Massachusetts Peace Action

The Real Origins of the Ukraine War and Why It Matters Today
2026-03-17 13:00 - 14:30 (America/New_York) | Online Event
Swiss Col. Jacques Baud (retired) is a military and international affairs analyst who will speak about his first-hand knowledge of the Donbass area of Ukraine. From 2012-2017, he was seconded to NATO by the Swiss government to head NATO Counterproliferation of Small Arms and Light Weapons Unit (SALW) in Brussels, as well as of programs against landmines. In that capacity, he monitored the SALW situation in the Donbass from 2014 to 2017 and designed de-mining projects in Ukraine.
Additionally, as a UN expert in the Rule of Law and Reform of Security Institutions, he contributed to projects related to the reform of the Ukrainian army at the end of 2014.
He has been outspoken in his views that the Ukrainian government, aided by the U.S. and EU, did not abide by the Minsk treaty, but instead conducted lethal military shelling of Donbass cities, called an anti-terrorism campaign, aimed at an armed insurgency of ethnic Russian Ukrainians whose religious, cultural, linguistic, economic, and political rights were being increasingly restricted by the central government in Kiev.
Baud has recently been severely sanctioned by the EU for his views. He will share his perspective not only on the origins of the civil war in Ukraine, but on the current military and political situation and the prospects for a negotiated settlement of the war.
Swiss Col. Jacques Baud (retired) holds a Master’s in Econometrics and Postgrade Diplomas in International Security and International Relations from the Graduate Institute for International Relations in Geneva. He worked several years in the Swiss Strategic Intelligence Service. He was trained in US and British intelligence.
His extensive expertise in strategic analysis, conflict mediation and international security spans decades. At the United Nations headquarters in New York, he was the Head of Policy and Doctrine in the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (2009-11) where his team worked on the protection of civilians in war. He is member of the UN Expert Group on the Rule of Law and Security Sector Reform. He authored several books on weapons, intelligence, asymmetric warfare and terrorism. He is currently retired and lives in Brussels (Belgium).
Baud is the author of many books including Covert Wars in Ukraine (2025), The Russian Art of War: How the West Led Ukraine to Defeat (2024), Operation Z: The Hidden Truth of the Ukraine War (2022), and Putin: Master of the Game (2019).
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Sponsored by MAPA’s Ukraine: A Time for Peace Campaign.
