The great people of this world

Today, as we stand alongside the Ukrainians in their fight to protect their homeland, we should start thinking about the ‘day after’ the war ends. We hope this day will come soon.

Today’s battle in the streets of Ukrainian cities is a fight for our core values, respect for dignity and human rights.

The ‘day after’ battle will be a battle to live together with our Russian neighbours. Geography is stubborn. We will continue to live next to each other.

As we prepare for the ‘day after’, we should not forget that the Russian people are great people. They have given a lot to the world: science, technology, politics, literature, music, art and faith, to cite only a few. They suffered the invasion of Nazis and Fascist armies and they paid the highest price in human lives to defeat Hitler and his Allies and they accompanied the Soviet regime out of the human history.

The Russian people should not be blamed for the decision taken by its leaders to wage a brutal war in Ukraine. Neither can they be blamed for denying the Ukrainian people their rights to make sovereign decisions on their way of life, or for choosing their security arrangements without reducing the security of others.

In the same way the American and European people are great people. They have contributed a lot to the world: in science, technology, politics, literature, music, art and faith. They have given a lot to develop democracy and human rights.

However, it shouldn’t be forgotten that their leaders have also committed deeply wrong deeds. They have waged wars, facilitated coups d’états, and destroyed entire civilisations all over the world in the name of colonialism.

So the Russian government leaders are right to say that the American and other European nations did commit atrocities and waged brutal wars throughout their history. We also acknowledge that.

But through the birth of the United Nations, the European Union and the Organization for the Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), we committed ourselves never to do so again, and to solve our differences through an ongoing system of negotiations. We are not talking here about the past, but about the future. And the invasion of Ukraine is, alas, the worst possible revisitation of a bygone era that should have been buried forever.

We remain one world. Difficult as it may be, it is essential that we find ways to live together. Should we fail, we are assuring our mutual destruction.

It is time for a ceasefire, and a return to the negotiating table. We must find ways to build a common security system, where the security concerns of every state, whether big or small, are accounted for and addressed in a serious and responsible manner.

Let us be responsible, not driven by propagandistic rhetoric or political opportunism, but by our responsibility to the whole of mankind, where every life saved matters.

Looking for hope in the ‘day after’, my thoughts turned to Mikhail Bulgakov, a brilliant writer who has contributed some of the greatest lines in literature’s history. Bulgakov was a Kyiv native. He lived in Moscow and wrote there.

His masterpiece “Master and Margarita” is one of the most beloved readings by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, who helped to shape our digital future.

Bulgakov reminds us that we were and we should remain one world. At one point he writes: “I don’t have any special talents, just an ordinary desire to live like a human being.” We still live in a world where millions are being denied this basic desire: through wars, oppression, poverty and inequality.

The irrationality and inhumanity of the Russian aggression should and must not encourage irrationality of the response, which will lead to a nuclear catastrophe.

Humanity and rationality must teach us that we are all one world. This is not a world where on one side we have saints and on the other side we have sinners. We are all sinners to one extent or another, seeking redemption.

In Bologna last summer at the Interfaith Meeting, we agreed on a Parva Carta pledging ourselves: “We must not kill each other. We must rescue each other. We must forgive each other. We concluded that for people to prosper and for the planet to be saved, the three Ps of people, Prosperity and Planet must be complemented by Peace. Without Peace everything falls apart.”

We must find ways of living together difficult as it might be and to find peace not after victory but before the catastrophe. As an Italian intellectual friend of mine saddened and very worried by what is going on in Ukraine told me recently: “We the European people must not be weak and stupid, but strong and wise: we must show that diplomacy is not cowardice but wisdom. The alternative is to destroy each other.”