No matter how much support and relief the West provides to Ukraine, no matter how prohibitive the sanctions on Russia are, and no matter how courageous the Ukrainians may be, the war on Ukraine will continue until the current Western agenda is scraped. 

In the meantime, Ukrainians are paying a heavy price and are being punished hard. As they flee the shelling of their country, they become refugees in adjacent countries by the million. Those who choose to remain in Ukraine face ferocious bombing and have no water, food, heating, or fuel. The injustice is incomparable. 

However, in reality, Ukraine is bearing the brunt of a proxy war. As Ukrainians extend this war, they are losing their country along with the war. Continuing to fight until the last man standing and the total destruction of Ukrainian cities is unjustified and illogical. The Ukrainian refugees will ultimately return home, only they will return to a flattened and crippled Ukraine and maybe even a split and divided homeland. Rational thinking demands a different approach.

Meanwhile, the destruction will not only hit eastern cities like Kharkiv and Mariupol, but will also extend to the west of Ukraine and areas which were originally safe and are now being shelled. A 40-mile convoy of Russian armed vehicles, which had stayed put for sometime, is now on the move, widening the Russian presence in rural as well as urban areas. Satellite images show the Russian military edging towards Kyiv while reaching into the west of the country. 

Ukrainian citizens are not being used as human shields per se, but misleading them into believing they will win this war and should continue to fight is extremely dangerous. Regardless of how much moral and financial support the West provides to Ukraine and what seems to be its genuine and wholehearted backing, the Ukrainians remain alone and are being led to believe they can stand up against Russia. 

If truth be told, no other nation will participate militarily alongside the Ukrainians. They will only supply arms and support. The West knows that participating militarily in this war will bring about World War III with the nuclear potential that goes with it. This will not happen, and thus it is clear that the Ukrainians are bound to fight this war alone. 

Maybe the Western sanctions will cripple Russia’s economy causing it to relent at some point, but this may take months, if it happens at all. The sanctions could plunge the rouble to unprecedented lows and halt the Russian economy, causing widespread inflation. But the Ukrainians must realise that Russian President Vladimir Putin will stand firm and will keep at this war because he will not let NATO and the EU infringe on Russian borders.

By standing with the Western world and corroborating its message, fanning the flames of war rather than reporting objectively, the Western media’s role in misleading the Ukrainians is pivotal. The Western media highlights Western financial support for Ukraine, encouraging Ukrainian resilience and reporting on the sanctions on Russia and the companies pulling out of Russia, all the while telling the Ukrainians to stay the course.  

The Western media disbelieves Russian reports on biological labs in Ukraine supported by the US or the study of infections spread by migrating birds. While these may be unsubstantiated claims, the Western media and social media consider them to be simply lies that do not deserve to be investigated further. 

Twitter does not accept any Russian reporting. The following message appears after the Russian News Agency Tass’s reports, “this Tweet links to a Russia state-affiliated media website,” it says, shedding doubt on whatever the Russian news agency says.  

When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addresses the Ukrainians, he says that “we are on our way to victory,” but that “time and patience will be needed to achieve this victory.” He does not tell them, however, how long it will take to reach that victory or what they will endure to achieve it. 

Some decades ago, former Egyptian president Anwar Al-Sadat said loud and clear that “I can’t fight America.” This meant that had Israel stood on its own and not relied entirely on the US, Egypt could have continued the war against it. But Al-Sadat made it very clear that Egypt could not fight a war against the US and that he would not lead his people into a war with such catastrophic consequences. 

Today, Ukraine should do the same. When the world powers are involved, countries such as Egypt or Ukraine should heed the potential of an unparalleled disaster. Conventional wisdom calls for saving lives, avoiding total destruction, and coming out at the other end with the least amount of damage.

The Washington Post, for once, is realistic. It says that “to explain what is happening now, you have to go back to the US move to expand NATO that began in the 1990s. In expanding that alliance and offering countries like Georgia and Ukraine the theoretical chance to join NATO, realists claim that the United States triggered a security dilemma with Russia that led to its invasions of Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014 and 2022.”

How will the war play out? “The guns are talking now, but the path of dialogue must always remain open,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres. This is vital: negotiations and peaceful talks will lead to de-escalation; maintaining the current level of fighting may lead to the opposite: total destruction. Ukraine and Russia must negotiate a fair settlement in which it is to be hoped that Ukraine will be able to coexist peacefully with Russia and the Western countries. 

It is true that Russian demands for a ceasefire are beyond the acceptable. It calls for the “demilitarisation,” “denazification,” and “neutrality” of Ukraine, as well as “the acceptance of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and recognition of the Russia-occupied regions of Donbas as independent states.” 

But this is how the ebb and flow of negotiations go. In the end, Russia, for a faster resolution of the crisis, may give up some of its demands, though the more it gains in Ukraine, the more adamant it will remain on the concessions it expects.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that the US is looking to end the war in Ukraine and not to expand it. I truly hope that this can be fulfilled. The victims of this terrible war, the Ukrainian people, have lost so much already. 

* The writer is the author of Cairo Rewind on the First Two Years of Egypt’s Revolution, 2011-2013.

*A version of this article appears in print in the 17 March, 2022 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.