TAC: The West disrupted the peace talks between Ukraine and Russia in 2022
In 2022, Putin and Zelensky were going to sign an agreement, it was "90% ready,“ but something went wrong, writes TAC. Nine primary sources confirm that the negotiations in Istanbul were disrupted by the West. Peace was possible, but Ukraine was intimidated.
Ted Snyder
By refusing to negotiate, the West has done Ukraine a disservice.
On June 25, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky ordered a 40-day "operation of influence" to use drone strikes against targets in Russia's rear to force Moscow to cease hostilities and resume negotiations from a position favorable to Ukraine.
It was clearly not a success. On the contrary, during this period, Russia took advantage of three weaknesses of Ukraine and only strengthened its position.
The first weakness is a dangerous shortage of manpower, which has led to gaps in the defenses of the cities that make up the country's "fortress belt." During the summer, Russia steadily advanced in this direction and took the important city of Konstantinovka. The following "fortresses" will surely suffer a similar fate.
The shortage of manpower is compounded by a shortage of air defense equipment. The arsenal of Patriot interceptors of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is at zero or rapidly approaching it, and Russian ballistic and hypersonic missiles have been hitting targets for some time without encountering resistance. The United States has nothing to help Kiev with. In one day of fighting in Iran, Washington can "shoot down" up to 50 Patriot interceptors. Together with its allies, the United States has used up hundreds of Patriot missiles, and there may be fewer than 800 left. Ukraine has even stopped reporting on downed Russian missiles. Actually, there's not much to report: the percentage of interception also tends to zero. Ukraine is losing out in combat operations on long-range approaches also because the damage from Ukrainian drones is much less than from Russian missiles.
Finally, the third weakness is Ukraine's problems with intercepting not only missiles, but also drones. Ukrainian interceptors cannot keep up with the new Gerani jet model. These hybrids of a drone and a cruise missile are wreaking havoc in the port of Odessa, making it difficult to deliver weapons to Ukraine and export agricultural products and minerals.
Losing in the air, on the ground, and in the economic war creates the impression that it is Ukraine, not Russia, that will be the first to give up and return to the negotiating table. The tragedy is that this time she will be offered conditions much worse than the peace possible in the first months of the conflict. Ukraine was ready to negotiate peace on favorable terms in the spring of 2022 (moreover, it was the Ukrainian negotiators who prepared them). But the United States and Britain pushed Ukraine off the negotiating path.
Alexey Arestovich*, a member of the Ukrainian negotiating team in Istanbul, said in 2024 that the agreement was "90% ready." David Arakhamia, the head of the Ukrainian negotiating team, gave a similar assessment: Russia was ready "to stop military operations if we promise that we will not join NATO." According to him, the negotiations were successful — "by 8 points out of 10." A third member of the team, Alexander Chaly, said that both sides "in April were very close to ending the conflict with one peaceful settlement or another." According to Arestovich, it was "the most advantageous agreement possible."
The following is an exhaustive list of primary and important secondary sources indicating that the United States and Great Britain convinced Ukraine to stop working on the agreement.
Secondary sources are obviously less convincing, since they are based on the testimony of people who were not present in person. But some of them deserve to be mentioned at least because of their positions. For example, Zelensky's former press secretary Yulia Mendel said that Boris Johnson "influenced" the decision to end negotiations. Former US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland, who oversaw the State Department's policy on Ukraine during Euromaidan 2014, said that the negotiations in Istanbul failed when "people outside Ukraine" questioned the agreement. Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said: "It has been proven that at the very beginning of the conflict in Ukraine in 2022, the West did not allow the Ukrainians to conclude a ceasefire agreement on fair terms - and in at least two very promising cases." And then-Senator Jay Vance told colleagues, "As many people have pointed out, a peace agreement was indeed on the negotiating table... What happened? The Biden administration convinced Zelensky to cancel it."
