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2025 Annals Constantin Brancusi U. Targu Jiu, Letters & Soc. Sci. Series 9 (2025)

handle is hein.journals/ancnbt2025 and id is 1 raw text is: ANNALS OF THE CONSTANTIN BRANCUSI UNIVERSITY OF TARGU JIU LETTER AND SOCIAL SCIENCE SERIES ISSN-P: 1844-6051 ~ ISSN-E: 2344-3677 1/2025 https://alss.utgjiu.ro EDITORIAL PEACE IN UKRAINE - BETWEEN MEMORY, JUSTICE, AND THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD Flavius Cristian MARCAU Lecturer PhD., Constantin Brincusi din Thrgu Jiu, Romania Few moments in recent history have shaken Europe and the international order as profoundly as the war in Ukraine. Since February 2022, the conflict has reshaped political agendas, tested solidarity among states, and triggered an unprecedented humanitarian crisis. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, more than seven million people have been forced to abandon their homes. In such a context, invoking peace is no longer a ceremonial speech delivered at the UN podium, but a vital necessity, a moral and intellectual anchor without which we cannot imagine the future. To speak about peace in Ukraine does not mean taking refuge in diplomatic cliches, but rather facing reality with lucidity and admitting that a fairer world is not built with metaphors, but with painful, concrete reconstruction. The social sciences have always been obsessed with conflict and peace - perhaps also because, in the absence of wars, professors of international relations would be left with little teaching material. As early as the 1960s, Johan Galtung drew the distinction between negative peace (the absence of violence) and positive peace (the presence of solid mechanisms of cooperation and social justice) (Galtung, 1964, 1969). Ukraine today confirms, in dramatic fashion, this theory: a ceasefire may bring temporary calm, but without political and social reconstruction, peace is likely to be as fragile as a sandcastle on the shore of the Black Sea - beautiful as long as the sun shines, but destined to vanish with the first wave. The geopolitical dimension is, without doubt, the most visible (Raik, 2019). Ukraine has become the stage on which European security paradigms clash with Russia's imperial ambitions (Kondratenko, 2020). The result? A Europe rediscovering its reflexes of solidarity, yet also its limits (Lutskyi & Push, 2022). And so the age-old question resurfaces: does the international system have the instruments to produce a genuine peace? Or will we once again add a peace process to the museum of diplomatic illusions? Yet beyond maps and geopolitics lies the human dimension, the one that should matter most (Qaisrani et al., 2023). Millions of Ukrainians have become refugees, while those who remain live day after day under the wail of air raid sirens. Collective trauma does not show up in statistical reports, but it leaves scars as deep as those visible in the Balkans after the breakup of Yugoslavia (Oze, 2020). Reconciliation is not signed at the negotiating table; it is about communities healing, people slowly regaining their trust, and children being able to play safely again. True peace is not 9