When Kremlin “fans” in Tirana demand submission

Following the presidential results of last November in Washington, an increasingly vocal group of analysts and commentators, who share the same line of thought as Mr. Dritan Hila, have begun to propagate the same narrative on the issue of the war in Ukraine. In his post “An explanation for Zelensky’s fans and Trump’s enemies” dated March 1, 2025 , Mr. Hila claims to open our eyes to the meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and US President Donald Trump, to reach a peace agreement. However, this approach is not simply individual, but part of a broader public trend that, following recent political developments, has adopted a narrative guided solely by the logic of force majeure or “the strongest”, distorting historical facts and openly positioning themselves in a way that sounds like an echo of the Kremlin’s bells. According to him, the conflict is presented in black and white terms: either Ukraine accepts “peace” immediately, or the world faces nuclear apocalypse.

The main argument of Mr. Hila and many others is that Ukraine can never win a war against a nuclear power like Russia, so the West must insist on peace as soon as possible. According to them, any weapons given to Ukraine “will only prolong its agony” and risk pushing Russia towards chaos, with the clear understanding that this chaos means global nuclear war. This is an open appeal to fear, which operates on the idea of ​​“surrender, or else you will cause World War III.” This logical blackmail is as baseless as it is dangerous in two essential respects: first, it denies and invalidates all the historical efforts of nations that have fought for the ideals and principles of a just war and for the protection of their sovereignty and territorial integrity; secondly, it conveys the message that any nation facing injustice must surrender when faced with a militarily more powerful enemy, completely disregarding the right to resistance and the pursuit of justice.

First, history shows that the “nuclear power,” Russia, is not invincible on the ground. It should not be forgotten in this context that the Ukrainian troops have proven this especially within the first months of the war, when they not only were not occupied within 72 hours as predicted by the Russian military command, but forced the Russian forces to withdraw first from Kiev and then from northern Ukraine, continuing to liberate regions across the country thanks to heroic resistance. Also, in the fall of 2022, Ukraine launched counteroffensives in Kharkiv and Kherson, liberating territory occupied by Russia. While last year, they also launched an incursion into Kursk inside Russia. These and other facts from the war there, deny the fatalistic assertion that Ukraine “has no chance”. On the contrary, with the continued support of the US-EU, Ukraine has managed to repel Moscow’s plans to turn the war into a frozen conflict. To declare that “Ukraine cannot win” is to completely ignore the dynamic reality of the battlefield and the successes that have already been achieved against all predictions.

Second, the argument “Russia has nuclear weapons, so Ukraine should not be strengthened” is morally and strategically dangerous. If we were to follow this logic, any nuclear power could invade anyone it wanted, without fear of anything. Bowing to Putin’s nuclear blackmail would not bring peace to Ukraine; on the contrary, it would set a fatal precedent for the future. It would signal to several countries in the world that nuclear weapons are the ticket to rule. Imagine North Korea for a moment. In other words, Mr. Hill’s doctrine of “surrender because the aggressor has the bomb” sounds like a recipe for global catastrophe, not peace. Ironically, by bowing to Moscow’s threats, the world would become much more dangerous, where any dictator armed with nuclear warheads could dictate the fate of his neighbors.

Third, the very fact that Russia threatens that “the world makes no sense without Russia” demonstrates the blackmailing nature of the Putinist regime. Mr. Hill takes these threats for granted as if they were a law of nature, without questioning why the world should accept Moscow’s logic. Moreover, he overlooks a crucial element… which even Moscow knows very well, that the use of nuclear weapons would be suicidal, following the concept of “MAD – mutual assured destruction”. It should be considered a duty of Western leaders not to fall prey to this fear, and so far they have balanced support for Ukraine with caution not to directly provoke Moscow into a wider conflict. So the choice is not “either we make peace by giving Putin what he wants, or we blow ourselves up”. These are the two extremes of Mr. Hill’s scenario. The trick, a false dilemma that ignores the intermediate option, the continuation of pressure and support until the aggressor realizes that war is not in their interest.

To conclude this section, Mr. Hila’s claim that “arming Ukraine is merely delaying its agony” is not only cynical, but also completely unfounded. The real “agony” would be if Ukraine were left at the mercy of the Russian army without the weapons to defend itself. Then we would truly see its destruction and all the values ​​that we as Albanians claim to believe in and share with Western countries: the freedom of peoples to determine their own destiny, sovereignty and territorial integrity, and basic democratic principles and universal freedoms and human rights. Thanks to Western armaments, Ukraine has survived the initial aggression and has even gone on the counterattack, showing that the war may not end with the Kremlin’s victory. Mr. Hila himself contradicts himself: he says that Ukraine “cannot win the war,” but he also claims that its continuation “pushes Russia into a chaos that frightens the world.” So where does the truth lie, Mr. Hila, because your logic seems like an oxymoron. Is Ukraine so weak that it cannot achieve victory and return its territories, or so dangerous that it can push Russia towards collapse? It cannot be both. This kind of self-refutation shows that his argument does not hold up, unless it aims to maximize fear in every direction. Such a contradictory argument only serves the propaganda of “Pravda” that will sow fear and confusion, not serious analysis.