For those unfamiliar with this part of the world, the Dnieper River rises in the Valdai Hills near Smolensk, Russia, before flowing through Belarus and Ukraine to the Black Sea. This sea is making headlines today due to Ukraine’s peace negotiations for this particular area. At the same time, as April 25, 2025, approaches, preparations are underway for the 80th-anniversary celebrations of the Elbe River reunion, which is associated with the meeting of the American and Soviet military on the Elbe River in the German city of Torgau on that day in 1945. This event became a symbolic act of Allied victory over NAZI Germany at the end of the WWII, but the meeting at the Dnieper River would be a similar act that prevented nuclear WWIII.
Presently, there are negotiations between American, Russian, and Ukrainian officials in search of peace to stop this madness when two Christian nations who lived together for centuries, sharing religion, family, history, and economic ties, are now destroying each other. Still, for now, let’s leave aside the question of who provoked this war. For every argument that it was an “unprovoked” Russian aggression, prominent American, European, and other international experts offer many other counterarguments that prove that Russia was indeed provoked. Scott Horton, head of the Libertarian Institute, presented facts and documents to this effect in his 900+-pages book Provoked, but there are many other books and articles on this subject. Let historians do more to research and continue these debates, but, as Presidents Trump and Putin agreed during their recent phone conversation, this “very horrible war between Russia and Ukraine must end.”
Unfortunately, there are many powerful forces, including in the United States, Europe, and Ukraine, that want this war to continue, either for their economic benefits or for weakening Russia, with no regrets for Ukrainian lives. They will use every chance to derail the peace process, and some of them again call Trump a Russian asset for his peace efforts.
Another important factor in preventing peace is the Ukrainian far-right groups, some of whom are openly neo-Nazis. Among those who admit that are not only unbiased Western observers but Ukrainians themselves. For example, Oleksandr Merezhko, the chair of the parliament’s foreign affairs committee and a member of President Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, said to Financial Times that ultranationalists posed a very real threat to the government – and one that could one day stand in the way of any attempt to negotiate an end to years of brutal fighting.“There will always be a radical segment of Ukrainian society that will call any negotiation capitulation,” he said, “the far right in Ukraine is growing and the right wing is a danger to democracy.”
The most famous of these forces is the Azov Battalion, whose founder and leader Andriy Biletsky, according to France 24, in 2010 called for Ukraine to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade” against what he described as “Semite-led Untermenschen” – or subhuman. In 2018, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a provision blocking any funding or training of Azov members by American forces, citing its neo-Nazi connections. In October 2019, House members requested that the Azov Batallion and two other far-right groups be classified as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the US State Department. However, after the Azov Battalion was absorbed into Ukraine’s National Guard as the 12th Azov Assault Brigade, Blinken’s State Department rewarded it in August 2022 by lifting this ban. Now, almost overnight, they are no longer terrorists but fighters for freedom and democracy. This is why, remembering the days when the US, Russia, and Ukraine were on the same anti-NAZI side of barricades, Given the seemingly significant progress in the current peace negotiations, wouldn’t it be fantastic if on April 25, Americans, Russians, and Ukrainians met on the Dnieper River to celebrate long-awaited peace and start the healing and rebuilding processes?
Another incentive could be that April 20 is Western and Slavic Orthodox Easter this year. They rarely come on the same day. So, isn’t it a sign from above?
Edward Lozansky is President of the American University in Moscow.
