Four years of war, as well as peaceful resistance
Next Tuesday marks four years since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Four years that have disrupted the lives of Ukrainian citizens far beyond those forced to take to the trenches to defend their country. Thousands upon thousands of Ukrainian and Russian soldiers have died in this long war. Young and not-so-young people who had different aspirations in life four years ago. Who studied, worked, and enjoyed themselves like the young Europeans we know. For them, there is no longer a future. And the debate now in Ukraine is whether the ongoing peace negotiations, which involve very painful territorial concessions to the invader, will render their sacrifice meaningless, or whether the narrative will focus more on the fact that their resistance has allowed them to maintain the country's independence as much as possible.
War, however, doesn't only affect soldiers. They will have to overcome the added trauma of having killed, but they share with civilians the trauma of living with the constant fear of death. In modern warfare, which, due to the increasingly deadly capabilities of weaponry, is becoming ever more cowardly as it preys on civilians to sow terror, Ukraine represents a turning point. Indiscriminate bombing continues, but now, among other things, [the following are added]. advances, drone warfare that allows targets to be pursued from a distance with maximum precision.
In this context, the report we published today in theNow Sunday about how Ukrainian civil society has confronted the invasion through solidarity and resistance. Hundreds of anonymous activists have coordinated to offer support to people who were alone or had to flee from attacked areas, to quickly install makeshift windows in bombed buildings, to offer a taste of culture in a basement, and to allow life inside to maintain some semblance of peace. Dozens of small, coordinated, resilient initiatives that speak volumes about how society can organize itself on the home front when things get tough. Without this civil resistance, the country would hardly have endured so many years of war.
In today's dossier, we also ask ourselves if it is still possible to be a pacifist in today's world. Of course, one cannot desire anything other than peace. For Ukraine, for Gaza, for Sudan, for all the many places in the world where war still rages. That is the goal. Whether achieving peace requires rearming against those who seek to destroy it is the debate currently taking place, especially in European societies. And increasingly, governments and public opinion seem to be leaning towards the necessity of rearmament, particularly given the growing unreliability of US defense support. However, over the past quarter-century, the enemies and the perceived needs have changed. While initially the enemy was global jihadism, against which there was no perceived need to justify increasing the size of traditional armies, now that the supposed threat is Russia, some even seem to want to reinstate universal conscription. We live in an uncertain world of hybrid and diffuse warfare, coexisting with the old world of hand-to-hand combat. Does it make sense to be a pacifist? It should.
