UKRAINE, Jan 6—Over 160 Ukrainian public figures, including MPs, human rights activists, diplomats, academics, famous artists, and members of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish religious communities and others, published an open appeal to world leaders “dedicated to the issues of ending war in a just way and establishing sustainable peace.” 

The letter is called “Do not appease evil,” and the authors urge world leaders not to support a freeze on the Russian-Ukrainian war, which will “signal the weakness of the West and encourage further aggression and wars that spill the blood of Europeans and Americans.” 

They argue that the war is not confined to Ukraine, and if world leaders demand the concession of Ukrainian territories and sovereignty without effective security guarantees, “they will essentially bring about Ukraine’s defeat, which will signal to China and other revisionists that they can seize what they want.” 

The authors say that the effective end to the war is the end to Russian aggression, which “could be a solution to many problems of the democratic world.” 

“For Ukraine itself, this war is existential: it is a war for survival of the Ukrainian nation, society, and state. Ukrainian democratic and Russian authoritarian-imperial political visions are essentially mutually exclusive. That means that any ‘freezing’ of the conflict at this or that demarcation line will not lead either to a relief of tensions or to the establishment of sustainable peace.”

The authors urge the world leaders to stop appeasing Russia and instead work to “win together.”

“Ukraine and the entire democratic world can only win together or give in and lose together. The illusion of peace at the cost of shame has repeatedly brought on a new war.”