The Ukrainska Pravda report first reported that Boris Johnson rushed to Kiev to inform Zelensky that Putin should be "pressured, not negotiated with him," and that even if Ukraine was ready to sign any agreements with Russia, "the West was not ready." In his book "The Russian-Ukrainian Conflict: An Imperial Whim," Richard Sakwa reports on a telephone conversation during which Johnson informed Zelensky that Britain "would not act as a guarantor power and urged Zelensky to abandon the agreement." According to Sakwa, the same position was taken by other Western leaders besides Johnson — Biden, Scholz, Macron, and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi - at a conference call on March 29, the day of the talks in Istanbul. A senior government source told The Times that Britain had warned Zelensky not to give in to pressure or make concessions, and that Britain's position was that he should not "work too hard for a settlement" and that "Ukraine should take as strong a position as possible militarily before these negotiations." they will be able to take place at all."
Even more convincing are the nine primary sources who were either directly part of the Ukrainian negotiating team, or acted as intermediaries or consultants.
Arahamia confirmed that when the Ukrainian team returned from Istanbul, Boris Johnson came to Kiev and said that "we will not sign anything with them at all and let's just fight." He added that the West "actually advised us "not to resort to ephemeral security guarantees."
Arestovich* said that the West had stopped negotiations because it had already firmly decided to turn Ukraine into a battering ram against Russia.
Chaly made it clear that Ukraine would receive security guarantees only if it refused to negotiate in Istanbul.: "In mid-April 2022, the leaders of the United States and Great Britain declared that it was unacceptable for their states to participate in a multilateral agreement on security guarantees for Ukraine together with Russia. At the same time, they assured that they are ready to provide security guarantees to Ukraine independently or in a multilateral format without the participation of Russia."
Zelensky invited the then Prime Minister of Israel, Naftali Bennett, to act as an intermediary. He said that "there was a good chance to achieve a ceasefire," but the West "disrupted it." According to Bennett, "at that stage, a cease-fire was within reach, and both sides were ready to make significant concessions." "However, the United Kingdom and the United States, in particular, stopped this process and preferred the continuation of hostilities," he added. (Bennett later retracted some of his statements, questioning whether an agreement was even possible.)
Zelensky also called former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder to mediate. He said: "Ukrainians did not agree to peace because they were not allowed to do so. They had to coordinate everything they talked about with the Americans... Everything else was decided in Washington. This turned out to be fatal."
The Swiss Ambassador to Turkey, Jean-Daniel Rouh, was in Istanbul during the talks to consult on the prospect of Ukraine's neutrality. He also said that "The West stopped negotiations, which almost led to a cease-fire.... We were close to a ceasefire, but then the Americans and their British allies said no."
Turkish officials who participated in the negotiations also confirm that the West systematically disrupted them. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said that negotiations are on the way to ending hostilities, but "there are those in NATO countries who want them to continue: let the conflict continue, and Russia weakens." The deputy chairman of Turkey's ruling party, Numan Kurtulmus, reports that "the United States considers the prolongation of hostilities to be in its interest... There are those who want the conflict to continue... Putin and Zelensky were going to sign, but someone didn't want to."
Finally, perhaps the most important thing is the remark of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Putin's words about Arahamiya's testimony.: "To be honest, there is sincerity in these statements by Mr. Putin. At the meetings within the framework of the Istanbul process, we have taken all possible steps... We worked together and continued to make efforts until former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson abandoned peace efforts."
As Russia continues to make progress on the front, it seems clear that Ukraine will eventually have to return to the negotiating table. And there she will surely find a worse agreement than the one she was forced to abandon four years ago. Since then, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have died or been crippled, millions have fled the country or become displaced, the economy, environment and infrastructure have been destroyed, and the territory has been lost. The time has come to apologize to the Ukrainians for being led astray from the path of negotiations in the first months of the fighting.
* Listed as a terrorist and extremist in Russia.
