RUSSIA – Ukraine: What Peaceful Co-existence?

♦ Bandung Spirit Online Conversation Series ♦

Vienna, 18 March 2022
RE/28375c-is

 

“When it comes to the use of force between sovereign states, the Russian invasion of Ukraine of February 24, 2022, has not heralded a paradigm change or, as the Western establishment suggests, the beginning of a ‘new era’ of international relations. The new era of lawlessness has begun, right after 1990, with a series of unilateral coercive measures and wars of aggression against those who, in the absence of a balance power, suddenly found themselves at the receiving end of the emerging hegemon’s assertion of national interests.”

With this blunt assessment, the President of the International Progress Organization, Dr. Hans Köchler, opened the presentation at an international online conversation on the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, and prospects for a peaceful solution. The meeting was organized by the Bandung Spirit group, a worldwide civil society organization promoting the ideals of the Non-aligned Movement.

Referring to the assessment of Henry Kissinger, who, at the beginning of the crisis in 2014, had advised against NATO membership of Ukraine, Dr. Köchler said that only the adoption of a status of permanent, armed neutrality by Ukraine would open a way out of the present crisis. Unlike the “assurances” of the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 (adopted after the country’s joining the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, as a non-nuclear state), security guarantees for a permanently neutral Ukraine must be enshrined in an international treaty, ratified by the legislatures of all signatory powers.

The President of the I.P.O. emphasized that “only states that have maintained a position of strict neutrality in the conflict between Ukraine and Russia can act as mediators. Turkey – the country of reference of the Montreux Convention – may play an essential role not only as regional mediating power, but also as guarantor, together with the P5 and other regional powers,” of the independence and security of Ukraine after the cessation of hostilities and the withdrawal of all Russian forces.

The international online conversation was moderated by Prof. Darwis Khudori (University of Le Havre Normandie, France). Among the speakers were experts of international relations, security studies and political science from Austria, China, France, Greece, Guyana, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Poland, and Serbia.

Text of the statement of Dr. Hans Köchler (18 March 2022)  

Blueprint for Peace in Ukraine (10 March 2022)

 Statement by the President of the International Progress Organization on Ukraine peace talks in Minsk (12 February 2015)