LICENCE FOR BUCHA, ZELENSKYY’S TRUMP CARD AND TRUMP’S OFFICIAL FUNCTION
If Ukraine commits, in any form, not to reclaim its occupied territories by military means, that would constitute capitulation. In other words, it would mean ending resistance to aggression.
This would automatically devalue Ukraine’s previously declared refusal to legally recognize Russian control over the occupied territories. It would also destroy any prospects of the so-called diplomatic path to restoring territorial integrity whatever President Zelenskyy currently understands that term to mean.
Any attempts to reclaim Ukrainian land through peaceful negotiations would be politically interpreted as revanchism and aggression.
Ukraine would be recast from victim into aggressor.
As a result, Russia’s current demands for the "demilitarization" and "denazification" of Ukraine will be recognized as "merely" a legitimate means of ensuring protection, both now and in the future, against so-called "Ukrainian aggression."
In turn, it would become logical for Ukraine’s partners to withdraw their military support for the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
For what purpose? To defend against another potential Russian assault?
But you yourselves renounced resistance to aggression!
To guarantee the security of NATO and EU countries?
They would simply defend themselves and save their weapons.
And even then, it’s unclear whether they would defend themselves at all. By endorsing Ukraine’s capitulation, the international community would set a precedent: treating defense as aggression. Accordingly, there will be another recognition of NATO as an aggressive bloc, and, as a result, the "legitimacy" of Russia’s ultimatums demanding that the Alliance return to its 1997 borders...
In this way, Russia which, due to the global policy of non-recognition, has effectively stripped itself of internationally recognized borders would begin to reaccumulate territory under new borders. In doing so, it would legitimize its restoration within the borders of the former USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics).
And it would frame the suffering of Ukrainians in the occupied territories as "internal affairs". With China’s favorite prohibition against "external interference"—such as international monitoring of human rights, and the like.
In this way, Ukraine’s renunciation of military de-occupation would become not merely an indulgence, but an outright license for Bucha 2, 3, 4—and beyond, anywhere.
Because the so-called diplomatic path inevitably entails continued negotiations with Russia who would, of course, demand so-called local referendums: illegal, extralegal, yet presented as 'realistic'.
As a result, this would entail Ukraine’s tacit consent (à la the infamous Steinmeier Formula) to Russia’s repressive, genocidal practices of exercising effective control over Ukrainian civilians in the occupied territories.
That would be the most honest answer to the question: "Territories or people?" An end to battlefield deaths in exchange for the institutionalized genocide of an unarmed population.
So where did the threat of Ukraine’s silent consent to forgo the military liberation of its territories in the future come from?
At present, these are verbal statements by President Zelenskyy, which in turn stem from his own verbal acknowledgment—as Commander-in-Chief—that Ukraine is currently unable to militarily retake its occupied territories. The reasons, of course, are serious: stalled foreign assistance, domestic issues with mobilization, corruption and underfunding in the defense industry, Trumpist policies of ambiguity, and so on.
But the logic remains flawed, as it rules out the possibility of Ukraine becoming stronger.
Or it pre-emptively factors in compliance with Russia’s demands—namely, yet another round of Ukraine’s disarmament.
Yet none of these reasons will matter when it comes to the consequences of Ukraine’s capitulation.
At this point, it no longer matters—when it comes to the consequences of Ukraine’s nuclear disarmament—that it was driven by intense pressure from President Clinton in the national interest of the United States.
Just as the long-term consequences of the Kharkiv Accords—regarding the occupation of Crimea—are no longer measured against the personal business interests of Yanukovych...
Perhaps only as an illustration of Ukraine’s chronic lack of political will—set against the ambitions of other global actors—seen in every subsequent, shameful, and ever-more-disastrous agreement, each struck at some stage and some level of trading national-security infrastructure for economic "compensation," usually laden with corruption.
But in the current "bargaining," Ukraine holds an extraordinary trump card—even if Trump himself fails to see it. That card is the exclusive sovereign right of every UN member state to international recognition of its own—and, by extension, neighboring borders.
Russia insists that Ukraine must recognize the annexation of its own regions for a reason. It refuses to settle for recognition by the United States alone.
Because without Ukraine’s consent—including silent consent—U.S. recognition would be legally null and void. At most, it would set a dubious precedent, relevant more to Trump’s ambitions over Greenland than to international law. But it would also serve as a direct provocation for China.
Without Ukraine’s consent, it is impossible to provide Russia with a comfortable, legally sanctioned expansion of its territory.
If someone has such a genuine desire, they should start by rewriting the entire UN Charter—specifically, its foundational norms.
For instance, the right to self-defense against aggression would have to be replaced with a ban on defense altogether. Respect for territorial integrity would become respect for the territorial claims of neighboring states. Respect for the sovereignty of every UN member under the primacy of international law would be transformed into submission to the effective control of stronger powers.
But which states, exactly? The ones with a bigger megalomania complex?
