Oleksandr Slyvchuk, Coordinator of the Spain and Latin America Cooperation Program at the Transatlantic Dialogue Center, published an op-ed in El Independiente marking 35 years of Ukrainian independence and reflecting on what Russia’s war against Ukraine means for European security and the future of international law. Please note that the article is published in Spanish.
In the article, Slyvchuk argues that the outcome of the war is a security question for the entire continent, not only for Eastern Europe. Ukraine’s victory or defeat will set a precedent for whether international law still retains value – or whether force becomes the only argument in international relations.
Slyvchuk also stresses that territorial concessions do not end aggression. Historically, every concession to an aggressor has postponed the next attack rather than prevented it. A so-called “territorial compromise” would not resolve the problem of a Russia that has not abandoned its goal of controlling Ukraine entirely.
The op-ed frames Russia’s invasion as imperial revanchism, not a border dispute. Slyvchuk points to Vladimir Putin’s July 2021 article denying Ukraine’s right to exist as a separate state as evidence that Moscow’s war is rooted in its refusal to accept Ukraine’s sovereignty. Russia, he notes, has never learned to coexist with its neighbors on terms of cooperation.
Finally, Slyvchuk emphasizes that Ukraine’s independence in 1991 was not a new beginning, but a continuation of the country’s statehood tradition. For more than seventy years of Soviet rule, a Ukrainian government-in-exile functioned in Europe, and in 1992 its last president formally transferred the symbols of power to the newly elected President Leonid Kravchuk.
Read the full article via the link.