Next month a five-person committee appointed by the Norwegian parliament will announce the winner of the 2022 Nobel peace prize. There is a clear and obvious choice: Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine.

Mr. Zelensky inspired the free world in his heroism this year when he chose to stay in Kiev even as Russian special operators fanned across his capital hunting for his head. His famous retort to a senior White House official at the start of the war is the stuff of legends. 

When offered a helicopter trip to safety, he reportedly said, “I need ammunition, not a ride.” His latest message to his Russian counterpart is no less inspiring. On Sunday evening he said, “Cold, hunger, darkness and thirst are not as frightening and deadly for us as your friendship and brotherhood.”  

If Mr. Zelensky had only led his country to a stalemate after Russia’s unprovoked invasion in February, he would still be deserving of the Nobel gold medal in peace. Today it appears that Ukraine may actually repel the Red Army altogether.

Ukrainian forces launched this week a successful drive across Russian positions in the northeast of the country, winning back the critical railway hub of Izium, and sending Russian soldiers into a chaotic retreat. Multiple accounts from the front say the Russians left tanks and heavy equipment behind.

This means that Ukraine now has the upper hand. The Institute for the Study of War concluded in its latest assessment that “Russia will find itself increasingly responding inadequately to growing Ukrainian physical and psychological pressure in successive military campaigns unless Moscow finds some way to regain the initiative.” 

Now some readers might  ponder why a wartime president should receive a prize reserved for statesman and others who help to end conflicts. The question assumes that peace is the result of negotiation or compromise. It’s not. Peace is won by defeating aggressors, not meeting them halfway.

On the world stage today there is no nation more threatening to the peace of its neighbors than Russia. This is largely because President Putin has sought to distract his population from their economic insecurity by launching wars on behalf of Russian speakers in countries that once fell under the yoke of the Soviet Union.

Until Russia’s invasion of Ukraine this year, Moscow appeared to be well on its way to reconstituting the evil empire. International sanctions and pressure failed to drive Russian forces from Georgian and Ukrainian territory. President Biden’s efforts to diffuse and deter Mr. Putin before the invasion this year also failed to tame the Russian bear. 

The best chance for peace now in Eurasia is the combination of western arms and Ukrainian mettle. Awarding the Nobel prize to Mr. Zelensky would not only recognize his great contribution to peace. It would also raise the price for Mr. Putin if he still plans to have his goons assassinate the Ukrainian president.

I put nothing past Mr. Putin in respect of treachery and barbarism. Yet how many of his henchmen want to be associated with a regime that murders a Nobel laureate? The Russian people have a history of enduring depredation and misery. They are not without a conscience, even if their current leader lacks one.      

Israel’s Second Worst Kept Secret

The worst-kept secret in the Middle East has been that the Jewish state has had a nuclear arsenal since the late 1960s. The second-worst-kept secret in the Middle East is that Israel’s Mossad has dedicated itself to stopping the Iranian regime from building one of its own.

Over the weekend, the Mossad director, David Barnea, in rare public remarks, warned Iran directly that if its proxies attacked Israel or Israelis, the Mossad would respond inside of Iran, even if the 2015 nuclear deal is revived.  

“The top Iranian echelon must be aware that resorting to force against Israel or Israelis, directly from Iran or via proxies, will meet a painful response against those responsible — on Iranian soil,” Mr. Barnea said at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism at Herzliya.  

Mr. Barnea then added the response would be “in Tehran, in Kermanshah, in Isfahan.” The Mossad has conducted operations against Iran’s nuclear program in those cities. The most famous was a daring raid at a warehouse in a commercial district in Tehran. Mossad operatives absconded with a library of blueprints, schematics and official papers on Iran’s secret nuclear program.

Those documents today have become a major thorn in the Iranian regime’s side. Eventually the International Atomic Energy Agency used the pilfered library to reopen new investigations of Iranian sites the regime never declared during the negotiations over the 2015 nuclear deal.   

A standoff over inspections related to this new investigation have also hindered recent talks in Vienna to revive the 2015 agreement. The Iranian regime’s position is that it does not need to cooperate with more inspections. So far, America and its European allies have not acquiesced to Iran’s demand.