In Equator this week, the writer and photographer Yevgenia Belorusets described the growing resistance inside Ukraine to the state’s tactics of forced conscription. Even as we published Belorusets’s piece, the news was filled with reports that a peace deal, forced by the US, might finally be cemented. We asked the Ukrainian sociologist Volodymyr Ishchenko about the plan that has emerged, and about the ineptness of European leaders throughout these negotiations.

Volodymyr Ishchenko

How do you assess the ongoing peace talks?

Typically, the peace negotiations that end such a complicated and brutal war take not just months but years to be finalised. It’s very good that discussions have resumed, and for the first time all the parties seem to be truly serious, but the road ahead may still be long. There will surely be significant differences between the present 28-point-plan and a final deal, if one is ever reached.

With that caveat, I would say that the current plan represents a defeat – but, significantly, not a capitulation – for Ukraine. It is a defeat because all the Russian demands in this plan were already present, in some form, in the terms that Vladimir Putin has been proposing since the start of the invasion: political

neutrality (no NATO membership), limiting the size of the armed forces (now to 600,000 soldiers, which is still more than twice the size of the army before the war began!), “denazification”, territorial concessions in the southeast.

It is not a capitulation because the plan does not allow Russia to take over most of Ukraine’s territory, or install a puppet government, or destroy Ukrainian identity. These are generally understood to be part of Putin’s “maximalist agenda”.

Putin objectively has the upper hand on the front line. If he is willing to accept limited achievements, that is perhaps because he has already won enough.

If the terms of peace have not advanced in almost four years, why have European governments pushed Ukraine to keep fighting?

Let us be clear: European leaders do not have a serious proposal or agenda to present as an alternative to the Trump-Putin plan. Instead, after two days of stunned silence, they have only made demands of Putin that he was certain to dismiss out of hand. They have revealed themselves to be completely out of touch with reality. What explains this?

One explanation is that European elites are trying to buy themselves more time – by paying with Ukrainian lives – to remilitarise and build stronger European armies, which can hold their own in the battlefield without American support, which they know can no longer be taken for granted. The problem with this approach, besides the sacrifice of Ukrainian lives, is that it is unlikely that European countries will be able to match Russia’s nuclear arsenal within decades, let alone years.

Another explanation is that European elites want to present themselves as Ukraine’s true supporters. Trump has betrayed Ukraine with these peace talks, but we, the courageous European Centre, still stand with our ally.

What explains this strategic incompetence?

In the past three decades, European elites have displayed a total lack of political leadership, they have been unable to propose a feasible security structure that can accommodate the interests of both Ukraine and Russia. This perhaps reflects a deeper crisis of knowledge about both countries and the post-Soviet region in general. Since the full-scale invasion began, European politicians, their consultants, think tanks and academic analysts, have consistently overestimated Ukraine’s resilience and, conversely, underestimated Russia.

If European leaders continue on the path to remilitarisation, it will likely precipitate a crisis within the European Union itself. Where will they find the money for these weapons and missiles? The answer is always the same: by diverting it from welfare provisions. The German welfare state, for instance, will end up on the chopping block.

Look, Europe can no longer pretend it is the beacon of modernisation. Even setting aside their response to the war in Ukraine, many European leaders are facing a huge crisis of political legitimacy at home. The French and British ruling coalitions, for instance, have seen dramatic falls in their popularity ratings. These leaders are not trusted by their own citizens, so what legitimacy will they have to broker an external geopolitical conflict? This is why Trump and Putin have simply cast them aside.

Pakistani media erupted with speculation last week about the death of Imran Khan: once the superstar who won his country the cricket World Cup in 1992, then the leader of his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) political party, then prime minister, and now, since August 2023, a 73-year-old incarcerated by the military in Rawalpindi's Adiala Jail. Imran, it turned out, was alive; his sister, having visited Pakistan’s most famous man in prison, said he was “perfectly fine.”

Osman Samiuddin, author of The Unquiet Ones, the definitive history of Pakistani cricket, visited Pakistan not long ago, on Imran’s trail for an upcoming piece for Equator. We asked him what he made of the wild alarm around Imran’s death and the mutable nature of his celebrity.

Osman Samiuddin

Was it odd, given Imran's vast popularity, that the only people protesting upon rumours of his death were his party’s supporters?

The make-up of the protestors wasn’t surprising as such. Imran’s fame stretches far beyond that of any personality in Pakistan, but he’s in a fiercely political battle right now. So it makes sense it was only his party workers out there. But also extremely relevant was the physicality with which the security forces treated his sisters, because it really reinforced a point about the kind of establishment we’re dealing with in Pakistan. This isn’t soft-touch authoritarianism. There is a real menace and vindictiveness to them.

The fervour of the speculation surrounding his death caught me slightly off guard. It’s not like it hadn’t happened before; during the India-Pakistan military confrontation earlier this year, a press release from Pakistan’s foreign office did the rounds announcing Imran’s death. It turned out to be completely fake and easy to prove as such. But this time, access to Imran was totally cut off for the longest spell – nearly a month without meetings with his sisters or lawyers or party leaders. 

The stink of misinformation that floats around us is also as pungent as it has ever been. It started as a hashtag (#whereisimrankhan), was picked up by dubious news platforms, then news aggregators, then more established news platforms (one of which even ran an obituary of sorts), and then global news agencies. Such was this momentum of content-generation that, by this stage, outside of a handful of people at Adiala Jail and in government, it had become impossible to know for sure whether the most famous man in Pakistan was dead or alive. Which, in this day and age, is quite the feat.

How would you describe the change in the character of Imran’s fame from say 1992 to today?

In a broad sense, his fame now is of a far more contested and divisive nature, due entirely to the nature of his politics, and of his tenure as prime minister. If he has a far larger base of fans and supporters than before, he also has more critics than he ever did. And as both sides become ever more entrenched in their space, the discourse around him becomes more amplified than ever.

There are two things to keep in mind. One: his fame now is almost a new fame, like a layer on top of his fame pre-politics. An entire generation of Pakistanis have grown up never having seen him play cricket or jet-set around the globe as the country's premier playboy. Instead, they know him and engage with him as a political figure. Second: even when he was a superstar cricketer, there was a persistent and vocal minority that was considered anti-Imran. It was partly parochial – Karachiites complained that he was partial to Punjabi players – but also comprised those who chafed against the dictatorial and entitled tendencies of his captaincy. For all his undoubted fame, he was never unanimously popular.

What are your own impressionistic memories of Imran the cricketer?

I first saw Imran play when he was already deep into his career, in his mid-30s. But even then, as a physical specimen, he was unlike anyone around him, definitely in that Pakistan team, and most other sides. Cricket was a fairly unathletic sport in the 1980s and here was Imran, broad-shouldered, toned arms and with a zero-percent-body-fat kind of leanness. Around him were careless paunches and love handles. And then he’d run in to bowl, a graceful glide in, a great sideways leap, and then, at high pace, the ball released. The gold necklace and luxuriant mullet-y mane accessorised it, and if you didn’t feel the pure, primal thrill of this, you were probably dead.