Ukraine Dam disaster: Another opportunity for peace

Volunteers evacuate residents from a flooded area in Kherson after a blast at the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant dam. AFP

As thousands of Ukrainians are being evacuated to safety after the destruction of the Kakhovka dam across the Dnipro River caused devastating floods, both Russia and Ukraine are accusing each other of committing the war crime, instead of learning a lesson from the disaster and pushing for peace.

The dam is in the Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine. What caused the breach is still unknown, but most people suspect it was due to sabotage. Both Russia and Ukraine have condemned the underwater blast. The dam blast reminds us of last year’s Nord Stream gas pipeline blasts under the Baltic Sea. It caused a severe gas leak. For obvious reasons, the environmental damage and the harm to marine life due to the blast were not made an international issue. It is said that more than 115,000 tons of natural gas escaped the damaged pipelines in just six days, with a greenhouse gas contribution of about 15 million tons of CO2—or the amount of carbon that can be absorbed by roughly 580 million trees in a year. 

Strangely, not many Western leaders condemned this ecological terrorism. This was because the pipeline was carrying gas from Russia to Western Europe and also they knew who was behind the sabotage. 

Citing United States intelligence officials, a New York Times report on March 7 this year said a pro-Ukrainian group carried out the September 2022 attack on the Nord Stream pipelines. But the report also added a rider, absolving the Ukrainian government and President Volodymir Zelensky of wrongdoing. 
When the Nord Stream blast occurred, many Western analysts pointed their fingers at Russia, just as they did when a Crimean passenger bridge was attacked last year and as they do now after the Kakhovka dam blast. Truth, the first casualty of war, remains buried or distorted, with most Western media outlets openly taking an anti-Russia stance and demonizing Russia. What we often get from the Western media is largely war propaganda on behalf of Ukraine and its main backers the United States and the United Kingdom. 

There is no denying that Russia is the aggressor but Ukrainian President Zelensky is equally to be blamed for precipitating the war and ignoring Russia’s legitimate security concerns. Zelensky has spurned many a peace move that came his way. He has become a pawn of the United States, which has used its assertive diplomacy to compel other NATO countries to back Ukraine’s war efforts. 

NATO’s Western European members such as Germany, France, and Hungary are reluctant partners. It was its Eastern European members such as Poland which are pushing for an all-out war. Meanwhile, NATO member Turkey maintains close diplomatic and defence ties with Russia.  Maybe NATO is united only in its resolve to condemn Russia’s aggression. Most NATO members are not stupid enough to convert Ukraine’s war into NATO’s war and bring about a nuclear confrontation with Russia.

When Ukraine asked Germany to send its advanced Leopard tanks, Germany did so only after a long delay and much debate. Even when a Russian missile hit a Polish village last year, NATO restrained itself and did not rush to invoke Article 5, the collective defence clause, according to which an attack on one member is an attack on all of its members. The only time, NATO in its 74-year existence invoked Article 5 was when the US came under a terrorist attack on September 11, 2001. 

Last week, Ukraine’s comedian-turned-president Zelensky once again called on NATO to expedite the process to enrol Ukraine as a member, only to be disappointed by the lack of response. No sensible NATO member would want Ukraine in and risk a direct war with Russia. But this is what globe-trotting Zelensky is after. Ukraine is fighting a US-UK proxy war. Zelensky needs to do what is beneficial to Ukraine. He is refusing to realise that he should not promote the US interest at the cost of Ukraine’s national interest. 
Though he was willing to negotiate peace at the beginning of the conflict, he changed his stance apparently under US and UK pressure and started rejecting peace offers by adding conditions which are so extreme that even a pacifist Russian president would not agree to them, let alone strongman Vladimir Putin. 

At the beginning of the conflict, the then-Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennet offered to make peace between Ukraine and Russia. Then Turkiye came up with a peace plan. But apparently, at the insistence of the US and UK, Zelensky refused to go ahead. The US and the UK, among other Western powers, want Russia to be weakened and possibly divided into smaller states so that it would be easier for them to check China. 

Apart from the US-UK strategic war-mongering in Ukraine, the war also means business. Making profits out of other people’s misery is disaster capitalism. With the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq over, the military-industrial complex, the most powerful political lobby in the US, needed another theatre. Ukraine fell on its lap. According to the US Defence Department, Washington has committed about $6.3 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since the beginning of the Joe Biden Administration, including about $5.6 billion since the beginning of Russia’s invasion on February 24, last year.

The annual US defence expenditure is about 900 billion dollars, which is 40 percent of the global total and thrice the defence allocation of China. Since 2001, the US war expenditure has been a whopping 8 trillion dollars – one-third of its 24 trillion-dollar debt. If this militarism continued, it will only spell disaster for the US economy. 
Last month China and last week Indonesia came up with peace plans, but, as expected, Ukraine rejected the overtures. 

China’s offer was the best chance for peace, given its special relationship with Russia. In a feat worthy of being considered for the Nobel Peace Prize, China recently made peace between the Middle East’s arch-rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia. Perhaps some Western powers are envious of Beijing accruing credentials or boosting its image as a peace-making superpower, and therefore find it hard to digest another successful peace brokering by China. What Beijing offered was a win-win formula. Ukraine should not have spurned the offer.

A looming humanitarian disaster is not the time to up the ante. Such disasters do call on the belligerents to lay down arms and take up the olive branch. The flood waters may even pose a long-term threat to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, though experts have said they see no short-term risks. 
How many more disasters must they wait for before realising that it is time for peace?