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Politico ran the headline, “Ukraine Peace Plans Galore.”

Ukraine, Russia, and China each have a peace plan. Trump is developing one. The Alliance of Democracies has one. It looks a lot like Ukraine’s plan at first glance.

There’s talk of a Demilitarized Zone between Ukraine and Russia. There’s also the suggestion of imposing a frozen conflict. They seem like an open invitation for continued stress between the countries, not real peace.

So, what’s the ignored key path to peace I’m talking about?

The first step along that path involves adopting a strategy of honesty. That requires sharp awareness of a troubling situation. It is that the mainstream Ukraine narrative expressed by most of our politicians is fabricated. Likewise are the stories reported by our media.

Instead of debunking all the falsehoods one by one I’ll describe the truths that the false narratives ignore. They became apparent to me by closely following what actually happened during and after the revolution. Here’s what I saw:

When in 2014 the Maidan revolutionaries took over by force, they cancelled Ukraine’s democracy.

• They illegally chased the democratically elected president out of the country, falsely claiming he was impeached. But on close examination he wasn’t. The United States has admitted that. A Ukrainian official also confirmed it to me personally. No impeachment. No resignation, either.

• The revolutionaries threw out the democratically promulgated constitution and replaced it with an old one that the legitimate Supreme Court had previously declared unconstitutional.

• They began to rule as militant, self-appointed, unelected leaders of a new, non-democratic state.

• They showed early intentions of drastically altering what had been successfully a Ukrainian-Russian multilingual state. That actually played out in later overt initiatives to linguistically and culturally cleanse things Russian from the new Ukrainian state. That brought about the oppression of Ukraine’s significant Russian minority population.

Most areas of Ukraine accepted all that as a fait accompli. Two did not: Crimea and Donbas. (Donbas consists of the areas known as Donetsk and Luhansk.)

Both Crimea and Donbas rejected the loss of democracy and also the unelected revolutionary leaders that caused it. Crimea and Donbas each declared their respective independence.

In response, the revolutionaries launched a hostile attack. They waged war on what was by then the independent area of Donbas. The intent was apparently to capture it by force.

They didn’t attack Crimea, however.

You see, a treaty that Russia had with Ukraine gave Russia control over its historical naval base at Sevastopol, Crimea. It also allowed for up to 25,000 Russian troops to be stationed there. According to the March 18, 2014 Washington Post, Russia was believed to have had about 15,000 on-base at the time of the revolution. That may have deterred an attack by the revolutionaries.

The net effect of the revolution was to create in a very real sense a different country, a different Ukraine.

Look at the chain of events I described above. Pre revolution — democracy. Post revolution — unelected rule by force. There was a complete break from the earlier government. There was no continuity. Pre revolution — control over Donbas and Crimea. Post revolution — no such control. They both had achieved independence.

In a de facto sense, pre-revolution Ukraine and post-revolution Ukraine aren’t the same country when it comes to statehood.

The post-revolution Ukrainian state was given some semblance of democracy in June 2014. That’s when it installed its first democratically elected president, Petro Poroshenko. This was about two months after the revolutionaries had already attacked Donbas. Upon taking office Poroshenko continued to attack Donbas as did Volodymyr Zelensky who followed as president.

To appreciate the concept of post-revolution Ukraine as a “different country” think of China in the 1900s. It had a revolution, too. Pre revolution it was the Republic of China. Post revolution it was the communist People’s Republic of China. Again, a complete break. Who would argue that they were the same country?

This perspective is consistent with a multinational treaty. It is the Montevideo Convention of 1933. It was signed on behalf of the United States by Cordell Hull, President Franklin Roosevelt’s secretary of state.

In international law this treaty is widely regarded as definitional regarding statehood and country status. Two essential qualifications are government and territory. Pre- and post-revolution Ukraine were discontinuous on both qualifications.

Why have the politicians and media gone for the false narrative? The full answer is beyond the scope of this article. But suffice to say, the extended war has been very lucrative and beneficial for many investors/financiers, defense industry companies, and politicians.

The impact of this on a potentially successful peace plan is a misalignment of interests. The interests of the war beneficiaries are served by prolonged war and tensions, not by sustainable peace.

That’s exactly why a sustainable peace agreement must be based on an honest perspective. The so-called peace plans that I’ve seen in the news all are accommodations of the false narrative. An honest accounting of the etiology of war in Ukraine will serve as a sounder basis.

I’m not suggesting that this be used to place blame. That would not be a wise approach. Rick Staggenborg, MD has followed this situation and explains: “To move toward peace in Ukraine we don’t have to agree on who is at fault. Unfortunately too many make that a big issue — but that’s gotten us nowhere. As a psychotherapist with training in family therapy, I know from experience that focusing on who is responsible for a problem almost never leads to a satisfactory solution; indeed it can be counterproductive.”

The key principals in negotiating a genuine peace plan must be the presidents of Ukraine, Russia, and the United States. I fail to see how they can bring about sustainable peace if the pretense of the false narrative is not broken, regardless of how entrenched it has become.

An approach based on honesty will have a better chance.

Here’s an example of an honest approach on a related matter: In mapping Ukraine, the National Geographic Society in 2014 chose not to include Crimea as part of it.

U.S. News quoted the Society’s geographer and director of editorial and research, “We map de facto, in other words we map the world as it is, not as people would like it to be.” That’s honesty on display.

In contrast, a spokesperson for Rand McNally said, “We take our direction from the State Department.” At that time the State Department was headed by politician John Kerry.

But fighting the false mainstream narrative will be difficult. There is a lot of dishonest narrative to discard.

Many countries have recognized the bogus territorial claims of the revolutionaries as factual. They’ve accepted the false narrative as being true. They side with the war beneficiaries. Those countries do so in disregard of the actual facts that are at hand.

However, in traditional diplomacy the concept of “recognition” is very powerful. Many judgments are based on that concept. Negotiators will need strength to oppose that.

“Recognition” is a political contrivance, though. It does not necessarily comport with the honest truth. Frankly, recognition sounds to me like a genteel euphemism for mob rule.

The negotiators will have a lot of controversial issues to deal with: Russia’s sudden 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the disposition of post-Ukraine territories now claimed by Russia, the main water supply for Crimea that the revolutionaries cut off, just to start with.

Then there are Russia’s security concerns over Nato advancement. History tells that President John F. Kennedy brought the world to the brink of nuclear war in 1962 over a Soviet missile threat far smaller than the Nato threat now perceived by Russia. In due fairness, Russia deserves having Nato threats considered with a comparable level of seriousness.

The peace negotiators will need the courage and integrity to resist pressure from the war beneficiaries and their allies, and reject the entrenched false narrative about Ukraine.

I hope that an honest view of the real circumstances will prevail if and when the three presidents meet to negotiate peace. That in effect is the “key path to Ukraine peace that has been long ignored by all.”

Original article: The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity