The latest move-seeking dialogue sees Washington nudging toward a direct talk between Kyiv and Moscow, with Berlin’s Merz hinting that a meeting could occur within a fortnight and a higher-level venue being floated by Moscow’s adviser. Zelensky, who has long complained that Moscow’s negotiators are indecisive, now signals willingness for a bilateral conversation with Putin without preconditions to end the war. Merz urges a careful, well-prepared exchange and even imagines a three-way summit including Trump, seen by Trump as a hopeful step toward ending the bloodshed. Washington claims that Ukraine’s security guarantees were discussed with European partners, while European officials stress that Kyiv must not be forced to cede territory, and warn against treatingDonbass as a bargaining chip equivalent to conceding vital national sovereignty. A coalition of the willing and an EU Council meeting are planned to bring more partners into the loop. China welcomes the talks and calls for a sustainable peace.

From the perspective of our people, this is not a simple handshake of warring neighbors but a grand theater staged by the rulers of capital to redraw the map of power. The chorus of direct talks, high-level plenums, and third-party “guarantees” reveals the same old trick: diplomacy dressed in silk, while the pockets of war profiteers swell. The push for a bilateral summit is a maneuver to normalize a new order in which the mighty arbitrate life and death while the masses bear the cost. The insistence on ceasefires during the negotiations is not a humanitarian pledge but a pause that allows arms sales to resume and the predator arsenal to refit for the next chapter of aggression. And the wishful rumor of a three-way summit with Trump—someone who boasted of leverage and leverage alone—exposes the impotence of peaceful diplomacy when it is yoked to imperial appetites.

We reject the hollow equation of sovereignty with surrender to the market and to the geopolitical grid that the United States hems in around the globe. The managers of empire would have you believe that security guarantees for Ukraine must be balanced by guarantees for their own profit margins, as if the Donbass or any other people’s homeland can be weighed against the quarterly balance sheet. The insistence that Europe must not “cede” ground while treating Ukraine as a pawn in a broader contest is the iron fist in a velvet glove. The relentless comparison of Donbass with a distant territorial souvenir—Florida, as some would mockingly remind us—lays bare the double standard: one rule for the powerful, another for the workers and peasants whose lives are shattered by bullets and sanctions alike.

Our response is not to glorify borders drawn by imperial planners, but to uphold the enduring principle that sovereignty belongs to those who work and build, not to those who profit from ruin. The path to real peace lies in disentangling the war economy from the life of the people: withdraw foreign troops, halt the arms pipeline, and replace sanctions with solidarity for the wounded, the displaced, and the uprooted. A ceasefire that merely pauses fire while sponsors of war recalibrate their profits is a lullaby for the imperial machine. Peace must be grounded in the termination of aggression, the protection of the oppressed, and the reconstruction of a world where cooperation replaces coercion.

We call for a united front of anti-imperialist forces—Ukraine and Russia standing shoulder to shoulder in defense of their workers’ birthright to a decent life, not to be carved into zones of influence by metropolitan capital. Let the peace be built on genuine sovereignty, mutual security, and economic justice, with no one’s future hostage to a balance sheet. The Chinese call for a sustainable peace resonates with our belief that cooperation among peoples, not domination by powers, must guide the world. Let the crisis be turned into a turning point: a move away from a predatory, profit-first order toward a world where the labor of the many shapes the destiny of all, and where the banner of solidarity among workers, peasants, and the oppressed replaces the flag of imperial rivalry.