Resisting All Wars in Ukraine and Everywhere Else

By Yurii Sheliazhenko, PhD, director of the Institute of Peace and Law (Kyiv, Ukraine) – for the Grounded festival, August 24, 2025

Greetings from Ukraine to all participants of this wonderful festival. I am thankful to organizers for an opportunity to discuss pacifist resistance. It is essentially resistance to all wars as one of the most ugly forms of human behavior. It is a resistance to a cult of glorious warriors, blind faith in mythical miracles achieved by violence and threats of violence, obsession with build-up of armies, waging wars, mobilization for wars, arms race and military alliances, fear and hate to certain nations, awkward apologies of mass killing and empty hopes that war somehow might bring peace.

When Donald Trump pushes Europe to buy more American tools of death and pushes Ukraine to give up lands and liberties to Putin’s empire, giving a cruel dictator red-carpet treatment, these leaders of so-called great powers are playing a game of “good cop” and “bad cop”, both corrupted self-serving megalomaniacs and extortionists, forcing the peoples of this planet to pay them for protection. It is exactly what we need to resist, politely but emphatically. And what do we see instead? Attempts to flatter President Trump seeking his military support; attempts to justify Putin’s imperialist war in naïve hope that his appetite will end in conquering Ukraine and not covet Europe; and attempts to embrace war as a normal part of everyday life forever, support it, impose it on others and fight those who don’t support the war as if they are enemies or enemy sympathizers.

In my talk I will explain the problem and discuss how to deal with it. I will argue that current world system allowed Russian aggression, and it need to be changed. Certain forces profiting from unfair status quo created a public opinion in its support, using carrots and sticks, manipulating and coercing people. In Russia, population is led to believe that the evil West destroyed a Soviet dream of mighty great power and civilization state, and the only way to survive is to arm to the teeth and die for motherland at the battlefield wherever the motherland currently invades in the quest to regain past glory. In the West, population is led to believe that the only response to it would be to arm to the teeth and try to find someone that buys the idea of death fight for survival. I will describe the ugliness of conscription and suppression of dissent in Ukraine. When Russian people see in invasion and destruction of Ukraine their only security guarantee, and when people in Ukraine, Slovenia and whole Europe see in NATO the only guarantee of peace and security, it is a mistake because nonviolent action and preparation for it is always better than war and preparation for it. I will argue that when selfish “great powers” don’t seek consensus in the interests of people and block peaceful decision-making in international bodies, when governments neglect their obligation to resolve international disputes peacefully, it is on the people to enforce peacefully prohibition of war by the international law, to resist nonviolently all war efforts, to stop military coercion by civil disobedience making the systemic violence futile.

It will require to make uneasy discoveries. It will require to understand that no power is absolute, to understand limits of sovereignty and national interests that must step down for the primacy of universal human rights, to welcome foreigners, immigrants and refugees, and allow them to raise on every political fora matters of human rights and world peace. This could not be internal affairs of any nation, it is common affair of humankind, and every human being as a member of world polity and a citizen of Earth must have publicly protected freedom of speech everywhere on these issues.

I am convinced that, to end Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the West must show the world example of nonviolent peace system. We need to rethink and reshape international relations, starting from prohibition of conscription and exclusive violent concepts of nationhood. Putin is a product of the archaic “sovereignty” absolutism that created and ruined all empires with enormous suffering of the people who are gullible enough to allow “sovereign” manipulators to take their peace and liberty. If we will accept the idea that certain actor, not a certain behavior, is a problem, we could wage war and defeat the actor at the cost of many human lives, but the behavior will repeat again and again, just as after beating Hitler one of winners started to behave alike under presidency of Putin; to stop this, we need to resist and overcome a system that produces all sorts of hitlers, putins and war profiteering. Nation states must be developed, transcended and harmoniously amalgamated in the spirit of real democracy, that means everyday decision-making in conversation and seeking consensus rather than coercion. I think all nations should negotiate a constitution of more centralized nonviolent governance on the planet to develop the UN and overcome such nonsensical expression of sovereign ambitions as the veto power in the Security Council.

Eighty years ago, at the end of the second world war, winners created an international organization with a hopeful name, called the United Nations, and adopted a wonderful document resembling the constitution of humankind, called the UN Charter. It requires to seek peaceful solutions to all disputes instead of war, it recognized that peace must be based on respect to inalienable and universally recognized rights of every human being, and it starts with amazing words: “we the peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war”. Unfortunately, Soviet Union insisted that United Nations should not be a world government and should not limit sovereignty of national governments. With other “great powers”, Soviets and Americans created a veto instrument to subordinate global governance to their whims. Military action was embedded into the UN Charter as an ultimate solution to, supposedly, stop the war by waging it. The Charter allowed defensive wars under pretext of so-called self-defense – do you know that Putin claims that too when invaded Ukraine, ridiculous, isn’t it? – and not limited preparations for war by arms race; actually, almost nothing was done to replace armies with institutions of civil disobedience in case of invasion, a measure suggested by Bertrand Russell in his visionary article in The Atlantic before the first world war. And the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted three years later was perceived as a non-binding and ended in a lot of concessions to violent governance during subsequent adoption of the International Covenant for Civil and Political Rights: it did not recognized that conscription is a form of slavery, it allowed to limit political expression of foreigners even if they demand just peace and decent treatment, and there was still very limited instruments to deal with violations of human rights.

Meanwhile, despite all the compromises, the UN was still too focused on diplomacy, so the U.S. military industry lobbied a creation of NATO as a marketing instrument to keep weapons sales on high level, and Soviet Union armed a lot of startup nation states under pretext of liberation from colonialism. So, the moral power of ideas of peace and human dignity was undermined by widespread cynical commitment to achieve greater power by military force. When Soviet economy bankrupted because of unsustainable militarism and authoritarianism, United States declared it will be the only great power policing the world and started series of reckless military adventures. War crimes in result of these adventures, even those where it was hard to whitewash by corporate media, are still not recognized, and instead of admitting the facts the U.S. wages war on the International Criminal Court subjecting to sanctions its judges and prosecutors.

So, the United States and the Soviet Union did not committed to peace seriously, despite all nice words and promises in propaganda, and it was a bad example for every government in the world. Later Russia recognized a superiority of Western system and asked a better place in U.S.-led world order; it was provided to a degree, but was not enough for Kremlin, as Putin revealed in his Munich speech. Example of a violent great power is a temptation to every ruler, so no wonder that later Russia and China started to copy U.S. hegemonic policies in the spheres of creation and use of military, economic, and information powers. When you hear loud words about new multilateral world order, it is in fact a more and more open anarchy of great powers able and willing to dominate in their geopolitical spheres of influence, ignoring any moral objections. This so-called new world order means permanent world war as an aggregate of all never-ending wars, proxy wars, revolutionary wars and other armed conflicts, currently there are near forty of them, waged because the great powers benefit from wars, they divide and rule the world, their military industry have profits, et cetera.

This collective dictatorship of great powers, competing but united in imposing their will on others, was predicted in a grim dystopia 1984 by George Orwell. It is possible only because peoples almost everywhere allow themselves to be deceived by propaganda to support wars, to be taxed to finance wars, and to be conscripted to die at wars.

Conscription is the most sinister institution allowing the never-ending war system to exist. If any government is entitled to force people to sacrifice their lives to preserve and increase its power, then political power is more valuable than human life. Ask yourself, is it true for you? Is it compatible with human dignity and with the idea that people create governments to live safely? Do you like this kind of power? Do you trust it? Are militarists right when they say that having a gun make you safer in dangerous world where your neighbour has a gun? Are they right that it would not be safe just to have a gun and not kill a neighbor who will probably attempt to kill you? Do you believe it is your obligation to participate in mass murder or preparation for it? Is it really necessary and inevitable as marketing of the militarists says, including the marketing in schools that supplants former attempts at peace education?

Putin would never invade Ukraine if he would have no power of conscription. And Europe failed to recognize this power as unjust. In 2014, when Putin already annexed Crimea and waged war of aggression by supporting terrorists and hiddenly using army in Eastern Ukraine, a philosophy student called Maksim Dyagilev adopted pacifist views, refused to serve in army and asked for alternative civilian service. He was denied under pretext of doubts in seriousness of his pacifist views, as if all people must be militarists by default and pacifists should be marginalized, not recognized and disempowered. The most shocking thing is that after he lost his lawsuit in courts in Russia in 2015, in 2020 the European Court of Human Rights found there was no violation of his right to conscientious objection to military service. Human rights organizations expressed concerns that the court disregarded standards of human rights law developed for a long time. Also, it considered a complaint five years despite its standard is that more than three years of domestic proceedings violate right to a fair trial; and it is good the case was considered at all, because 9 of 10 complaints are declared inadmissible without any explanations, the reasons are hidden in a confidential note for a single judge. In Ukraine, some prisoners of conscience later were denied in justice in that way. But this injustice started, when, sadly, the Strasbourg court that supposed to be a safeguard of democracy and human rights denied a right of Russian conscript to adopt pacifist views and refuse to fight Putin’s wars.

