particular, emphasize the ignorance of international law by the ruscist federation, and thus exclude Russia from the world community, which is governed by the UN Charter.
This so-called constitution has been in existence, by the way, for years, but this in itself has not led to its recognition as incompatible with international law and the aggressor country's place in the UN Security Council.
The reason for this strange phenomenon was the same boundless hope of the comfortable "first world" to pacify the madman Putin by recognizing the "greatness" of his empire. Legally, the state of these dubious relations was ensured by the non-recognition policy regarding the attempted annexation of Crimea and the Minsk agreements on Donbas.
But after a two-year large-scale war, pseudo-elections in the gulag and in the occupied territories no longer meet even the conditional limits of legal coexistence between decent countries and a criminal who, among other things, already has an arrest warrant from the ICC.
In this context, it is not possible to preserve Russia's seat in the UN Security Council.
And for a long time now, there has been no threat that would deter UN members from expelling the aggressor country from this institution, provided, of course, that there is the so-called political will...
Moreover, no country would have had such an option in its international policy as to recognize the illegal annexation of foreign territories by a rogue state.
However, a week before the so-called elections, this topic was not even discussed. Instead, the issue of... the legitimacy of the President of Ukraine after May of this year was discussed.
It was discussed in the context of contrasting the "legitimate" Putin with the "illegitimate" Zelenskyy.
Perhaps the "meaning" of this opposition was that the "illegitimacy" of the President of Ukraine somehow delegitimizes the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the entire country? Typical perverse Kremlin logic.
In fact, it's the other way around.
Clarifying the issue of the legitimacy of the President of Ukraine on the basis of the study of the provisions of the Ukrainian Constitution (regardless of the conclusion, for example, of the Constitutional Court) is in itself an additional recognition of the absolute legitimacy of the Constitution of Ukraine. That is, the inviolability of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the state of Ukraine.
Namely, the text of this Constitution contains an exhaustive list of regions and the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, which are part of the sovereign territory of Ukraine and are its integral part. Despite the fact that these regions and the Autonomous Republic of Crimea became part of Ukraine from the text of the Constitution of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, and not from the RSFSR or from somewhere else...
The attempt to force Ukraine into negotiations on "recognizing the realities" is also caused by the content of the Constitution. It is the Constitution that allows territorial issues to be resolved only through an all-Ukrainian referendum.
That is, for Russia and other accomplices to even think about Ukraine's recognition of the legitimacy of the annexation of our territories, Zelenskyy would have to sign the relevant international treaty, the Verkhovna Rada would have to announce it, and the CEC would have to hold an all-Ukrainian referendum (with the participation of the four occupied regions and Crimea!) on the fate of the territories. However, the law on the referendum prohibits the reduction of Ukrainian territory...
In practice, the attempted annexation was carried out by the aggressor country in a typical raider way, just as enterprises, housing, land plots, etc. are raided in a gangster environment.
And the civilized community can only respond to this with a non-recognition policy.
By the way, the non-recognition policy itself first appeared as a declaration by Simpson, the American Secretary of State, in response to Japan's similar "raiding" of a piece of Chinese territory in 1932 in the form of the "People's Republic" of Manchukuo.
On the other hand, in 1933, President Roosevelt himself recognized the USSR in the midst of the Holodomor-Genocide in Ukraine. The motive for this was the US recovery from the Great Depression, which stimulated the participation of American capital and technology in Stalin's industrialization, paid for, among other things, by Ukrainian grain.
And today's strategic opponent - the People's Republic of China - was brought to the UN and the Security Council by the United States itself, recognizing the communist regime (after the McCarthyite era!) at the peak of the USSR and instead of the Republic of Korea, which did not yet know how to produce microchips in Taiwan...
That is, the possibility of Trump and others recognizing the territorial conquests of the Russian Federation in Ukraine cannot be ruled out not only because of the principle of "never say never," but even more so because of the limitations of the UN Charter.
This will be possible if the "freezing" of the front remains a fact due to the absence of weapons, and the "peace conference" continues to persuade Putin to withdraw his troops and record that the invited countries still respect the territorial integrity of Ukraine. Seeing as they would have been able not to respect it! Or is it a matter of time and circumstances?
Before we hypocritically ask what Ukraine's victory should look like, we should publicly ask what defeat looks like.
And this is exactly what it looks like.
Not as a temporary occupation of the territories due to the prohibition of partners to defend themselves and defeat the aggressor.
But as a recognition of the defeat of international law up to the arbitrary recognition of the annexation of the territory of a sovereign country. And the destruction of the legal system of the world order.
It is because of this, and not only because of Putin's unbridled appetite, that in the event of Ukraine's defeat, the threat of a major European war automatically arises.
Ukraine's victory invariably lies in the physical de-occupation of territories that no Trump can recognize as Russian.
And there is time for this before the final American election.
Iryna Pohorielova, for Censor. NET
