Index – Foreign countries – Russia’s war in Ukraine – Index’s Tuesday news summary

New details have come to light about the talks in Istanbul between the Ukrainian and Russian delegations that took place in the spring of 2022, during which preliminary peace agreements were reached. The publication Foreign Affairs (FA) reports on them.

The article actually confirms the version that one of the reasons for the failure of the negotiations was the negative attitude of the United States and Great Britain. Washington refused to give security guarantees to Kiev, which would mean that in the event of another attack on Ukraine, America would enter the war.

According to the newspaper, Kiev did not coordinate the text of the document with Washington, even though they would have had a significant role in it. In the document, several Western countries, especially the United States, but also Russia would have undertaken security guarantees for Ukraine.

Moreover, these commitments were formulated much more precisely than Article 5 of NATO: the introduction of a no-fly zone, the delivery of weapons or direct intervention using the guarantor state’s own armed forces.

At the same time, Ukraine wanted these agreements to be more effective than the ones in Budapest, the violation of which was followed by nothing on the part of Russia. He also wanted the countries to decide for themselves whether they would rush to help Ukraine. Russia, on the other hand, insisted that the aid would be provided “on the basis of a decision accepted by all guarantor states,” which would give Russia a veto in the event of another possible attack.

This point was never finalised, but a former US official involved in Ukraine policy at the time told FA that “the Ukrainians did not consult with Washington until the release of the statement, although the treaty described in it

would have created new legal obligations for the United States, including a commitment to go to war against Russia if it attacked Ukraine again.

“This condition alone would have made the treaty unfavorable for Washington. Thus, instead of accepting the Istanbul Communiqué and the subsequent diplomatic process, the West increased military support to Kiev and increased pressure on Russia, including through an ever-tightening sanctions regime,” the article reads.

The West did not want peace enough

The communique outlined a multilateral framework that would require the West’s willingness to engage diplomatically with Russia and consider security guarantees for Ukraine. “Neither was a priority for the United States and its allies at the time,” FA writes.

The authors point out that Washington and its allies were “deeply skeptical about the prospects for a diplomatic route from Istanbul. After all, the announcement did not deal with the issue of territory and borders, and the parties were deeply divided on other important issues as well. It did not seem to them that the negotiations would be successful”.

Zelensky and Putin wanted to discuss the topic of Ukrainian borders personally in the subsequent negotiations, so they did not agree on it, just as the size of the Ukrainian army was not discussed.

On April 9, Boris Johnson arrived in Kiev and “appears to have given up on diplomacy”, saying that “any deal with Putin would be quite messy”. The Americans were less vocal, but neither did they see diplomacy as central to their response to the Russian invasion. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin visited Kiev two weeks after Johnson, primarily to coordinate increased military support.

According to popular belief, the negotiations stopped after the Bucharest atrocities. In reality, however, the negotiations continued even more intensively: according to the paper, the last draft of the agreement was dated April 15. According to the authors of the article, another reason for the failure of the negotiations was that the participants put the “cart” of the post-war security order before the “horse” of ending the war.

“Both sides left out the important issues of conflict management and reduction (creation of humanitarian corridors, ceasefire, troop withdrawal – ed.), instead they tried to work out some sort of long-term peace treaty that would have resolved the security disputes that had caused geopolitical tension for decades. It was an extremely ambitious attempt, but it turned out to be too ambitious,” the publication writes.

Earlier, Putin said that

According to Strana, one of the main reasons for the failure of the spring 2022 peace talks was the refusal of Western countries to provide security guarantees to Ukraine.