No wonder Putin invaded Ukraine. He had a power to turn citizens into a cannon fodder, and his pursuit of empire was acceptable according to so-called “realist” rules of great power competition, ignoring the reality that most of people does not want to fight wars and want to live in peace, have a right to peace. Does it matter for him who can manipulate people and force them to believe that “war is peace”, in Orwellian words? When you deny human rights, when your venerable court deny human rights, you live in the world where might is right, the world of lawlessness. The world in which a dictator could invade and occupy a territory of neighboring country under a pretext of saving the population, large part of which his army kills, tortures and detains for a lack of support to a dictator and unwilling to fight in his army.

This tendency could not be resisted by violence, only nonviolent action is a true resistance to war. When you respond to evil by becoming evil, the war consumes you. I refuse to engage in this vicious circle of violence and resist it by overcoming the evil with good, as Jesus taught us.

Ability to harm others does not guarantee peace or its weak egoistic version, so-called “security”; our kindness to others is the best security guarantee.

I belong to the Religious Society of Friends, the Quakers, who are determined, in the words of founder of our church George Fox, “to walk cheerfully around the world answering that of God in everyone”. I cannot kill a person who, even if behaves badly, still has this sacred light within, that might overcome darkness of evil behavior in any moment. History knows many stories of great sinners repented. I take seriously the commandment “you should not kill” and new covenant of love invoked by Jesus Christ in the Sermon on the Mount. I perceive this covenant not as exclusive connection between the Lord and believers, but as a universal value that makes all peoples united in diversity regardless of their religion or belief, nationality, gender, or any other identity. Being not only a Christian but also a scholar, I could discuss this covenant in secular terms because people of different views and traditions famously wrote in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that all humans are one family and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood and sisterhood. It was accepted and remains formally accepted by almost all nations in the world, despite, to my shame, my country, at that time Soviet Ukraine, was represented by a Stalin’s stooge and abstained during the vote along with two other stooges. Later it was remedied because Ukraine joined main human rights treaties. Problem is, that our government don’t comply with our treaties.

Human right to freedom of religion or belief in its internal aspect of free choice in adopting, holding or changing personal religion or belief, is absolute and cannot be denied by coercion of governments. To avoid such horrors like a Spanish inquisition, it was universally recognized and enshrined in European Convention on Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights that no one shall be subject to coercion which would impair one’s freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of one’s choice. This obligation of the state, that covers a right to conscientious objection to military service, should not be abandoned in time of war. The only way in which government could limit right to profess pacifist religion or belief, express it externally, is to compel pacifist citizens to undergo mandatory service of civilian nature substituting compulsory military service. And yet, even before Russian invasion alternative service was not accessible to the most of pacifists, discriminatory and punitive in its nature. After the invasion the army insisted on total denial in this right.

In our small religious community, Meeting of Friends of Ukraine, two Quakers suffered forced mobilization. One of them, Mykhailo Drijiruk, managed to take and publish in social media photos of bruises and scars of people after inhumane treatment by military recruiters of the Territorial Conscription Center, or TCC. It made a big scandal. He managed to escape, now he is wanted and is hiding from police. Another Quaker and pacifist, Oleksandr Ivanov, is detained in a military unit and not allowed to worship with us online. Like in prison, the so-called trainee soldiers are not allowed to talk to anyone except one short time in a week under supervision, with no privacy, and their phones are taken from them; they can’t move freely and are escorted by armed convoy to dining room, to barracks and so on. When Oleksandr was forcibly transported to a shooting range and refused to take a weapon, when he stayed in a distance, someone had shoot in his direction and commander refused to investigate complaint, he said it is a normal treatment of “draft dodgers” from Soviet time and that human losses during the “military training” are acceptable. Despite such threats and captivity, our Friend is determined not to take up arms.