Put simply, if Ukraine is to be forced into capitulation under "new rules," the UN Charter would first have to be amended—right now—to formalize a partition of the world.
But between whom, exactly?
Has that even been definitively settled?
Or is this, in fact, the fastest route to World War III—faster than any "escalation" caused by defending Ukraine’s sovereignty and restoring internationally recognized borders in Europe?
There’s been no talk of rewriting the global system. There’s jostling for position—but no new rules. Not even a hint of them.
Surely we can't treat Trump’s sudden flashes of insight about who does or doesn’t hold the cards in the so-called peace process...
If Ukraine itself agrees to the loss of its territories, it would simply become a "voluntary" exception to existing international law—something akin to the peaceful dissolution of Czechoslovakia. A legally safe precedent for everyone else.
Zelenskyy’s refusal to accept any form of territorial concession—and therefore his continued resistance to aggression, thereby breach of the UN Charter (is, aside from the army and the people), Ukraine’s true trump card in the geopolitical game. Meanwhile, the entire so-called "peacekeeping" diplomacy is essentially aimed at knocking that card out of the Ukrainian president’s hands.
For his part, Trump is required as a mediator in this "peace process" for one very specific purpose: to guarantee the "voluntariness" of Ukraine’s territorial surrender. After all, the United States are friends, partners, almost allies; they exert no military pressure—only the pressure of withholding the weapons Ukraine needs for self-defence…
Under such "friendly" pressure, the Ukrainian case wouldn’t disrupt the broader international system—it would simply be presented as the exception that proves the rule.
Whereas a renunciation of territory under hostile military coercion is legally void under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.
This, in fact, is what an answer might look like to Trump’s endless question of whether Putin really wants peace—and why he keeps putting forward those idiotic demands.
But no, there’s more.
Why does Russia need the administrative borders of Ukrainian regions—the ones it has now written into its so-called constitution?
One might think: just fix the seized borders—at least that’s within your control.
But no. Because the administrative borders of Ukraine’s regions are written into the Constitution, and any fight over those lines is, in effect, a fight over how Ukraine would have to strike its own regions out of that Constitution if it capitulated.
Not as "certain districts," as was floated in 2014 for ORDLO (Certain Regions of Donetsk and Luhansk regions - ed.note), but as entire constitutional clauses.
First through a "peace agreement" signed by the president, then through Parliament, and finally via a "referendum" for which the Verkhovna Rada would have to rewrite the enabling law… You can almost feel Medvedchuk’s guiding hand behind this "project," can’t you?
Of course, to pull it off you’d need a different president, a different parliament—and a different nation.
And Russia keeps working on exactly that—through terrorist pressure on the civilian population, demands for elections in Ukraine, and its constant whining about Zelenskyy’s alleged illegitimacy—despite him being fully recognized by every other head of state, kings included...
So when Ukraine’s Defence Forces heroically stop Russian troops from reaching the region's administrative borders, they are preventing the Commander-in-Chief from capitulating—both in law and in fact, by way of tacit consent.
And whenever our "friendly partners" withhold additional weapons from the Armed Forces of Ukraine, they are nudging our guarantor toward capitulation, no matter how loudly they deny it.
Thus, every time President Zelenskyy adroitly slips out of these "peace-making" traps, he protects not only Ukraine but the entire world from dangers far greater than any escalation of a sovereign state’s right to self-defence under international law.
And now to the "root causes."
In Russia’s prior sets of pre-conditions for any "peace process," that term is either left intentionally vague or has its meaning swapped out at will.
First it was NATO’s post-1997 enlargement—an issue Moscow ignored for a quarter-century, until the Kremlin needed a pretext to prolong Putin’s regime.
Then came the "threat of Ukrainian Nazism," which spared the Kremlin the political cost of declaring war and let it mask outright aggression as a preventive punitive "special operation."
This is a "historical injustice," that not only raised Pechenegs and Polovtsians, the Austrian General Staff, and the English witch befouls, but also reawakened China’s ancient grievances against former colonial powers, and so on.
Yet all this nonsense stems from the collapse of the USSR—a collapse that took place in fact but was never completed in formal-legal terms within the UN framework.
Because of the same tacit consent of UN member states, the name "USSR" still sits in the UN Charter, listed as a founder of the Organization itself and of the Security Council—complete with veto power.
As a result, the entire United Nations has turned into a mausoleum for a stinking corpse that poisons every sphere of international law, goading the Kremlin’s ruscist clique to keep galvanizing the monster and leaving it no way to stop.
Therefore, the root cause of the war cannot be removed without erasing the USSR —and its spawn, Russia—from the world map, not merely through their strategic military defeat but by formally and legally liquidating them within the UN framework.
Let’s be honest: that is far less traumatic and far more pragmatic than rewriting the rules of the world order to suit the delusions of maniacs chasing a greatness that never existed.
Iryna Pohorielova, for Censor. NET
