On: EU set to sign off €90bn loan for Ukraine and fresh Russia sanctions - Europe li

The river does not flow backward because you command it. The tree does not grow faster because you pull its branches. Yet today I watch the great nations gather like ants around honey, believing their treaties and sanctions will bend the course of war.

They pour gold into the fire, thinking more fuel will extinguish the flames. When the Druzhba pipeline opens again, they call it victory - as if the oil that once fed the conflict will now starve it. But the pipeline was never the cause, only the symptom. The true war lives in the hearts of men who cannot bear emptiness, who must fill every silence with action, every valley with fortifications.

I see Hungary and Slovakia drop their objections - not because wisdom touched them, but because the oil flowed once more. This is the way of the world: principles bend to pipelines, and morality follows the money. The sanctions tighten like a noose, yet the more they squeeze, the more reasons they give for the conflict to continue.

The wise ruler knows: when you push, the universe pushes back. The harder you sanction, the more ingenious the evasion. The louder you condemn, the deeper the resentment grows.

They ask me, “What then? Should we do nothing?” I answer: There is a doing that is not doing. There is a strength that appears as weakness. Water does not fight the mountain - it flows around, and in time, the mountain is gone.

Let them sanction if they must. But the true healing begins when they stop believing in the power of sanctions.