Several months since the invasion of Russian forces into Ukraine, there has been no significant step by both parties toward finding a lasting peaceful solution. Eugene Plotkin, an American-based businessman, and CEO of TechWallet, an organization dedicated to improving people’s financial literacy through technology, speaks about the war, its future and how it could be ended. He attended Harvard University and became a business, technology and finance professional before becoming fintech’s consultant for startups and starting TechWallet. His opinion on the war matters because he was born in the Soviet Union and understands the needs of Russians and Ukrainians.
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Before the war, the Donbas region was engulfed in a years-long conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Russia’s military invasion, which Ukraine says was unprovoked, was set to achieve three goals; keep the nations of the Donbas region independent, reduce Ukraine’s military power and prevent it from joining NATO. Even as Ukraine continues to receive humanitarian and military help from the United States and western allies and more economic sanctions are imposed on Russia, Russia still seems to hold the upper hand.
Even though there seems to be no solution soon, Eugene Plotkin has a few suggestions for stopping the war. He says that despite the understandable reasons for the war, it is time for the world, especially Europe, to force the two parties into negotiations for a peaceful solution. Since the early meetings at their border and in Turkey, there has been no other meeting between the two nations’ leaders. Although Ukraine’s determination to fight for sovereignty is commendable, it is incurring massive losses because the war is happening within its borders, and its military capability is smaller than Russia’s. Besides, the cultures between western and eastern Ukraine are different; therefore, many Ukrainians in the eastern region would fight for Russia if given a chance.
Eugene suggests an economic approach to finding a compromise between the warring nations. In game theory, the parties should take away their emotions from the picture, forget about being wrong or right and focus entirely on resource allocation. All wars end in a peaceful solution, and if Ukraine is to prevent itself from losing more territory, property and soldiers, now is the time to call for peace talks. Russia is greatly advantaged. It has significantly more resources than Ukraine, but if the war continues, more violence will likely be seen, and both parties will likely incur big losses.
Eugene Plotkin notes that the Russians are a very determined nation regarding defending territory. Despite losing at least 3 million and 11 million soldiers in World War I and II, they still fought to protect their territory.
Towards finding a solution to the conflict, he believes that Europe should work harder to stop the war before it spills to other countries like Romania, Belarus and Poland. Ukraine has recently acknowledged its losses so far to be huge. Eugene hopes this realization could be the beginning for Ukraine, Russia and other world leaders to set aside their egos and work towards an acceptable compromise.
