Statement adopted by general assembly of the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement on the International Day of Peace 21 September 2024.
Clean skies are proudly azure,
When bloodshed of inhuman war is ceased,
And peace endure.
So says the last poem written by Ukrainian writer Ivan Franko; he desired to end the first world war, but didn’t lived to see the Peace of Versailles. If he would, he might be disappointed by short-sighted plans of peaceful life written by victors who never seriously considered life without wars and because of that failed to build sustainable peace.
Of course, in most places, most of the time, people always live in peace, because peace is the need and natural right of every person and every community, including the people of Ukraine. Restraint, truth and love, good trusting relations for centuries and millennia allowed people to live peacefully on the common planet Earth and in each of its countries, including Ukraine.
Peace, rooted in every particle of existence, always surrounds us. Even when we don’t notice it. Even when injustice and evil far or near disturb us, cause pain and loss.
Faith, care and knowledge allow us to find and strengthen peace within and around us. If it is not strengthened, if past traumas are not healed, the fragile peace can suffer from intentional or unintentional harm to people and nature, from violence against oneself and others.
“How countries, burdened by war, desperately want peace! And ignorance learns true values only when they are lost: suffers getting them, doesn’t enjoy having them, and is tormented by losing them,” wrote Ukrainian philosopher Hryhorii Skovoroda, a self-described “lover and son of peace”.
At the demands of peace congresses of the world civil society, where Ukraine was also represented, pacifism became the norm of international relations. International organizations were created where you can assemble to council, find help, settle disputes with assistance of objective arbitrators, and find common ground with assistance of benevolent mediators instead of the senseless mass killing that is war.
The League of Nations, and then the United Nations, became the foundation of a new world peaceful governance, the leaders of which promised, according to the UN Charter, to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war and to resolve international disputes by peaceful means, or, according to the Constitution of Ukraine, to maintain a peaceful and mutually beneficial cooperation with members of the international community according to generally recognized principles and norms of international law.
Unfortunately, this architecture of the universal peace of mankind on the common planet Earth was perceived by the victors of wars as a scenery behind which they continued to drill their armies and arm themselves. Instead of preparing for peace, the winners of wars prepared for new wars and set a bad example for other such “heroes”. Peaceful promises were therefore broken, and anyone who breaks them portrays himself as a hero and victim of oppression, even if he is a villain and oppressor.
The problem is not that demonic enemies oppose angelic heroes, but that all humans on the common planet suffering from unnecessary wars are victims of a flawed, outdated political system where far more effort and resources are spent to prepare and wage wars rather than to stop and avoid wars.
Nuclear weapons are the most dangerous part of this vicious system that threatens to kill all life on the planet. To prevent this from happening, we demand general and complete disarmament in accordance with the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. The Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine proclaimed that Ukraine does not participate in military blocs and adheres to three non-nuclear principles: not to accept, not to produce, and not to acquire nuclear weapons. We remember this historical fact, we take care of the realization of these peaceful aspirations of the Ukrainian people and call to support the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and implement its requirements in every country of the world.
Today, Ukrainians are victims of brutal Russian aggression and have the right to fair compensation for the suffering and return of what was conquered by war criminals. Without restoration of justice, there can be no true, honest reconciliation.
The victim’s desire to have victory over the attacker is natural. One must have courage and make reasonable efforts to defend one’s rights in a peaceful way, overcoming fear and anger and deceptive temptations to take cruel revenge or surrender to the mercy of a stronger one.
A truly strong one has a conscience not to do evil and does not need anyone’s destruction or enslavement. And the one who does not have a conscience is deprived of conscious and effective unity and peace with all humanity and nature, and this is one’s weakness.
No victory will be fair if it is not mutual. Common victory, when everyone is satisfied and no one is offended, has a name: peace.
If you want peace, you must prepare for peace.
The aggressor state is preparing for a long-term war against the West. With blunt brutality, the Kremlin is trying to force Ukrainians in the temporarily occupied territories of Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions to hate Ukraine and fight in the Russian army, which destroys cities and kills people with barbaric bombings.
This wild and outdated policy, like the general increase in militaristic arbitrariness, is a challenge that cannot be feared.
Rejecting the myopic temptations of the outdated policies of opportunism and surrenderism, the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement remains faithful to principles of the “Peace Agenda for Ukraine and the World” and the statement on the development of unarmed forces of pacifists to resist Russian aggression and implement the Ukrainian vision of world peace, common peace for all humans.
We will continue consistently to move forward on the path of unarmed protection of civilians, nonviolent resistance to aggression and tyranny. We will make every effort to direct as many people as possible to this peaceful path: by personal example, enlightenment, information, etc.
We firmly believe that peace, not war, is the norm of human life, as we stated in the “Peace Agenda for Ukraine and the World.” Peace≠war: peace is not war, this is the pacifist formula of peace. We consider it an axiom that peace is not equal to war, we support and implement the values of peace, democracy and justice in our activities.
We form and implement a long-term vision of a world without wars and demand that everyone who proposes peace plans must necessarily include in these plans a long-term vision of a peaceful future without wars (a realistic path to eternal peace) and take into account the fair restoration of the rights of Ukrainians as victims of aggression (dignity of victim, so that the power of justice, with support of entire peaceful world, restores and reinvigorates the strength and resilience of Ukraine as a victim of Putin’s genocidal war of aggression).
We support the United Nations in initiatives to build peace through peaceful means and have high hopes for the Summit Of The Future. We hope that world leaders will seize the opportunity to adopt a universal pact for a peaceful future, so that politics, economics, science and technology will work for peace, not war, to liberate future generations from the yoke of war.
We will inspire peaceful people to be strong and courageous in their desire to remain civilians, to protect peaceful life in a peaceful way, to uphold human rights to peace and conscientious objection to military service.
We need global peaceful transformations and more effective global nonviolent governance, involving the efforts of world peace movements into successful activities of the United Nations and achieving such a power of nonviolent actions that will be able to stop Russian aggression.
We, the pacifists, know that the highest law of life is “Thou shalt not kill!”, therefore we cannot become soldiers, murderers and executioners. This is a key point in our strategy to approach peace.
Our vision of the future is eternal peace. And by demanding that all peace plans must include real paths to this desired future, we resist militaristic madness, the desire to fight endlessly. Justice should be brought peacefully, not by war. Highest justice is a world without wars.
War is a crime against humanity, therefore we are determined not to support any kind of war and will strive for the removal of all causes of war.
UKRAINIAN PACIFIST MOVEMENT
Thank you for this important work. I believe that the path to peace includes understanding that, despite ideological differences, we are all stronger when we share knowledge and resources between nations for the betterment of all people and the planet that sustains us.