Negotiating peace under the missiles: Moscow receives a proposal, the strikes go on

On the morning of 5 September 2026, two envoys of the President of the United States, Mr Witkoff and Mr Kushner, landed in Moscow bearing a peace proposal meant to end the war in Ukraine. According to the American president, the proposal concerns both fronts and was to be put first to Russia, then to Kyiv the following day, 6 September, a visit confirmed by President Zelensky. A Russian presidential envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, was expected to meet the American delegation. Kyiv had proposed an aerial ceasefire for the duration of the visit and was still awaiting Moscow's answer.

At the same moment, the strikes did not stop. In the night before the mission, the Russian army claimed combined missile and drone attacks against three Ukrainian regions, and struck Mykolaiv and Odessa, logistics hubs and an electrical substation. Ukrainian air defence said it had neutralised 128 of the 167 drones and decoys launched, with 23 localities hit; Russia for its part claimed to have downed 53 Ukrainian drones. The human tolls diverge according to the perimeter and time window chosen: at least four dead in the Dnipropetrovsk region by one count, at least seven dead and fifty-one wounded over twenty-four hours by another, including four dead and five wounded at Kamianske according to the regional governor. The Russian deputy foreign minister warned that Washington had to reckon with “the reality on the ground,” which he called unfavourable to Kyiv.

What the Church has always taught of peace and innocent blood

Peace is not the mere silence of arms. St. Augustine defines it as “the tranquillity of order”: it is the fruit of justice, not the arrangement dictated by the stronger. To seek peace is a duty of princes; but a peace that is only the ratification of a conquest has nothing of peace but the name.

On blood shed, the Catechism of the Council of Trent is plain. The fifth commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” absolutely forbids the killing of the innocent; it excepts only the putting to death carried out by legitimate authority according to justice, and legitimate defence. To strike deliberately those who bear no arms is homicide, whatever the flag in whose name the dead are counted.

On the eve of the last great conflict, Pope Pius XII issued the warning that has remained famous: “Nothing is lost by peace. Everything may be lost by war.”

The measure

That an effort is made to stop this war is a good, and we say so plainly: the duty of every ruler is to work for peace. But two things must be held together, which the event pulls apart.

First, a peace negotiated while the missiles are falling is still only a hope, not a fact. A proposal is announced, an answer is awaited; nothing is signed, nothing is decided. We report an initiative, not an agreement. And when an official demands that account be taken of “the reality on the ground,” it must be remembered that tradition does not measure peace by the military advantage of the moment, but by justice: a peace that is only the sanction of force is not the tranquillity of order.

Then, the blood. The tolls are disputed, claimed by each side against the other and impossible to verify independently; but no count changes the rule. The fifth commandment does not weigh the dead according to the capital that claims them. As long as non-combatants fall under the drones and the missiles, the killing of the innocent remains what it is: a sin that cries for vengeance, and that no strategic necessity absolves.

For the faithful, the course is simple. To pray for a true peace, one that rests on justice and not on fear; to distrust words of peace that the same day's facts belie; and never to let the habit of war dull the horror before the murder of the innocent.

Sources. Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566), exposition of the fifth commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.” St. Augustine, The City of God, Book XIX, on peace as “the tranquillity of order.” Pius XII, radio message of 24 August 1939, on the eve of the war: “Nothing is lost by peace. Everything may be lost by war.”