By now, the whole world should be in awe of the Ukrainian people. Their skill and heroism in resisting the onslaught of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s massive army is nothing short of breathtaking.
Consider this: In 1941 the French Army capitulated to the Nazis in just six weeks. The Ukrainians have been fighting Russia’s full-scale invasion for three years, and a smaller, brutal war in the Donbas since 2014.
Since the Russian invasion in February 2022, the Ukrainian armed forces and volunteer brigades have beaten the Russians back from more than half of the territory they seized. They have liberated the cities of Bucha, Irpin, Kherson and Izyum. They have crippled the Russian Navy, allowing for shipments of grain to be resumed along the West Coast of the Black Sea. By exporting millions of metric tons of wheat, corn, barley and other foodstuffs, Ukraine is helping to prevent mass starvation in countries like Ethiopia, Sudan, Nigeria, and Bangladesh.
A few weeks ago, President Donald Trump was on the right track when he blamed Putin for the disastrous results of the invasion he started. This week, after speaking with Putin, Trump changed his mind and tried to blame Ukraine for the invasion.
This would be the same as blaming Poland for Adolf Hitler’s 1939 invasion. Or blaming the United States for the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Since the 1960s, Ukraine forged its independence through a series of non-violent movements. How does 33 years of peaceful coexistence with all of Ukraine’s neighbors qualify as “provocation”? Ukraine’s refusal to succumb to Putin’s terrorist attacks cannot be blamed on Ukraine.
Similarly, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth effectively sided with the Russians when he said that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s peace proposal was unreasonable.
Why would Hegseth accept Putin’s premise that Ukraine’s membership in NATO is unacceptable? Since when do we let tyrants like Putin dictate the terms of any peace agreement? Why should Hegseth start negotiations by giving away the key bargaining chip that Putin fears most?
A basic question: What about Russia?
The United States and NATO should counter Putin’s bluster by saying that what is unreasonable and unacceptable was Russia’s barbaric assault on a peaceful neighbor, its destruction of entire cities, its massacres of civilian populations, and its attacks on civilian infrastructure.
These are all brutal components of Putin’s campaign of genocide. By asking Ukraine to give up territory, the U.S. is consigning thousands of Ukrainians to live under a brutal regime that has been subjecting prisoners of war and civilians to torture, starvation and summary executions.
The Ukrainians have shown that they can withstand an excruciating amount of hardship that would have broken a less resilient nation. Since the invasion in 2022, the word “resilient” has become practically synonymous with “Ukraine.” But resiliency is a completely inadequate term to describe the level of toughness and grit the Ukrainians have shown.
Instead of asking the Ukrainians to give up for peace, why are we not asking the more fundamental question: What will the Russians be forced to give up? How should the Russians be forced to compensate for their unprovoked attack against a peaceful neighbor?
We should start by insisting that the Russians return tens of thousands of Ukrainian children that they abducted, forcing them to undergo harsh indoctrination, trying to force children to renounce and despise their Ukrainian identity.
Why shouldn’t the Russians be forced to pay reparations for the more than 600 Ukrainian churches and shrines they have destroyed? To rebuild the Okhmatdyt children’s cancer hospital that they bombed in Kyiv? Shouldn’t they pay for the schools and universities and libraries and museums that they reduced to rubble in their mindless attempt to destroy Ukraine’s distinct and vibrant culture?
Putin is not a statesman worthy of anyone’s respect. As Trump recently said, Putin has only hurt his own people, leading hundreds of thousands of Russians to the slaughter. Putin fully allied with America’s sworn enemies — Syria’s Bashar al Assad and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, the Iranian mullahs and drone producers and the Hamas terrorists that consider Putin their best friend.
It would be a gross injustice for U.S. negotiators to assume some kind of moral equivalency between Ukraine and Russia in this war. Putin was clearly the aggressor. To punish Ukraine for Putin’s criminality would be worse than unreasonable. It would be perverse and obscene.
Instead of sugarcoating the Russians’ crimes against humanity, the president and Hegseth should condemn their explicit policy of genocide.
Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Keith Kellogg, a special envoy to Ukraine under Trump, should now demonstrate that they are capable of deft and skillful negotiations. They must show that they will not be duped or played by Putin. Trump and Vice-President JD Vance should not bail Putin out of his miserable failure.
For the sake of world peace, they need to show that they can be tougher than Putin and are willing to bring him to his knees.
Alexander Kuzma is chief development officer for the Ukrainian Catholic University Foundation in Chicago.
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