Our editorial director, Andrea Tornelli, reflects on the 1,000th day of Russia’s war in Ukraine and the need for diplomatic efforts to achieve peace.
Andrea Tornelli
Vatican City, Monday, November 18, 2024: A thousand days. February 24, 2022 marks one thousand days since the military of the Russian Federation invaded and invaded Ukraine on the orders of President Vladimir Putin. A thousand days and an unspecified – but much greater – number of dead, civilians and soldiers, innocent victims such as children murdered in the streets, in schools, in their own homes.
A thousand days and hundreds of thousands of injured and traumatized people who have been disabled for life, families who have been left homeless. A thousand days and a martyred and devastated country. Nothing can justify this tragedy that could have been avoided in the first place, if everyone had opted for Pope Francis’ “peace plans” instead of surrendering to the perceived inevitability of conflict. A war that, like any other war, is always linked to the interests, first of all of businesses that do not know the crisis and more recently even during the pandemic, of those that are global and transnational, both from the East and the West. and sell weapons in India.
The tragic chronology of the thousand days since the beginning of military aggression against Ukraine raises the same question: how to end this conflict? How to reach a ceasefire and then a just peace? How can we give life to the negotiations, those “honest negotiations” that the Successor of Saint Peter recently spoke of, that allow us to reach “respectful agreements” that put an end to a dramatic spiral that risks taking us to the abyss of nuclear war? ?
We cannot hide behind a finger. The head of diplomacy appears flat, the only glimmer of hope seems to be linked to the electoral announcements of the new president of the United States. But a ceasefire and then a negotiated peace is – or rather should be – an objective accepted by all and cannot be left to the promises of any particular leader.
So what should be done? How can we, especially on behalf of Europe, find our past and the role of those leaders who in the postwar period made the old continent a community of nations that guaranteed peace and cooperation for decades? The so-called West, instead of focusing solely on the mad race for rearmament and military alliances that now seem obsolete and a legacy of the Cold War, should perhaps take into account the growing number of countries that are not recognized in the scheme of things. There are countries that have maintained high-level relations with Russia and have even deepened them: why not fully verify the possibilities of finding common solutions for peace? Why not develop diplomatic action and a sustained dialogue with these countries through consultations that are neither sporadic nor bureaucratic but intensive?
And if European chancellors struggle to follow this path, can we imagine a greater role for churches and religious leaders? Once again, beyond official contacts, which have reached a minimum level, we can expect important parallel initiatives of analysis and proposals from the countries that support Ukraine economically and militarily: the international “think tanks.” Someone who can dare is urgently needed, he points out. possible and concrete paths to solutions, and propose plans for a peace acceptable to all.
To do this, as Cardinal Parolin told the Vatican media, “politicians with a visionary vision will be needed, capable of brave gestures of humility, capable of thinking about the well-being of their people” and today more than ever. People also need to raise their voices for peace.
