A Japanese Initiative for Peace in the Russia-Ukraine War

24 February is a date destined to be long remembered, the day on which Russia launched war on its neighbor Ukraine in the name of a “Special Military Operation.” Just over a week later the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted by overwhelming majority a special, emergency resolution (ES-11/1) deploring the Russian act as aggression and demanding it desist and withdraw. The invasion and the response by Ukrainian forces under President Zelenskyy, backed by US and NATO support in the form of advanced weaponry, economic, financial and diplomatic backing, has brought the world itself to the brink of World War Three. In addition to exacerbating the combined economic and covid-19 crises, the Ukraine war now raises the specter of nuclear catastrophe. The future of humanity itself may hinge on moving expeditiously toward a peace agreement. But talks between Russia and Ukraine have collapsed. Huge quantities of war materiel are flowing into Ukraine from the United States, NATO and others. Sanctions, themselves a form of warfare albeit economic, and in possible breach of the international humanitarian law principle forbidding general or indiscriminate collective punishment, disrupt trade flows and threaten poverty or even famine not only to Ukraine but to others including Russia. Countless lives are lost and millions are driven from their homes and forced to become refugees. The consequences are global. As Ramzy Baroud observes, some of the poorest countries of Asia and Africa, including Tunisia, Sri Lanka and Ghana, and numerous others dependent on Russian and Ukrainian grain, face critical wheat and energy shortages as global supply chains are disrupted.