[Updated, Wrocław, 26 July 2022]

Putin’s murderous, unprovoked war rages just across the Polish border. As I write this on 26 July 2022, over five million heart-rending refugees, mostly women and children, have already arrived here in Poland to escape the deadly Russian invasion. And they keep arriving, with 22.6 thousand just yesterday. It’s almost impossible to visualise the scale of this exodus. Ordinary Polish folk have opened their homes to feed and shelter them.

Meanwhile, their menfolk dig in around the Donbas, Odessa and other cities waiting for Russian assaults, while Putin’s bombs, rockets and shells fall indiscriminately around them, turning everything to rubble.

It is easy to be overcome with seething anger.

Anger at Putin and his barbarian ruling mafia. Anger at his cowardly chain of command, who implement his brutal orders to maim and kill indiscriminately. Anger at their inhuman orcs who rape and plunder civilians. Anger at Lukashenko and Kremlin’s other flunkeys.

Anger at duplicitous Germany who courted Putin’s regime over the years, pretending not to notice Russian atrocities in Crimea, Chechnya, Georgia or Syria, and whose strategic addictions to his hydrocarbons have financed this current campaign of terror.

Anger at India, Pakistan, Mexico and other morally bankrupt countries, who not only abstained from the recent UN General Assembly vote, but are actively liaising with Russia to profiteer from mass murder and help it bypass sanctions. Anger at leaders in Africa and elsewhere, who similarly refuse publicly to condemn the Russian invasion.

I am convinced that Putin will lose this war. I am convinced that Putin will be removed from the Kremlin. There is no second life for tyrants. The entire world order is at stake. So while Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy leads his brave warriors to victory, I and others are already starting to channel our collective anger into something more hopefully positive, into defining the war’s aftermath – what happens next?

The ultimate goal of the Free World should not be the cessation of hostilities or even the full withdrawal of Putin from Ukraine. It must be to leverage this crisis to catalyse a transition to a new world order, where Russia will never again pose any threat to its neighbours, and where others (such as China) realise that the world will no longer tolerate more brutal wars of choice.

There are several enablers for lasting post-war peace. I present some of these here. While these ambitions may seem excessively bold, such as reclaiming Kaliningrad or global offensive nuclear disarmament, I am optimistic that after Russia is defeated in Ukraine and its regime changes, we will have a unique opportunity to address a global geopolitical transformation.

My challenge is, “if not now, then when?”.

If you support these ambitions, help me communicate these widely. Post this article on your social media. Forward it to your politicians and opinion makers. If you have further suggestions, please let me know. Together, we need to design and build a lasting post-war peace.

1.    UN Security Council

The General Assembly should immediately agree on a process to remove Russia from the UN Security Council. While the original UN charter did not consider the situation of one of its Security Council members being the aggressor, the UN is a membership organisation, so there is nothing stopping its membership (the General Assembly) agreeing on a mechanism to remove Russia from this body.

Eliminating Russia’s veto would then free the UN to consider a range of actions, including sending UN observers or even a peacekeeper force into Ukraine.

A much deeper shakeup at the UN is also long overdue. Over the years, the inept, corruption-ridden UN has been systematically infiltrated with Russia and China sympathisers. What else could for example explain UN staff being instructed not to use terms such as "invasion" or "war" when discussing Ukraine?

2.    Justice: International court and a global snatch network

International relations with Russia will never heal, and there can never be any lasting peace, until Putin and his cronies are brought to justice.

While some would be delighted to see Putin and Lukashenko hanging by their ankles from lampposts on Maidan Nezalezhnosti with their throats cut open, we need to show that we are morally superior to these barbarians. We are defending a humane, rules-based civilisation.

So justice needs to be seen to be delivered with cold rationality and precision. Whether it’s through the International Court of Justice in The Hague (the principal judicial body of the sadly inept, corruption-ridden UN above) or a specially commissioned international court of justice.

In the meantime, we need to set up an effective global snatch network, a persistent, distributed and international network of active duty agents and the ‘back-office’ governance of the surveillance, planning and co-ordination of all activities over the next few years to hunt down and physically seize (or assassinate if appropriate) Russian murderers, anywhere in the world, including on Russian territory.

There is no statute of limitations for genocide or war crimes. Let’s learn from Mossad. Fifteen years after the end of WWII, they seized Adolf Eichmann, the patron of the Nazi Holocaust, in Argentina and smuggled him to Israel. He was executed by hanging. After the 1972 Olympic atrocity, Mossad similarly tracked down and assassinated members of Black September one by one, all around the globe.

This is the template we should follow. I am hoping that Mossad, as well as its British and US special service equivalents, are already coaching the Ukrainian secret services in this area.