Military mobilization started in Ukraine after the brutal Russian invasion in 2022, though performed with a legitimate aim of self-defense, is characterized by neglect of fundamental human rights, lawlessness and violence of military recruiters of Territorial Conscription Centers, lack of legal remedies to redress forced disappearance, arbitrary detention, torture, inhumane and cruel treatment, illegal conscription by mobilization to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. When a man walk at street or ride bicycle, he could be violently stopped by the recruiters and stuffed into a minibus; it is called “busification,” a new word of the year. Protests against forced mobilization are suppressed both formally, as a crime of interference in military affairs, and informally, since the media are encouraged to cover such protests as enemy’s influence, to portray “draft evaders” as enemies. There was recently a massive protest against detention of conscripts with seizing of their mobile phones at stadium in Vinnytsia, protesters dispersed using tear gas, 5 of them charged in interference in military affairs and attempt to take over public building. After a news that a conscript was tortured with a shocker and beaten to death in a bus transporting conscript, a crowd surrounded another such a bus and released conscripts, that was reported in media according to press-release of TCC scolding the “irresponsible sympathizers of draft evaders.” There are millions of people spontaneously informally resisting conscription and compulsory military registration measures, – for example, 6 millions of men not updated military registration, – but instead of honest democratic discussion and seeking fair solutions the military and the government are fully dedicated to compulsion and use of force. It became a taboo to question human rights aspects of forced mobilization or to propose alternative nonmilitary responses to Russian aggression. Human right to conscientious objection to military service is effectively not recognized, its exercise is punished as a draft evasion, but in the most cases it is not even a judicial punishment, people are just dragged kicking and screaming into army, detained incommunicado in military units.

United Nations and Council of Europe’s human rights commissioners reported detentions and tortures of conscientious objectors in attempts to force them to change their beliefs. The European Bureau for Conscientious Objection (EBCO) published an annual report which calls to release all prisoners of conscience in Ukraine, including those detained on Russia-occupied territories and those who suffered abuses because of harsh military mobilization for Ukrainian defensive war against Russian aggression. The report outlines 15 names of conscientious objectors detained in prisons and military units, all of them Christian pacifists, some served alternative service before, that are deprived of liberty for their faith and must be immediately released by Ukrainian government. I reported this in the Free Civilians media outlet and sent letters calling to release prisoners of conscience. Official responses received from authorities indicate no willing to release them. Prosecutorial offices wrote that the prisoners of conscience were, in their view, duly sentenced. Parliamentary committee wrote that conscientious objection is a crime of draft evasion. Parliamentary commissioner for human rights wrote conscientious objection is a threat to national security. The DESS, regulator of religion and minority affairs, wrote that the draft law on alternative service in wartime is not ready yet; their “interdepartmental working group” created in 2024 didn’t produced any changes in legislation necessary to provide alternative service during the war. Three complaints of conscientious objectors are stuck in the Constitutional Court of Ukraine that is reluctant to implement recent recommendations of the Venice Commission to recognize a right to conscientious objection, and the Supreme Court is reluctant to change its opinion that pacifism is a crime because of the army’s pressure.

In Ukraine, all men in age from 18 to 60 are considered a resource of conscription regardless of their beliefs and way of life, even prohibited to travel abroad and forcibly conscripted when they try to do so. I was not allowed to travel to Slovenia to conduct a research project with Peace Institute in Ljubljana. Fortunately, I found ways to conduct comparative studies of cultures and histories of peace in Ukraine and in Slovenia simultaneously continuing my human rights defending work in Kyiv. I started also a Free Civilians School of Pacifism and established in Kyiv an Institute of Peace and Law to study and develop norms of social life that help people to live in peace. I miss past time when I lectured in legal theory and history in university and focused on institutions of peace in my lectures, that approach was unique among Ukrainian scholars; the School of Pacifism, though informal, helped to share knowledge in hard times when a militarist and plagiarist became our minister of education. And I told attenders, among other, some interesting findings, including a paradox that movements for independence both in Ukraine and Slovenia were critical to Russian and Serbian militarism respectively, successfully used nonviolent methods, but after gaining independence both countries somehow ended in seeking NATO membership, as if military alliance is better protection than nonviolent solidarity of the people.

In 2022, on the International Day of Peace, Ukrainian Pacifist Movement adopted a statement condemning Russian aggression and all wars, calling for nonviolent resistance, not to demonized “enemies” but to any militarist behavior, such as Putin’s bombing of Ukrainian cities killing civilians. I sent this statement to President Zelensky. Then Security Service of Ukraine came to my house, searched and seized my computer and smartphone. I was accused in so-called justification of Russian aggression in pacifist statement condemning it, that is nonsense, precisely for the call to resist Russian aggression nonviolently on the basis of reason, not hate. My trial was postponed many times because a prosecutor failed to appear, but when and if this political trial will come to sentence, I could be imprisoned for up to 5 years. Yet I wrote again and again new letters calling to provide alternative nonmilitary service to conscientious objectors and institutionalize nonviolent resistance. Such letters are usually forwarded to ministry of defense and result in nothing, maximum in response that such ideas are inacceptable for army as the only defenders of Ukraine, but it is necessary for the future to continue this advocacy of nonviolent action and peace education efforts. Without hope for changes, future would be disappointing.

