The president of Ukraine is reported to have approached the African Union to take a stand in the war that is now raging in Ukraine.
The war should stop. However, different countries in the world are taking different approaches to war. Some have decided to help Ukraine to receive arms to fight to defeat Russia and compel its armed forces to leave Ukraine. They do not support any ceasefire and negotiation while Russia occupies any piece of land in Ukraine. They prefer for sanctions to be carried out by all countries in the world to isolate Russia from the international community.
Some other countries prefer to be neutral and call for a cease-fire and negotiated settlement to stop the war.
Others are simply supporting Russia based on its explanation that the war would end if Ukraine declares neutrality in the competition between NATO and Russia and maintain no military power to be a threat to Russia’s security.
The African Union should try to be part of the solution and should not be neutral nor be dragged to be part of the problem. How is to do this? It must inject realism in the conceptualization of a solution to the problem. It should convincingly inform both Russia and Ukraine and those who support show neutrality or take sides that the death and destruction taking place cannot pass the test of human civilization and must not be allowed to continue a day longer. The African Union should give ample evidence that neither Russia nor Ukraine can win the war. Ukraine will never have the military might to fight to the end to remove Russia from its territory and Russia will not have the military might to occupy Ukraine without causing death and destruction on both sides.
Such a loss/loss situation is not sustainable. Hence there should be a political settlement through diplomatic means.
The political settlement when war is raging would require stages, it would require an immediate and ultimate solution. The immediate solution would require maintaining existing grounds to facilitate a ceasefire and negotiation to attain concrete political objectives. Those objectives should be realistically defined by both Ukraine and Russia.
The negotiators would then try to mediate to ensure there is agreement on the political objectives both immediate and ultimate. This is how the African Union could facilitate an end to the death and destruction and the final solution to the conflict. We hope that the current president of the African Union will take this direction.
