Undoubtedly, the “freezing” of the war in Ukraine is now vitally important for Russia. Ukraine’s Western allies clearly understand that Kyiv will not, sit at the negotiating table with the current Kremlin leadership, as they would use any ceasefire to regroup and prepare for further expansion. Even after Ukraine achieves victory on the battlefield, the only topic for negotiations with Russia could be the terms of its capitulation and payment of reparations. However, the Kremlin does not cease its attempts to force Ukraine to engage in negotiations.
In order to promote their pacifist rhetoric, Russian manipulators utilize international platforms that disseminate the idea of “peaceful negotiations” in the Western information space.
A whole pool of Kremlin loyal “experts” is being engaged to participate in such forums, calling for the consolidation of anti-war activities against military support for the Ukrainians. The most extensive Russian propaganda campaign ahead of the active phase of Ukraine’s preparations for a counteroffensive is expected to be the “International Summit for Peace in Ukraine” taking place in Vienna, Austria, from June 10th to 11th.
The official goal of the event is the adoption of an urgent global appeal called the “Vienna Declaration of Peace”, which will contain a call to political leaders to take immediate measures to support a ceasefire and peaceful negotiations to resolve the situation in Ukraine.
After the summit, there will be a march of its participants to deliver the declaration to the embassies of NATO countries, Russia and Ukraine, as well as to the offices of international organizations.
International Peace Bureau delegations are also expected to visit representatives of the governments of Western countries to work out peaceful resolution strategies for the conflict.
It is not the first time that the Kremlin has used controlled pacifist organizations in Europe to spread demagogic calls for “world peace” and mask its real revanchist goals. In particular, the organizer of the summit in Vienna is the outwardly independent pacifist organization “International Peace Bureau”, founded in 1891.
However, one of its previous leaders, Sean McBride (1974-1985), a former member of the terrorist Irish Republican Army, actively cooperated with Soviet intelligence and passed on information about the British army, for which he was awarded the International Lenin Peace Prize in 1975. In the 1980s, US intelligence included the International Peace Bureau among organizations that worked for the USSR. Since 2014, IPB executive director R. Braun has been spreading pro-Russian propaganda, organizing protest actions against the policy of the German government towards Russia and calling the Revolution of Dignity a “putsch” and the occupation of Crimea a reaction to “NATO provocations.”
The “track record” of some participants and organizations invited to the summit shows that this international event will be used by Russia to promote narratives about the alleged existence of a request for peace negotiations in Ukrainian and Western European society.
Among the most controversial participants of the event:
Avram Noam Chomsky, a US citizen known for criticizing US foreign policy for supporting Ukraine and scaring Americans with a third world war over the past year, advocates a “neutral federal Ukraine”.
The President of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva) – proposed to create a “peace group” among the states not involved in Ukraine’s war with Russia.
Yurii Shelyazhenko, a Ukrainian citizen, a member of the IPB council, identifies himself as the Executive Secretary of the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement. He claimed that the USA and the Russian Federation are equally responsible for the Russian invasion.
The funding for the event is also coming from questionable sources. This is Code Pink: Women for Peace (CODEPINK) – an American non-governmental feminist organization that accuses the USA of provoking the war in Ukraine and repeats other Russian narratives; the European network of left-wing non-governmental organizations Transform! Europe, which receives funds from the communist parties of Austria, France and the Catalan left-wing party Esquerra Unida i Alternativa; the Rosa-Luxemburg Foundation, a non-governmental political fund of a Marxist orientation, whose board chairman H. Fitz in 2014-2022 defined the war in Ukraine as a “civil war” and “rebellion in the East”.
Therefore, Russia, using “pocket pacifists” from all over the world, is conducting another information and psychological special operation in an attempt to legitimize anti-war rhetoric as the position of a certain part of the population of the West. However, it is predicted that the effectiveness of this event will be minimal due to the pro-Russian manifestations of their participants. After all, the experience of Russia’s previous attempts to draw attention to Ukrainian issues in this way shows that European society does not accept the Kremlin’s position.
