The war isn't here yet.

Russia has not yet invaded Ukraine, although some feared it would last week.

That's the good news - even if the Russian spearheads are still standing by.

Three words in particular resonate in these days of war danger.

They fell on Monday and Tuesday during the Chancellor's trip to Ukraine and Russia.

The first comes from Olaf Scholz himself. He said in Kiev and then in Moscow that Ukraine's accession to NATO was "not on the agenda".

The second spoke Vladimir Putin.

Scholz countered that Kiev was committing a “genocide” in the Donbass, where Russian fighters have been occupying Ukrainian territory for eight years and the fighting is now intensifying again.

The third word came from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

He told Scholz that "preventive signals" were now needed against Russia.

Breach of word and its price

Word number one and Olaf Scholz.

His statement that Ukraine's admission to NATO is "not on the agenda" seems to be a commonplace.

Everyone knows that Allianz will not keep the clear promise of admission it made to Ukraine in Bucharest in 2008 for the foreseeable future, because Berlin in particular never intended to keep its word.

That's why accession hasn't materialized to this day - with the result that Putin was able to invade Ukraine in 2014 without risk.

So the statement that the admission was never due anyway is not new.

What is new, however, is that the chancellor is now taking the breach of his promise as a matter of course, and that he has also told Putin how long the promise that he has given will not be kept.

For as long as they would both be in office.

This has two consequences, one hoped for and one certain.

The hoped-for: Maybe Putin won't actually invade Ukraine.

The safe one: International protection commitments are now worth even less than before.

This applies not only to NATO's promise to Ukraine.

Anyone who throws this in the shredder to appease Russia also invalidates another agreement: the Istanbul Declaration of 1999, in which all members of the OSCE (including Germany and Russia) guaranteed the rights of every partner state (including Ukraine). to “choose freely” his alliances.

Scholz then chose his words in Moscow in this sense.

He mentioned several principles of the OSCE, but not the free choice of alliances.

Perhaps this concession was necessary.

Perhaps such pragmatism is the stuff of peace.

When it comes to Ukraine and its place between East and West, two rigid models have been discussed up to now.

Number one, the “Helsinki” model (so named after the Helsinki Final Act of 1975), guarantees “sovereign equality” to all countries.

Number two is called "Yalta", after the city in Crimea where the victors of World War II divided Europe into zones of influence over the heads of the people.

In "Yalta" there was neither sovereignty nor equality, just superpowers and vassals.

Only a few small countries, Austria or Finland, hovered neutrally between the worlds.

The Finland model

Scholz's pragmatism could lead to the model of these little ones, to permanent neutrality of the Ukraine.

If the idea works, perhaps the peace preserved will be worth a broken promise.