By Jabir Deralla

It has long passed being ridiculous. It is no longer even disturbing or outrageous. It has become normalized.

World diplomacy has become a joke — a bad and deadly, yet very expensive joke. Paid for with the blood of innocent civilians. Paid for with the livelihoods of millions of people.

Peace efforts? Peace negotiations? Shuttle diplomacy? Do they even remember what these words mean anymore?

It is enough to look at the timeline of “peace efforts” of U.S. President Donald Trump, spearheaded by his friend, the real estate agent Steve Witkoff. That is a “diplomacy” pushed to the edge of tragic comedy — a reality resembling Monty Python only in form, but with consequences written in blood.

These “peace efforts” are so futile and so absurd at the same time that they make the author of these lines unwilling to take them seriously at all. They are grounded in a parallel reality created in the Kremlin and transplanted into the White House — a construction that, if it is ever remembered, will deserve a special chapter in human history as something utterly senseless, yet horribly destructive and humiliating.

It is a theater play nobody wants to watch, yet the audience is forced to sit through it because the biggest bully in the neighborhood insists on staging it. So I will stop here. It is not worth dissecting further. Not anymore.

I want to discuss a different aspect of diplomacy and of the debate on the world stage — something more real, more consequential, and more worthy of attention.

In recent months, European leaders — most clearly the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Kaja Kallas — have emphasized that there is one victim in this war — Ukraine — and one aggressor — Russia. On one occasion, Kallas expressed expressed this truth with admirable clarity, reminding the world that “we must keep in mind that there is one aggressor and one victim.” Such clarity is not trivial. It is necessary.

In a time of deliberate disinformation and moral fog, stating even the obvious has become politically meaningful. It anchors public discourse in reality and resists the false equivalence that authoritarian propaganda constantly tries to impose.

For four years now, democratic leaders have returned to this formulation in countless variations — a moral compass in a brutal era: there is one aggressor and one victim.

It is politically effective. It is morally clear. It steadies those who hesitate and exposes those who equivocate.

But it is not sufficient.

Because the world today is not facing a single aggressor. It is facing an axis of aggressors and enablers.

Yes — Ukraine is the victim of an unprovoked, genocidal war. That is immutable. It is written into mass graves and destroyed cities, into murdered civilians, into women tortured, raped, and killed. It is written into Bucha. Into Mariupol. Into the mass deportation of children, the torture chambers, the systematic destruction of civilian life, culture, and identity. This is not a matter of interpretation. It is a matter of record.

And — Russia is indeed the primary aggressor, but not the only one. The reality is harsher, broader, and far more dangerous than that: Ukraine is under attack by a coalition of authoritarian regimes — an axis coordinating militarily, logistically, economically, and technologically to wage war jointly against a sovereign state. It is time to call this what it is, and to call its members by their real names. Treating it as if it were only Russia is not realism. It is a strategic blind spot.

Belarus: The silent invader

Belarus is not an accidental bystander. It is not a hostage state. And it is absolutely not neutral. Belarus is a co-aggressor. Full stop.

It opened its entire territory to Russia’s assault on Kyiv on 24 February 2022 — an act that alone qualifies it as a belligerent under international law. But it did not stop there.

Belarus has provided training grounds, barracks, and storage facilities for Russian troops. It has offered airfields and logistics hubs essential for missile strikes. It is the Belarusian military and security apparatus that has supported Russian intelligence and surveillance, and enabled the permanent deployment and rotation of Russian forces on its soil.

This is not passive complicity. This is active participation in the largest act of aggression on European soil since World War II.

Belarus is not a no man’s land. It is a state with borders, institutions, and leadership — and therefore with responsibility.

Every missile launched from Belarusian territory is not only a Russian act of war; it is a Belarusian one as well. Every Russian battalion funneled through Belarus is carried on the political and moral responsibility of Minsk. Every logistical corridor kept open is an extension of Lukashenko’s will — the will of a man who has chosen to serve as the Kremlin’s most obedient accomplice to aggression.

Lukashenko is not a bystander, nor a hostage. He is a willing partner to the Kremlin’s war of conquest — a subordinate ally to Vladimir Putin’s criminal project.

Belarus did not lose its sovereignty. It surrendered it. Today it serves openly as Russia’s forward operating base — an obedient extension of the Kremlin’s military footprint. In doing so, it has made itself a full-fledged co-aggressor in this war: legally, politically, and morally.

North Korea: The outsourcer of death

North Korea’s role in this war is no longer speculative. It is present, documented, and expanding. Pyongyang has already shipped millions of artillery shells to Russia and supplied ballistic missile components, launch systems, and ammunition for some of Moscow’s most brutal offensives. It has deepened military and cyber cooperation with the Kremlin. And — in the clearest sign of full complicity — North Korea is now sending troops to fight and die alongside Russian forces.

This is unprecedented: a nuclear dictatorship from East Asia exporting both manpower and ammunition for an imperial war in Europe — proof that this is no longer a European conflict, but a transcontinental, globalized project of authoritarian power.

It is the first intercontinental mercenary state of the twenty-first century — a regime willing to trade soldiers and weapons for diplomatic cover, technology, and strategic favor, regardless of how many Ukrainian civilians are killed as a result.

What do we call this — “military–technical cooperation”? “Assistance”? These are euphemisms designed to anesthetize responsibility. This is direct participation in a war of conquest: the outsourcing of death to sustain a fellow dictatorship’s delusions of empire.

