By Jabir Deralla
In the days before the overhyped meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian dictator and war criminal Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, a viral social media post captured the mood: “Stop telling Ukraine to give up land. Start telling Russia to give it back.”
I reposted it because it is more than a witty, punchy moral judgement. It is a condensed, logical, and credible position — the only possible one — for achieving a just and lasting peace in Ukraine based on democratic values and justice. From Kyiv to Berlin, Warsaw to Paris, leaders, thinkers, and civil society voices echo the same truth: peace must be anchored in Russia’s full troop withdrawal, justice for war crimes, and reparations for the devastation it caused. Anything less betrays Ukraine and chips away at the pillars of international law. I have repeated this hundreds of times in my speeches, podcasts, and writings.
After three and a half years of full-scale war, Putin has achieved neither victory nor legitimacy. He failed to take Kyiv, failed to topple the government, and colossally failed to crush Ukrainian resolve for freedom and independence. Putin’s genocidal war — with columns of tanks, swarms of drones, and a rain of missiles and bombs on civilians — has forged unprecedented unity among Ukrainians. Russia is trapped in a grinding conflict with staggering military losses, bleeding lives, resources, and credibility. On the world stage, Moscow stands increasingly isolated. Its attempts to weaponize energy, distort reality and facts, and economic coercion have fallen flat against united international solidarity.
Yet in Washington, President Trump began his second term by doing what Putin could not: trying to hand him victories he had already lost on the battlefield. As I argued — in my March podcast Putin’s Losing Hand: The Myth of Russian Strength and Trump’s Wild Card, and in many other analyses — Putin never held the winning hand, and the myth of his strength has always been an illusion. Trump is dealing Putin the aces under the table. By doing so, he undermines Western resolve and sends a dangerous message to every aggressor: use force, and borders will bend. Realpolitik? Hardly. It’s surrender dressed up as diplomacy.
Russia’s war against Ukraine is a dark catalogue of atrocities: mass killings, deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure, systematic torture, the razing of cities, and the abduction of more than 20,000 Ukrainian children. These crimes are not incidental to the war; they are its blueprint — the deliberate, calculated essence of a strategy forged in the Kremlin’s chambers and cultivated across Russian society for years. A strategy that dehumanizes and demonizes an entire nation, paving the way for its erasure. That is why the world cannot afford another day of hesitation — every pause in maximum, coordinated pressure is a day Moscow’s terror machine claims more lives and wipes more communities off the map.
Global condemnation must be matched with global action. That means sustained, united political, economic, and legal pressure until every Russian soldier leaves Ukraine; the return of every abducted child; and justice for every victim of war crimes—from the mass graves of Bucha to the shattered homes of Mariupol. Anything less leaves the door open for another war, another invasion, another generation of victims.
Supporting Ukraine is not charity. It is an investment in the stability and security of the Euro-Atlantic community. Ukraine’s constitution enshrines its path to full liberation, sovereignty, and Euro-Atlantic integration — the will and inalienable right of its people. Our commitment must match that ambition: weapons, resources, and political guarantees until Ukraine is whole and firmly anchored in the EU and NATO.
A ceasefire may halt the immediate killing, but peace will not come through concessions or appeasement. A frozen conflict is not peace—it is a pause that Russia will exploit to rearm, regroup, and strike again. Real peace will come only when Ukraine is whole, its people safe, and its sovereignty beyond question. To believe otherwise is to ignore the lessons written in the blood of the innocent.
That is why I say again — and this time as a rallying call to every capital: Stop telling Ukraine to give up land. Start telling Russia to give it back.
— Jabir Deralla
(pen name of Xhabir Memedi Deralla, used for writings in English)
Jabir Deralla is a writer, human rights defender, and democracy analyst. He writes on politics, disinformation, hybrid warfare, authoritarianism, and the future of democracy in Europe and beyond.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of any organization with which he is affiliated.
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