The Only Way to Achieve Lasting Peace in Ukraine

What most Ukrainians want, passionately, is to be left alone by Russia. They do not want to be considered Russian; they do not want to be brought back under Moscow’s rule; they do not want to “rediscover,” at gunpoint, what the Kremlin believes is Ukrainians’ true identity. Instead, they wish to be treated as a nation that has the right to an independent existence. Most importantly, Ukrainians do not want to be invaded, annexed, displaced, murdered, plundered, tortured, abducted, and raped in the name of the mythical “historical unity” and “East Slavic brotherhood” that shape Russian President Vladimir Putin’s thinking.

But is coexistence even possible, given the intensity of Russian feelings toward Ukraine, the long-standing Russian belief in the unity of the two nations, and Moscow’s insistence on ownership over the Kyivan Rus patrimony?

During the final years of my doctoral studies at the University of Wisconsin, I worked as a research assistant to political scientist Nadav Shelef. My task was to identify irredentist governments, parties, and political movements: those who believed that parts of their homeland were controlled by a foreign state and sought to reclaim them. There were partitioned homelands I already knew much about, such as Israel and Palestine, Crimea, Taiwan, Kashmir, the territories lost by Hungary post-World War I, Northern Ireland, and Serbia and Kosovo.

But there were also many cases that even I, a Ph.D. candidate specializing in conflict, had heard only vaguely about or not at all. Indeed, Shelef’s key insight was that “there are many, often unnoticed instances of once-voluble claims to lost homeland territory, melting away.” Few Germans still desire East Prussia and Königsberg, now Russian Kaliningrad; Poles reconciled themselves to the loss of Lviv, a city for which they doggedly fought in 1918; and Italians have given up on retaking the northern Adriatic coast, the very demand that gave birth to the term “irredenta.”

There is no reason why, in the future, the Russian desire to control or conquer Ukraine cannot be added to the list of forgotten claims. Something along these lines happened before. In 1914, the Russian imperial government considered Galicia—a historic region encompassing what is now western Ukraine and southeastern Poland—to be Russian land that needed to be reunited with the rest of the empire. In 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Poland on the pretext of unifying the Ukrainians of Galicia and Volhynia with their homeland. But now, even the most radical Russian nationalists typically do not wish to rule western Ukraine.

It will be exceptionally hard to change Russian attitudes toward Ukraine but not impossible. This task is essential if we—Ukrainians, anti-war Russians, the world—want the invasion and genocide that started in 2022 to be the last Russian attempt to destroy the country.

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Security is a more technical issue than identity and therefore arguably easier to address. This is why, since 2014, politicians, academics, and policy analysts have preferred to focus on this dimension of the conflict. Over the years, they have put forward schemes to halt the violence in the Donbas and later the full-scale war that center on which alliances Ukraine should or should not belong to, the weapons it can possess, and how it ought to carry out its defense policies.

Indeed, security issues should not be overlooked. The liberation of Ukrainian territories currently under occupation is essential to save lives. And I am convinced that Ukraine should join NATO. Even if NATO membership would not prevent Russia from trying to divide, destabilize, and control Ukraine, it would most likely stop Russia from physically destroying it. Russian leaders, all their saber-rattling and borderline apocalyptic rhetoric aside, are expansionist but not suicidal. They want to control Ukraine—but not at the cost of destroying their own rule, palaces, and yachts. The threat of a war against NATO is the most effective deterrent against a future Russian invasion.

But identity, not security, has historically been the main driver of Russian aggression. The sticking point is not Ukrainian policy but Russian perceptions of Ukraine and its right to exist as a sovereign state. Without addressing this, security arrangements cannot effect lasting change.

The good news is that the widespread belief in the historical unity and shared origin of Russians and Ukrainians is not a sacred, primordial truth but a relatively recent construct: a product of the 19th-century writings and activism of Russian nationalist historians. Like every other national myth, it can change over time. This will not happen overnight. But it is not uncharted territory either, and history teaches us how this shift in identity can be achieved, if and when the Kremlin decides to do so.

Ukraine’s experience under Soviet rule demonstrates the vital role education plays in shaping popular belief. The core of the 1920s Ukrainization process that followed the dissolution of the Russian Empire was education, which introduced children to the core tenets of Communist ideology and promoted a distinct Ukrainian identity. Indeed, one of the key reasons for Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s anti-Ukrainian policies the following decade was the success of Ukrainian-language primary education, which challenged the class-based and, later, Russo-centric nature of the Soviet Union.

The fight against antisemitism is another example of how education changes attitudes over time. Antisemitism was widespread in early 20th-century Ukraine, so when Soviet authorities decided to eradicate anti-Jewish prejudice in the 1920s, they adopted a wide range of policies, from criminalizing xenophobia to designing school curricula that promoted ethnic equality and harmony. Less than two decades later, during the Holocaust, younger generations of Soviet Ukrainians were substantially more likely to help Jews than residents of neighboring Moldova, which had not seen similar attempts to eradicate antisemitism.

Laying the groundwork for a change in Russian attitudes should therefore start in history textbooks. Instead of being taught that Russians and Ukrainians are the same people, divided by the tragedy of Soviet collapse and nefarious Western machinations, Russian students might learn to respect Ukraine’s distinct nationhood. It will take years, possibly even decades, for such ideas to become commonplace, but once they do, this will secure peace more than any externally imposed security guarantee. Similarly, instead of funding films, plays, and exhibitions that promote Russian-Ukrainian historical unity and repudiate Ukraine’s independence, the Russian government might support cultural works that reject neoimperial, expansionist narratives. Financial support for a certain type of popular culture is a political choice, and the Kremlin can change its priorities at will.