Without knowledge, there is no hope. And it is so embarrassing that leaders of my country sometimes say things that reveal lack of knowledge of basics about peace because of their trust in militarist ideology. President Zelensky once said no talks could stop rockets. However, the talks between the U.S. and USSR during the Cuban Missile Crisis averted the risk of thermonuclear war and literally stopped the ballistic missiles from being fired and killing millions of people. I don’t know though, maybe Zelensky already changed his mind because he wants a ceasefire to talk with Putin. A retired Ukrainian general Zaluzhny serving as our ambassador in the UK once falsely blamed the UN in a public speech at the London Defence Conference for allegedly not admitting that Russia kills civilians in Ukraine. Ironically, it coincided in time with false accusations from Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs that the UN does not check information about civilian deaths in Ukraine when blaming Russia. When the UN report Russian war crimes, it is in all media, but when abuses on Ukrainian side are exposed, there is shocking silence, or even worse, comments of a minister of culture and “strategic communication” – an euphemism for militarist propaganda, –that the UN is full of Russian agents and UN reports are pure politics without fact check. How dare he to say such things when the UN human rights monitoring mission triple-checks facts before reporting? At least, I am thankful they don’t prohibit UN activities yet, like Israel do in this genocidal campaign to conquer Gaza. But disinformation against the UN is a serious problem, and it must be resisted, because such denigration legitimized shortages in funding of the world organization of peaceful governance and undermined many peacebuilding and humanitarian activities vitally needed in our war-torn world. Such things as veto need reform, I grant it, but this should not be an excuse for withdrawing our support of the UN and claiming the UN is not effective, because it managed to do a lot with such a small resources, considering that its 30-billion annual budget is nothing in comparison with 2 trillions of annual global military spending. We need to save the UN and start to invest in peace seriously instead of investing in war. I wish to see protests with slogans “Save the UN” in capitals of all nations who treat the UN and its Charter with contempt, who don’t pay duly their membership fees like the U.S., under offices of all media that spread lies about the UN.

Nonviolent popular action, spontaneous and organized, averted wars in the past and could do it again. Draft resistance and popular protests ended American war in Vietnam and Soviet war in Afghanistan. When millions went to the streets in Europe protesting against escalation of cold war towards a nuclear conflict, it pushed great powers to conclude Helsinki Accords and other treaties restraining nuclear arms race. The most basic thing that many people always do spontaneously and that could be done better when organized and institutionalized, is refusal to kill. So I invite you to support the Object War Campaign aimed at ending the war in Europe by helping those who refuse to participate in the war.

Current system of world governance based on anarchic arbitrariness of sovereign governments and over-investment into violent means of wrongly perceived security is destructive for a future of humankind and needs rethinking and redesign. It could not be achieved without nonviolent resistance to war profiteers and other actors interested in status quo.

We need to be aware that the institutions of peace built by many generations of visioners and faithful workers could be corrupted and actually are subverted to a degree for the benefit of war profiteers. Democracy that supposed to be a nonviolent governance is abused by procedures of building popular support for war and repression of dissent. Rule of law that supposed to promote and protect human rights is abused by procedures of depriving people of their rights and coercion against conscience, common sense and nonviolent way of life.

We need to build well-organized peace movements everywhere able to reclaim democracy and rule of law, empower and enforce peace by massive civil disobedience to all sorts of war and violence, study and practice knowledge-based nonviolent action and make happen the vision of world governed peacefully where all people live as one family in harmony with natural environment on the common planet. This vision might look like a too great task, but it deserves our efforts. It is a worthy goal to move forward, step by step.

We need to be ready to start this movement for big changes in the world from a work in small groups and courageous individual action. Personal example of nonviolent resistance is an important icebreaker. Let’s admit that we live in environment hostile to peace movements. Dictators and warmongers have technologies helping them to organize astroturfing and claim that public opinion is on their side. But peace movements are working in the interests of people, to shape reality according to universal human right to peace, and with patient dialog and education efforts people will understand that. Building popular resilience to propaganda war, disinformation, cultivation of ignorant gullibility and other populist manipulations is another important form of pacifist resistance to systemic violence.

War resisters have a great job ahead: to uphold human right to refuse to kill; to prevent emerging security state and nationalist military dictatorship from hijacking public politics by offering and practicing nonviolent and nonmilitary responses to warmongering and perceived threats to peace; to show ineffectiveness of violence and power of civil disobedience to tyrants and aggressors. Doing all of this, I invite you to resist together all wars and build a better world without wars.