3.     Comprehensive war reparations

Russia’s children need to be seen to be repaying Putin’s debt for many years to come. Sanctions should not be lifted until all reparations are fully paid. All proceeds from Russia’s strategic revenue streams, such as oil and gas sales, should be governed by an international body to fund the rebuilding of Ukraine and the reimbursement of all indirect costs of this unprovoked war, such as the humanitarian aid given by Poland and the international community.

Do not feel sorry for ‘normal’ Russians. Many independent polls agree that over 70% of the Russian population supports Putin and the Ukrainian invasion. Even with local TV and radio under Kremlin’s control, if the Russian public were interested in the truth, it is easily available through digital media or from their diaspora.

It is a lazy evasion of an uncomfortable truth to claim that this is one man’s war. Putin is a product of a morally bankrupt Russian society, its inherent cruelty and its unsatiated empire ambitions.

It is Russians – not Putin - who press the triggers to rain shells, bombs and rockets on civilians. It is Russians – not Putin - who starve and maim children. It is Russia and the majority of Russians – not only Putin - that the civilised world is at war with.

But we need to be conscious of historical precedents, such as 1919’s Treaty of Versailles, which humiliated Germany and became the recruitment banner for its emergent Nazi party. We need to design a balanced mechanism by which Russia compensates the world for its aggression in a way that does not alienate its future generations and push them into sympathy with nationalist extremist agendas.

In the meantime, all property of Putin’s oligarchs should be confiscated and proceeds from these assets credited into the Ukraine rebuilding fund. Similarly all Russian government assets overseas should be nationalised with the same objective.

4.    Truth and reconciliation

The reparation regime above, and reconciliation and enduring order in Russia, are contingent on the Russian public receiving free and true information about the war. Most Russians do not have access to narratives other than Kremlin’s propaganda. According to the best polls, most Russians today believe that they have a fair and honest leader, who is fighting for justice. Putin’s true character and his lies need to be loudly and soundly exposed.

Until there is free media and public dialogue in Russia, and a systematic process of national reconciliation, Putin’s defeat in Ukraine could metamorphose into a poisonous ultranationalist myth and potentially explode in another conflict in years to come.

5.    Return of seized territories

Russia needs to immediately and irrevocably return Crimea and all seized Ukrainian territory, including Donetsk and Luhansk, its puppet statelets seized in 2014.

In addition it needs to return all other previously illegally annexed territories, such as Transnistria and Abkhazia (both seized in 1992), South Ossetia (controlled since 2008) and return the Kuril Islands to Japan.

6.    Kaliningrad

The issue of Kaliningrad is worth discussing distinctly as it has such critical strategic importance. Kaliningrad is the base of the Russian Baltic Fleet and the forward offensive platform from which Russia could rapidly launch both conventional and nuclear attacks on Europe. But it is simply not a legal part of Russia!

At the end of WWII, Stalin brutally invaded this territory and ethnically cleansed it. However, the USSR (and now Russia) never acquired any legal title to this exclave. The Potsdam Agreement of August 1945 did not allow any annexation of this territory, it merely placed Kaliningrad under the temporary administration of the Soviet Union, as its Article VI states, “pending the final determination of territorial questions at the peace settlement”.

Kaliningrad was thus renamed by Stalin in July 1946 after Mikhail Kalinin, his second in command and a leading communist murderer. The very name of this illegal exclave is an insult to Poland, not least because in March 1940 Kalinin in person countersigned the order to execute 25,700 Polish officers and intelligentsia as part of the infamous Katyn massacre, a significant and tragic milestone of Polish national history.

As part of any post Ukraine invasion peace agreement, the UN should strip Kaliningrad away from Putin, place it under UN administration, rename and demilitarise it, else it will continue to pose a strategic threat to the world, and specifically to the Baltic states and Poland.

7.    Declaration permanently ending Russian irredentism

The world needs a treaty blocking any future Russian irredentist claims to any territories of the former Russian Empire or USSR, such as the Baltic states, Transnistria or northern Kazakhstan.

Russia needs to clearly and irrevocably declare that it has no outstanding territorial claims on any nation or peoples, and that it will respect the sovereignty of all nations in the future.

8.    Expulsion from remaining world bodies

It’s all very well for Russia’s feeble team to sit out FIFA’s current football competitions. More meaningful in terms of the current sanctions regime would be their expulsion from bodies such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. With thousands murdered by Putin and millions of refugees pouring over Ukraine’s borders, what on Earth are these institutions waiting for to start treating Russia as the pariah it should be? 