Liberals and those committed to a peaceful and democratic Russia must also articulate a clear vision of what Russia is, its history, and its place in the world. They must not cede the development of a national identity to Communists, nationalists, and the restorationists of failed empires. Russians need to learn, understand, and come to believe that Ukraine is a different country and not a severed limb of Russia, that Ukrainians are not Russians who speak in a funny dialect, and that the “Russian world” is an invention of politicians seeking resources and prestige.

Luckily, this change in identity does not even require Russia to become a democracy and could be accomplished without major investment or institutional reforms; the only thing that is needed is time and a political leadership genuinely committed to changing popular attitudes. Such a change might even be beneficial for Russia’s autocrats, as it would alleviate the Kremlin’s deep-seated fear that if Ukrainians were able to establish a democracy, then the presumably fraternal Russians might as well.

Russia, as a popular saying goes, is a country with an unpredictable past. Such a change of national identity and historical mythology is not at all inconceivable.

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These people provided Moscow or Moscow-affiliated Ukrainian governments with legitimacy, local knowledge, public support, and normative reinforcement of the idea of Russia and Ukraine as part of a larger whole. Without local support, Russian control cannot be maintained, and the narrative of unity underlying Russian strategy will eventually collapse.

By 2022, for the first time in its long history, the population of Ukraine was not deeply divided from within, and this cohesion was crucial to the successful defense of the country. Had the people of Mariupol, Kharkiv, Kyiv, and Kherson, or soldiers hailing from these areas, viewed the Russian army as liberators rather than invaders, Ukraine would have almost certainly lost the war. Indeed, this is exactly what the Kremlin and many Western observers expected. But the Ukraine of 2022 was not the Ukraine of 1917 or 1991.

For Ukraine, the implications of this national cohesion are profound. Internally, a record number of Ukraine’s residents are now committed to independence, and ever more Ukrainians are switching from speaking both Russian and Ukrainian to speaking only Ukrainian. After Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, Kyiv passed laws that banned Soviet and Communist symbols and names from street and city names and public spaces. But since the full-scale invasion, Ukrainian towns have also started removing monuments and place names associated with the pre-1917 Russian Empire—and the push for these changes is coming from below, not from Kyiv.

Many Ukrainians have cut off contact with friends and relatives in Russia who support the Kremlin’s narrative or who refuse to believe that the Russian army is committing atrocities or bombing civilian targets. Such estrangement is tragic on the personal level, but it reinforces the message that citizens of Russia and Ukraine are, contrary to Putin’s claims, members of two distinct—and now hostile—communities.

These changes have had an impact further afield. In 2022, on the eve of the Russian invasion, only a third of Americans could place Ukraine on a map. Now, anyone who watches the news or reads a newspaper knows about the country. The number of foreigners learning Ukrainian has skyrocketed, and museums and cultural institutions across the globe no longer automatically label artists born in what is now Ukraine as “Russian.” Following the full-scale Russian invasion, the European Parliament and national legislatures of Brazil, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and several other states recognized the Holodomor—the 1932-33 famine engineered by the Soviet regime—as genocide. Hopefully, this recent shift in foreign attitudes will strengthen both Ukraine and those Russians who advocate restraint and responsible statecraft.

Ukrainian national identity is still a work in progress, and after the war, Ukrainians will have to address painful issues. But the war is also an opportunity to strengthen Ukraine’s inclusive identity and create a pantheon of new heroes who fought for Ukrainian independence. The choice of identity and historical narrative is a decision for Ukraine alone, but it will have implications for Russia’s willingness to view Ukraine as a separate nation and for the Kremlin’s ability to secure local support if it tries to dominate or conquer Ukraine once again.

Meanwhile, the West—while unable to dictate how Russians and Ukrainians should structure their societies, national identities, and foreign relations—can help contain Russia, shore up Ukrainian democracy, and give Kyiv the tools it needs to protect itself.

In addition to the NATO collective defense protection, the European Union will also be crucial to securing Ukraine’s future, and Ukraine is finally on track to become a member state. EU membership is not a panacea and cannot prevent economic crisis, mismanagement, corruption, xenophobia, and even autocracy. But it is nonetheless an effective tool to minimize and confront these vices, and the accession process that requires candidate states to meet multiple membership criteria is an important catalyst for reforms. The prize of EU membership is also a powerful incentive for society to tolerate the social and political price of potentially painful changes.

Having endured repression, invasion, famine, and genocide, Ukrainians justifiably want Russia to finally leave them alone. Whether this will happen depends first and foremost on Russian society and its willingness to respect Ukrainian sovereignty, abandon irredentist dreams, and shed its widespread belief in the unity of the two nations. Neither Ukraine nor any other country can force Russians to abandon their beliefs. Only through deep internal change will Russia’s intent to destroy Ukraine be consigned to painful history and never again be policy.

What Ukraine can do is maintain its unity by wholeheartedly embracing democracy and prioritizing a unique, inclusive civic national identity over exclusionary and radical alternatives. Western partners ought to assist Ukraine in this process, but the initiative and the main effort should come from within Ukraine itself. The key lesson of history is that only a strong, united, and democratic Ukraine can meet the challenges of independent statehood and survive.