The Russian-Ukrainian War: An Open Letter To President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine 

2 years ago
8 mins read

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, I am writing this letter with the faint hope that it would reach you despite the heavy censorship of the West and those surrounding you.

Writing this letter has not been easy for me but as you would agree, one must do his/her duty to save mankind no matter the odds. Watching you touring the West, giving speeches and being hugged and praised by the politicians as a hero while your country burns and your citizens die in droves, is to say the least, heart wrenching.

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I know you are just a comedian who finds himself thrust into the limelight of war, and therefore are quite inexperienced in politics and in war. I do sympathise with you in that regards. But surely you must have been intelligent to be the president of a country. The world outside of the West are not seeing that intelligence. All we are seeing is a poor confused chap being led by the nose and manipulated by the West to fight their war, otherwise, how could they tell you to fight to the last Ukrainian knowing full well that you would never, ever defeat Russia even if hell freezes over. They did not tell you to fight to the last American or the last British or the last Canadian or the last French man or the last German; but to fight to the last Ukrainian!

If the Russians are fighting as badly as the West would have us, including you, believe, and your country is gallantly winning, ask yourself, how come the Russians are gaining grounds and have even started to threaten Kiev again?

Whose country is getting destroyed? Your country. Whose people are dying? Your people. Which country will be the first to be erased from the face of the earth in the event of a nuclear war? Your country! You know full well that Ukraine according to European statistics, is the most corrupt country in Europe; so, have you considered what will happen to those weapons pouring into your country once the war is over? You are going to have massive internal instability and terrorism for years to come, much like Iraq, Libya and Syria. Yet you are continuing to pursue the path of war to solve your problem with your neighbour, Russia, knowing full well that that path is doomed to failure with devastating consequences to your country and your people.

Whose prestige is at stake? The West. Who is laughing to the bank with proceeds from oil and weapons sale while your people are dying and grinding into poverty? The West. Who is going to get the contract to rebuild your country after the war is over? The West. Who will be the creditor? The West. Who is going to be paying for the war for generations to come? Ukrainians!

Heroism is not about doing things for personal praises or gains, rather it is having the courage to play the fool for the benefit of others. Gallantry likewise, is not about “courageously” stepping forward at the edge of an abyss, rather it is about stepping backwards! It must have sunk into your head by now that you and your fellow countrymen are being used as pawns to do somebody else’s bidding, otherwise, how could your country suddenly become the darling of the West after years of being kept at arms length and dubbed the most corrupt country in Europe?

Turkey has for years been seeking for integration into the European Union and has been refused. But suddenly, even with Ukraine currently having massive internal and external issues, the EU wanted to grant her a membership status despite Ukraine not having met the Copenhagen criteria for EU membership, which specifically requires a country seeking for EU membership to have a functioning market economy, a stable democracy and the rule of law, amongst other requirements. Does it not make you wonder why you are getting all these preferential treatments? And we all know that nothing in this world is free, especially where the West are concerned.

For the West, it is all about winning, no matter the consequences, provided that they did not have to pay the price for those consequences. Perhaps a little trip down memory lane will help you see clearly your situation and the damage, hypocrisy and disservice being done to your country and your people:

There was once (and still is), a country called Nigeria. This country has three major ethnic groups and two main religions (Christianity and Islam), and as such, common sense dictates that it should have been separated into three countries. But for economics and ease of governance, the British colonial master then, lumped the three ethnic groups into a single country.

Not long after independence in 1960, lines of faults started to appear in the form of coup and counter coup, culminating in the pogrom of more than 50,000 Christian Eastern Nigerians living in the North. This eventually led to a civil war fought between 1967 and 1970. During the said war, the British led an embargo with her ally, the USA against the Christian Eastern Nigeria called Biafra, and further, with her (the UK’s) blessings, the Nigerian government blockaded Biafra. These two actions led to starvation and death in the Biafra enclave so that people were reduced to eating lizards, frogs and actual rats for survival. Children were dying from a disease called kwashiorkor due to lack of protein, essential minerals and vitamins, while Britain and the USA stood by and watched with smug smiles on their faces. At the end of the war, more than a million people of the Eastern Nigeria origin perished, not from bullets and bombs, but from hunger and starvation. These cruel deaths were necessary so that Britain could maintain her prestige as a former colonial master who was able to create a unified country!

Why am I telling you this? It is to show you that the West do not care for anybody else but only for their interests, and that they are willing to go to any length and use any means, no matter how odious, to accomplish those interests. The same Biafra model is today being applied to Tigray, Yemen and Syria.