North Korea is not a bystander. It is a co-aggressor — directly complicit in Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Iran: The drone empire feeding Russia’s terror against civilians

If Belarus provides geography and North Korea provides artillery and infantry, Iran provides the airborne terror that haunts Ukrainian nights.

Iran is the architect of Russia’s drone war. It has delivered thousands of Shahed kamikaze drones, supplied massive quantities of ammunition, and provided ballistic missiles, including the Fath-360. Tehran is actively helping the Kremlin build its own drone-manufacturing capacity by sending engineers, technicians, and trainers to support development and production. It has also shared surveillance, targeting, and intelligence capabilities — the very systems that guide Russian terror from the sky.

In short, Iran performs a specific function in a system of mass violence. It enables cheap, mass-produced death at the hands of the aggressor.

Every Shahed hissing over Odesa, Kyiv, Lviv, Dnipro, or Zaporizhzhia is an Iranian weapon of terror — built for the express purpose of killing civilians, destroying infrastructure, and exhausting Ukraine’s air defences. Iran is on the battlefield, present through its weapons, its technology, its production know-how, and its strategic alignment with the Kremlin.

Failing to name Tehran as an aggressor is not neutrality. It is political blindness — and almost certainly, willful.

China: The indispensable supplier behind the curtain

China avoids the headlines. It avoids the atrocities. It avoids overt alignment. It cloaks its role in language that some still insist on calling soft power. There is nothing soft about China’s power when it comes to this war. It is time to admit the obvious: China is, quietly and methodically, one of the most consequential enablers of the Kremlin’s war machine.

The list of what Beijing delivers to Moscow is long — and lethal. Dual-use electronics, drone engines, production technology, and machine tools critical to Russia’s weapons factories. Chips, sensors, thermal optics, gunpowder, chemicals, explosive precursors, and industrial machinery. And above all, a sprawling architecture for sanctions evasion, without which Russia’s war machine would suffocate.

China does not need to send a single soldier. By keeping Russia’s war industry breathing, it is already a full accomplice to the genocidal assault on Ukraine.

China may declare neutrality, but what it delivers is industrial blood support — the lifeline of Russia’s war machine. Without China’s supply chains, Russia’s ability to wage war would collapse within months. With them, it can be sustained for years.

That alone elevates China from “concerned observer” to structural co-aggressor, whether Beijing admits it or not.

Ukraine and the myth of inevitability

There is one further truth that must be stated clearly, even if carefully: authoritarian regimes make choices. So do nations.

Ukraine, too, once had a Kremlin-aligned leadership. Viktor Yanukovych governed as Moscow’s subordinate partner, bending Ukraine’s sovereignty to the preferences of a foreign power. But Ukrainian society rejected that arrangement. It chose political autonomy over subordination, and institutional dignity over enforced loyalty.

That choice had a cost. It was paid on the Maidan, and it is being paid again on the battlefield.

This matters because it dismantles a persistent myth often invoked — explicitly or implicitly — to excuse the behavior of states that now enable Russia’s aggression: the idea that societies under authoritarian pressure have no alternative, no agency, and no responsibility.

They do. Constraint is real. Repression is real. Fear is real. But inevitability is not.

Ukraine demonstrated that even under extreme pressure, a society can still choose political self-determination. And that is precisely why the authoritarian axis — from Minsk to Tehran, Pyongyang, and Beijing — aligns itself against Ukraine.

Ukraine is not threatening because it is militarily powerful. It is threatening because it shows that submission is not destiny. That example is corrosive to every authoritarian system built on the claim that obedience is natural and alternatives are impossible.

Allies can supply weapons, funds, training, and political backing. But it is Ukrainians — soldiers and civilians alike — who absorb the costs. They are not symbols. They are the material agents of this choice.

This is why Ukraine matters beyond Ukraine. It breaks the narrative of inevitability — the idea that once a country enters Moscow’s orbit, it must remain there indefinitely.

That is the deeper reason this war is annihilatory in character. Not because Ukraine is weak — but because Ukraine is free.

From semantics to strategic clarity

The formula “one aggressor, one victim” made sense in the war’s first hours, when tanks rolled toward Kyiv and the world was still stunned. Four years later, it has become a dangerous simplification.

Treating this war as merely “Russia versus Ukraine” underestimates the scale of the authoritarian coalition behind Putin and obscures the globalized supply chains that sustain Russia’s war machine. It renders Belarus and North Korea politically invisible and allows Iran and China to evade responsibility for enabling mass violence.

This framing misleads democratic societies about the magnitude of the threat and creates the illusion of a contained conflict. In reality, it allows the Kremlin to expand its axis quietly and largely without consequence — and it weakens Europe’s capacity to respond.

Failing to name the structure is failing to understand it. Failing to understand it is failing to stop it.

The language must therefore change. Euphemism must give way to precision. The world should state clearly: there is one victim — Ukraine — and a coalition of aggressors: Russia as the primary aggressor, enabled and reinforced by Belarus, North Korea, Iran, China, and other authoritarian regimes.

This is not a semantic correction. It is a strategic one. Europe cannot defend itself against an axis it refuses to name.

A just peace will come only when every member of this coalition is confronted with responsibility — political, economic, legal, and moral. Until then, Ukraine remains the victim twice over: of a genocidal assault, and of the world’s reluctance to acknowledge its full nature.

Illustration: “Axis of Aggressors, One Victim” — a visual representation of the coalition of aggressors confronting Ukraine.
Attribution: AI-assisted illustration created in collaboration with OpenAI / ChatGPT, under the direction and editorial control of the author.