We shouldn’t reward Russia with a ‘peace’ that leaves Ukraine carved up and helpless

Despite President Trump’s calls for the fighting to stop, Russia this week again stepped up its war against Ukraine.

On Wednesday, Russian forces fired X-101 cruise missiles at sites in Western Ukraine.

This is far away from the East of the country where most of the fighting has been taking place since the full-scale Russian invasion of February 2022.

The targets for Wednesday’s strikes included not just energy infrastructure sites, but residential buildings in the city of Ternopil.

Not least apartment tower-blocks where dozens of residents were killed and wounded.

But at the same time as Russia ramps up its aggression, it is the Ukrainians who are being pressured to sign a peace deal.

It has been reported this week that the Ukrainian government has been handed a 28-point peace plan to end the war.

This is said to have come about as a result of negotiations between Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and his Russian counterpart Kirill Dmitriev.

Although there have been denials that this is a deal that has been stitched-up by the Russians to hand to the Ukrainians it certainly seems a lot like that.

The proposals to end the war not only includes Russian being allowed to retain control of areas of Ukraine its military already occupies.

They also include handing over parts of Ukraine which the Russian army does not yet occupy.

These “peace” proposals are also said to include a demand that after the war is over Ukraine should be forced to halve the size of its military.

Perhaps this is just an opening gambit, but it must be clear to any observer that these are not terms that any Ukrainian government could agree to.

Firstly — the ceding of any Ukrainian territory to Russia is a reward for Russian aggression.

It might be — as the war risks running into its fourth year — that some Ukrainian territory will have to be given up in a bid for peace.

But to give Russia even more territory than it has succeeded in seizing by force is a demand no Ukrainian government could sign off on.

Secondly, the demand that Ukraine should halve its armed forces after the war is a signal of only one thing.

It is widely understood in Europe as well as Ukraine that if an end to the war is negotiated then Ukraine will have to use the opportunity to rearm.

Obviously Europe should help their neighbor do that – since the war is in Europe´s backyard.

But nobody in Europe thinks that the post-war period can be anything but a pause. Most observers know that any Russian cessation of hostilities will only be temporary.

And that unless Russia is deterred from doing so then Putin will simply wait for President Trump to leave office and come back and try to take the country all over again.

After all, if he keeps being rewarded for his aggression why wouldn’t he?

He already got to “keep” Crimea after the Obama administration sat by and did nothing as Russia seized it in 2014.

And now it looks as though it is again the Ukrainians who will be claimed to be “anti-peace” and “un-budging” if they do not hand over more of their territory to Vladimir Putin.

But why should the commitments not go the other way?

Why should Russia not be expected to halve the size of its military once this war is ended?

Why should Russia not give back the land it has stolen?

Why shouldn’t Russia suffer some cost for starting this brutal, bloody war in the first place?

There are some people who continue to insist that Ukraine’s pre-war search for security guarantees from the West somehow started this war.

But even if that was the case (and it isn’t), hasn’t Ukrainian fears for their own security been more than justified over the past four years?

Indeed over the past 11 years since the Russian invasion of Crimea?

There are concessions that Ukraine will doubtless have to make if this war is to stop.

But America and her allies must remember who started this war.

And remember that the dictator who started it cannot just be rewarded for doing so.

There better be some equally indigestible demands being made of him in this “deal.”

Frightening show of Jew hatred

“We need to make them scared. We need to make them scared.”

If I told you that these words were screamed by demonstrators outside a synagogue, which city would you guess it was in?

And which year?

Well as Post readers will have read, these were words shouted by some of the 200 demonstrators who gathered outside Park East synagogue in Manhattan.

The event taking place inside the synagogue was organized by Nefesh B’nefesh, a group that helps Jews who want to emigrate to Israel.

The protestors outside the event did their usual chants of “Globalize the Intifada” and also urged what they called the “resistance” — a k a “terrorists” — to “take another settler out.”

You have to marvel at the logic — as well as the manners — of these people.

On the one hand they accuse Jews who live in their historic homeland of being “settlers.”

On the other they scream abuse at Jews in every country outside of Israel.

Surely, in the process, making more Jews want to move to Israel.

After all, if you are going to scream at, and urge violence against, Jews in the middle of Manhattan, can you be surprised if some of them might want to move?

Particularly to somewhere where they might be better protected?

It reminds me of those charming students at Columbia University who chased Jews across campus last year shouting “Go back to Poland.”

When there were a lot of Jews in Poland those same Jews would be told to “go back home” to the Middle East.

It really is almost as though some people don’t want Jews to exist anywhere at all, isn’t it?