9.    Amnesty and reform

To sustain peace and international engagement, Russian society needs to be based on just law, a politically independent judiciary, and a multi-party system chosen through free elections. Urgent reforms should be implemented to make this happen and sanctions not lifted until it does. Laws criminalising free assembly, speech and legitimate reporting (including Putin’s newest ‘fake news’ law) should be repealed.

In the meantime, all so-called ‘political’ prisoners, including everyone arrested during the current anti-war protests in Russia, should be given immediate amnesty and compensation.

10. Returning all Ukrainian citizens

Similarly, all Ukrainian soldiers captured and civilians forcibly resettled need to be urgently returned to their homes and compensated by Russia. As Human Rights Watch reports only this week. Russian forces have tortured, unlawfully detained and forcibly disappeared thousands of civilians in the occupied Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions.

Local mayors, civil servants, police officers, teachers, journalists and anyone suspected of opposing the occupation are systematically disappeared into an inhumane hell. The barbarian orcs do not of course care that torture and inhuman treatment of anyone is prohibited under international law, and constitutes a war crime and a crime against humanity. And they are not simply following brutal orders because, as many first-hand reports testify, they sadistically enjoy beating, electrocuting, starving and raping their helpless captives. After all, FSB agents have been trained and systematically dehumanised to do just that, it’s their modus operandi.

11. Removing Putin’s agents from Germany and the rest of Europe

Germany is a disgrace. It's a shame that it took a murderous and unprovoked attack on Ukraine for most EU luvvies to finally realise this. Merkel has the blood of Ukraine on her hands. She needs to be deeply investigated as there is growing evidence that she and some of the key members of her inner circle were actually Stasi/KGB/FSB trained sleeper agents, whose generational mission was to make Western Europe dependent on Russia’s largesse.

They prematurely shut down Germany’s nuclear power stations. Instead of building a single LPG terminal to make the purchasing of gas from other countries possible, Germany instead invested in two Nord Stream pipelines, in order to become energy dependent on Russia and to make immoral profits on reselling Russian natural gas to the rest of Europe. Germany even sold its key hydrocarbon storage facilities (located on German soil!) to Kremlin backed companies.

In the meantime, Merkel blocked Ukraine from joining NATO and EU, while Europe’s migrant crisis was orchestrated by the FSB on her watch. I could go on...

I do not believe that Mutti and her cronies were so ignorant or naive. They simply enacted a long term plan devised by the Stasi, KGB and later the FSB. Merkel (who is increasingly suspected to be a Stasi trained sleeper agent – better late then never, I suppose), Schröder the Clown (a corrupt Russian bribe taker) and their duplicitous gang need to be investigated and tried. One day soon the truth will be exposed and the German political house of cards, and the useful idiots that have been propping them up over the last 20 years, will come crashing down.

There are Russian agents and bribe takers in political roles in several European countries, especially in the ex-Soviet republics and the Baltics.

As Kiril Petkov, Bulgaria’s prime minister who was forced to resign last month says, Kremlin backed corruption in eastern Europe is rife. “We curbed corruption locally but found we had a bigger enemy: Russian influence,” he told The Times today. “We didn’t understand that corruption and Russian influence in Bulgaria are the same thing. Corruption is Moscow’s best foreign policy instrument in the Balkans”. This gangrene needs to be systematically tackled across Europe and excised, with those involved brought to justice.

12. Denuclearisation

Finally, the ultimate commitment to world peace by Russia would be it adopting a policy of nuclear disarmament. Russia could work with NATO to provide each other with security guarantees and anti-missile systems to protect Russia from any nuclear (and possibly conventional) missile attack. Once this is in place, both sides can actively pursue offensive denuclearisation.

It costs an eye-watering level of continuous investment to maintain an effective nuclear deterrent. The Congressional Budget Office projects some $634 billion cost over the 2021–2030 period, or an average of over $60 billion a year to the US tax payers alone. This could instead be spent on anti-missile shielding and other nuclear containment technologies to offer reliable protection to partnering countries against rogue players, such as North Korea.

As the song goes, you may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. After Putin’s failed Ukrainian war, it is not beyond imagination that a truly democratically elected, international rules based and pacifist oriented administration could be sworn in to take Russia on a new positive path. This would be the ultimate phoenix rising from the ashes of today’s evil war.   

The above list is just a start. If you agree, help me communicate these ideas widely. Post this article on social media. Forward this to your politicians and opinion makers. Discuss this with your friends. If you have further suggestions, or wish to join me in developing these ideas further, please get in touch. Together, let's help design and build a lasting post-war peace!

Copyright © 2022 by Piotr Ney. All rights reserved.

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