Europe’s appetite for war: Why peace in Ukraine remains elusive

The great thing about being a journalist is to be able to stand between two sides in a conflict without feeling guilty about which one you must side with.

And being a South African – with its neutral stance in the conflict – also adds impetus to your own approach as a non-partisan player.

But in my encounter with both sides, at least at diplomatic level and more with the Western diplomatic circles in the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war, I have never seen people who are so uncommitted to a peaceful end to the conflict than the Europeans themselves.

They are more into the continuation of the war than the Ukrainians themselves.

I met diplomatic chiefs a few times this year and heard how willing the European nations are to see the war to continue indefinitely.

Even as the US under President Donald Trump attempts to stop the blood-letting the battlefront, Europe, is eager to send more weapons to Ukraine so that it continue fighting.

They know my stance against any war, especially one that I believe could result in the World War III. My question to them has been consistent: why don’t you give peace a chance?

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This is out of my belief that for every war there must be an end and the means to that end begins with peace negotiations.

You will never fight a perpetual war while hoping that you are going to annihilate your enemy, especially one that has never been defeated in any major war like the Red Army.

I say this because I thought they would take the cue from the US and join its peace efforts to end the war. Instead, the European nations want blood and more blood to flow in Ukrainian battlefront.

Hence, they are sending more weapons and even talking about delivering their troops to participate directly in the conflict in Ukraine. That’s not how you end war.

Even if we believe blindly the Western media and Ukraine itself insists on the narrative that Ukraine is making progress in the battlefront, one cannot ignore the fact that even with the full support of the Nato bloc, Ukraine will not be able to defeat Russia.

This is something Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confessed to even during his shouting match with Trump at the White House recently.

Trump said the war could have ended within a fortnight but Zelensky even reduced the time to just two days.

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The good thing about some Western media now is how they have made a U-turn or experienced a Damascene moment to now tell the truth about the reality of what is happening in the battlefront.

I have read several stories in the New York Times and the BBC online where the truth is now beginning to emerge that all is not going well for Kyiv in the war.

Trump said in no uncertain terms that Russia is not an aggressor in the war – not that I don’t understanding that Trump no longer sees Zelensky as an ally in the same way that his predecessor Joe Biden did.

In fact, Trump and his deputy JD Vance pronounced Zelensky belongs in jail. If the Western media narrative is changing, isn’t it time for the European nations to also follow suit.

Brussels claims that Russia is the aggressor in the sense that it sent its troops to invade Ukraine, but it doesn’t want to delve into why this invasion had to happen.

But Trump has not been shy to recall the events of 2014 and how Nato had expanded towards the Russian border side of Ukraine, which was one of the causes of the conflict as that annoyed Moscow.

Now, Europe wants to admit Ukraine as an EU member, another cause for the war. As long as Europe adopts this attitude, that conflict will never end and they will once more blame Putin for not wanting peace.

We won’t take their narrative that the Russian leader wants to revive the former Soviet Union by invading the rest of Europe to consolidate it until these European leaders commit to the current US-led peace process, instead of fuelling the war.

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