Moving on. You were a witness to how Iraq was almost bombed to oblivion in 2003 by the West in search of non existent weapons of mass destruction, which they claimed were existential threat to their security. At the end of the war, more than a million Iraqis were killed. Nobody to this day has held the Western leaders to account for this crime, and those Iraqis that died in the illegal war were classified as mere statistics.

During the Vietnam War, the USA used a very dangerous herbicide mixture called dioxin (aka Agent Orange) to defoliate forests in Vietnam. Dioxin causes liver problems, type 2 diabetes, affects the immune system, muscles, and the heart, amongst other health issues. This chemical was used to defoliate millions of acres of forests and farmland in Vietnam, and the affected areas still remain to this day, unusable. The USA employed this dangerous chemical to save American lives by depriving the North Vietnamese forest cover. No thought was given to the civilians or what would happen when the war ended. The only thing that mattered was saving American lives!

During the Cold War, it is on record that the West had plans in place to use nuclear weapons in West Germany should a shooting war develop in which the West was losing to the Soviets such that the latter invaded West Germany from East Germany. In other words, the German people were expendable just so that the West would not lose a war. West Germany then was more or less in the same type of relationship as you are currently enjoying with the West. If they were willing to sacrifice and exterminate the Germans just for the sake of prestige, think what they will do to your people just so that they win the war against Russia. I do not have to tell you about the use of atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the Second World War in order to save American lives; the incineration of Dresden and Hamburg during the Second World War. Neither do I need to tell you about colonisation, slavery and apartheid, and the effects they had (and are still having) in Africa.

The reason I am giving you all these histories is for you to know that the West have never been associated with the word altruism, neither have they ever shied away from sacrificing and taking millions of human lives to further their aims. That they are supplying you with weapons and providing other humanitarian assistance, is not that they are Father Christmas. It is because you are doing their dirty work for them! If by tomorrow they no longer require your services, they will sling you out on your ears.

You were elected on the mandate of reconciling Ukraine with Russia, and finding peace between the two countries. But somewhere along the line, you got distracted and instead did the opposite, which amongst other things, now resulted in war between your country and Russia.

The West that are egging you on, are hundreds, and some thousands of miles away but you live next door to Russia. Does it not make sense to live in peace with your neighbour than to war with him?

You have up to now listened to Western “experts” and followed their “expert, complicated and wise” advice, and have seen the consequences of such advice. Does it not now make good sense to listen to a “naive, simple and stupid” advice, which is: swallowing your pride and seeking peaceful resolution to the war. Yes, you would be negotiating with a weaker hand or as the British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, unsurprisingly put it, “coerced” into making a “bad” peace; but it does not matter. What matters is to stop the bloodshed engulfing your country. That will not make you a coward, rather you are being the bigger man. With peace between your country and Russia, and given time, you will be able to recover all the territory currently in Russian hands. To bring an everlasting peace and prosperity in your country and engineer trust in you by the Russians, all you have to do is to begin to reverse all the anti Russian measures currently being implemented in your country. I am talking about the ban forbidding people to use the Russian language and the formation of fascist organisations in your country. The Nazis did terrible things to Russians including Ukrainians, Jews, gypsies, and other people they termed undesirables, and to now turn and allow such a sinister organisation to flourish in Ukraine is just plain stupid. No degree of nationalism justifies the formation of such odious and murderous organisation.

It is true that every country has the right to decide its foreign policy. But where such policy impacts on the security concerns of one’s neighbour, it is wise to pause and find an alternative or seek a dialogue with your neighbour. Russia do have a genuine security concern with the direction your country is heading, and with good reason. As you already know, Russia viewed the USA in the guise of NATO as an enemy (and ditto the USA views on Russia), and to allow an enemy of Russia into your country is not a good neighbourly thing to do. You can be friendly with Russia and the West simultaneously without annoying either one of them if you go about it in peaceful, wise, and matured manner than the uncaring and destructive way you are currently going about it. This advice does not mean condoning Russia’s attack on your country, or that Russia is better than the West – far be it, they are both birds of the same feather. But in your current situation you could do worse than make peace with Russia.

I know that you must face enormous pressures from your handlers if you tried to go against their wishes by suing for peace. But you must remember that the future of your people comes first before anything or anybody else. Therefore, I implore you, for the sake of your suffering country, and for the sake of generations of Ukrainians yet unborn, stop this madness and seek avenues for a peaceful resolution to this war. Tell the West with their continual offer of weapons, “Thanks, but no thanks.” They can go elsewhere and fight with the Russians but not in your country.

A word is enough for the wise. Be the bigger man, and not just a man.

Thanks for reading, hoping that you would be courageous enough to seek the path of peace. I pray and look forward to seeing a peaceful and prosperous Ukraine in the nearby future.

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Dr Gabriel Uguru
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