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Abstract

This article analyses competing discourses of peace in the Russo-Ukrainian war by asking how they reproduce, enable, or resist relations of colonial domination. It examines peace proposals advanced by Russia, Ukraine, and aspiring mediators, in particular, Trump’s diplomatic blitz and the Group of Friends for Peace on the Ukraine Crisis, founded by China and Brazil at the UN. We argue that these peace discourses are structured by three competing logics: Russia’s colonial entitlement, mediators’ colonial enablement, and Ukraine’s anti-colonial resistance. Russia framed peace as a pacification of an allegedly chaotic Ukraine in a great-power concert with the US, demanding limits on Ukraine’s internal and external sovereignty. The Trump administration and the China-Brazil initiative did not fully reject these premises: they treated Ukrainian concessions as a route to stability and validated spheres-of-influence thinking. Ukraine articulated peace as sovereign agency and justice, advancing a distinct variety of anti-colonialism that rejected self-victimisation and sought alignment with European modernity. By reframing peace discourses as sites of colonial politics and extending existing accounts of anti-colonial agency, the article contributes to the scholarship on wartime diplomacy, the normative foundations of multipolarity, and varieties of anti-colonialism.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in International Affairs following peer review. The version of record will be available online at: https://academic.oup.com/ia
Subjects:	J Political Science > JA Political science (General) J Political Science > JV Colonies and colonization. Emigration and immigration. International migration
Departments:	School of Policy & Global Affairs School of Policy & Global Affairs > Department of International Politics
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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