{"id":52267,"date":"2025-03-26T07:16:15","date_gmt":"2025-03-26T15:16:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=52267"},"modified":"2025-03-26T07:16:15","modified_gmt":"2025-03-26T15:16:15","slug":"from-elbe-to-dnieper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/26\/from-elbe-to-dnieper\/","title":{"rendered":"From Elbe to Dnieper"},"content":{"rendered":"

For those unfamiliar with this part of the world, the Dnieper River rises in the Valdai Hills near Smolensk, Russia, before flowing through Belarus and Ukraine to the Black Sea. This sea\u00a0is making headlines\u00a0today due to Ukraine’s peace negotiations for this\u00a0particular\u00a0area.\u00a0At the same time, as\u00a0April 25, 2025, approaches, preparations are underway for the 80th-anniversary celebrations of the Elbe River reunion<\/a>, which is associated with the\u00a0meeting of the American and Soviet military on the Elbe River in the German city of Torgau on\u00a0that day in\u00a01945. This event became\u00a0a symbolic act of Allied victory over NAZI Germany at the end of the WWII, but the\u00a0meeting at the Dnieper River would be a similar act that prevented\u00a0nuclear\u00a0WWIII.<\/p>\n

Presently, there are negotiations between American, Russian, and Ukrainian officials in search of peace to stop this madness when two Christian nations who lived together for centuries, sharing religion, family, history, and economic ties, are now destroying each other.\u00a0\u00a0Still, for now, let’s leave aside the question of who provoked this war. For every argument that it was an “unprovoked” Russian aggression, prominent American, European, and other international experts offer many other counterarguments that prove that Russia was indeed provoked.\u00a0 Scott Horton, head of the Libertarian Institute, presented facts and documents to this effect in his 900+-pages book Provoked<\/em><\/a>, but there are many other<\/a>\u00a0books and articles on this subject.\u00a0Let historians do more to research and continue these debates, but, as Presidents Trump and Putin agreed\u00a0during their recent phone conversation,\u00a0this “very horrible war between Russia and Ukraine must end.”<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, there are many powerful forces, including in the United States, Europe, and Ukraine, that want this war to continue, either for their economic benefits or for weakening Russia, with no regrets for Ukrainian lives. They will use every chance to derail the peace process, and some of them again call\u00a0Trump a Russian asset<\/a>\u00a0for his peace efforts.<\/p>\n

Another important factor in preventing peace is the Ukrainian far-right groups, some of whom are openly neo-Nazis. Among\u00a0those who admit that are not only unbiased Western observers but Ukrainians themselves. For example,\u00a0Oleksandr Merezhko, the chair of the parliament\u2019s foreign affairs committee and a member of President Zelensky\u2019s Servant of the People party, said\u00a0to\u00a0Financial Times<\/em>\u00a0<\/a>that ultranationalists posed a very real threat to the government \u2013 and one that could one day stand in the way of any attempt to negotiate an end to years of brutal fighting.\u201cThere will always be a radical segment of Ukrainian society that will call any negotiation capitulation,\u201d he said, \u201cthe far right in Ukraine is growing and the right wing is a danger to democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The most famous of these forces is the Azov Battalion, whose founder and leader Andriy Biletsky, according to\u00a0France 24<\/a>,\u00a0in 2010 called for Ukraine to \u201clead the white races of the world in a final crusade\u201d against what he described as \u201cSemite-led Untermenschen\u201d \u2013 or subhuman.\u00a0In 2018, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a\u00a0provision<\/a>\u00a0blocking any funding or training of Azov members by American forces, citing its neo-Nazi connections.\u00a0In October 2019, House\u00a0members\u00a0requested that the Azov\u00a0Batallion\u00a0and two other far-right groups be classified as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the US State Department. However, after the\u00a0Azov Battalion\u00a0was absorbed into Ukraine\u2019s National Guard as the 12th Azov Assault Brigade, Blinken’s State Department\u00a0rewarded\u00a0it\u00a0in August\u00a02022 by lifting\u00a0this\u00a0ban.\u00a0Now, almost overnight, they are no longer terrorists but fighters for freedom and democracy.\u00a0This is why, remembering the days when the US, Russia, and Ukraine were on the same anti-NAZI side of barricades,\u00a0Given the seemingly significant progress in the current peace negotiations, wouldn’t it be fantastic if on April 25, Americans, Russians, and Ukrainians met on the Dnieper River to celebrate long-awaited peace and start the healing and rebuilding processes?<\/p>\n

Another incentive could be that April 20 is Western and Slavic Orthodox Easter this year. They rarely come on the same day. So,\u00a0isn’t it a sign from above?<\/p>\n

Edward Lozansky is President of the American University in Moscow.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For those unfamiliar with this part of the world, the Dnieper River rises in the Valdai Hills near Smolensk, Russia, before flowing through Belarus and Ukraine to the Black Sea. This sea\u00a0is making headlines\u00a0today due to Ukraine’s peace negotiations for this\u00a0particular\u00a0area.\u00a0At the same time, as\u00a0April 25, 2025, approaches, preparations are underway for the 80th-anniversary celebrations […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":534,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[817],"class_list":["post-52267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52267"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52270,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52267\/revisions\/52270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52267"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=52267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}