PETER HITCHENS: It’s absurd to say broke, decrepit Russia will turn its tanks on us

I doubt this peace agreement will work, but I really hope it does.

A way must be found to end this stupid, senseless war that has been going on for 11 years, a war that began long before most people in the West realized it.

He created cemeteries that can be seen from space. It destroyed most of Ukraine. However, if President Zelenskiy accepts these conditions, he will not be decorated with flowers and will not be called ‘Peaceful Volodymyr’. He will be accused of ‘surrender’ (a wild exaggeration). He will quickly fall out of office. He could even be deposed by an ultranationalist coup similar to the coup that toppled another Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, in 2014.

The very powerful nationalist forces in Ukraine do not want peace under these conditions. No one wants to take responsibility for such a defeat.

That’s always the problem with modern wars. For years, rulers have been telling their people that they are angels and their enemies are devils. Then they need to sit down with those demons and make peace.

This problem is one of the reasons why the First World War lasted two years longer than necessary and perhaps did not stop for years. Mind you, this is a worse deal than Kiev could have made when the war was in its early stages. We would all be much better off if they had accepted the peace terms that Mr. Zelensky negotiated in 2019. However, the militants described this agreement as capitulation and killed the agreement.

To me, the biggest paradox is this: A Russia-hating group in Washington DC has sought this war for years, provoking the Kremlin with NATO’s westward expansion.

With similar stupidity, Putin succumbed to provocation and carried out his cruel, brutal and illegal occupation.

Vladimir Putin speaks during an operational meeting with permanent members of the Russian Security Council at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, November 21, 2025.

This gave the American Russia hawks what they wanted. Since Ukraine is not a member of NATO, they could engage in a heated war with Moscow in Europe that would not lead to a nuclear conflict.

No Western troops participated, thus avoiding the misery of Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. This was all done by sending money and weapons and sharing intelligence.

They probably hoped this would topple Putin. But it didn’t happen.

So now America, as is often the case, is bored with a war it once desired and is now trying to get out of it.

You might think that European leaders would welcome the chance to put an end to this, especially since it costs them so much and gives them nothing. It wasn’t even their idea.

But no, they all want it to continue because they are in the grip of a strange fantasy. They claim that they think Russia (bad, rusty, decrepit and even more corrupt than Ukraine) is ready to cross the Continent and clear the tank tracks at Calais.

Putin has yet to capture the Ukrainian city of Kharkov, ten miles from the Russian border.

And European nations already spend roughly three times what Russia spends on defense.

Maybe they worry too much.