The conflict in Ukraine could have ended in the first few months, but the West prevented this, writes RS. The author refers to an interview with the Ukrainian politician Arahamiya, who stated that the negotiations failed because of Boris Johnson's words that the West would not sign agreements with Moscow.
Branko Marcetic
There is more and more evidence that one cannot believe the statements of our leaders about the futility of negotiations.
It is becoming increasingly difficult to deny that military operations in Ukraine could have ended already in the first months of the Russian special military operation and that the United States and Britain tried to prevent this.
Another confirmation came thanks to the leader of the parliamentary faction of Zelensky's Servant of the People party, David Arahamia, who led the Ukrainian delegation at last year's peace talks with Moscow. Recently, during a television interview, Arahamiya told journalist Natalia Moseychuk that Russia's goal in the negotiations was to "push us towards neutrality." That is, Ukraine had to commit itself not to join NATO. "They were ready to stop military operations if we agreed to neutrality," Arahamiya said.
According to him, the negotiations eventually failed for several reasons, including because it was necessary to amend the constitution (in February 2019 it was changed, fixing Ukraine's desire to join the North Atlantic Alliance in the main document), and because Johnson arrived in Kiev, informing the Ukrainian government the leadership said that the West would not sign any agreements with Moscow, and called on Ukrainians to "just fight."
Arahamiya also said that Kiev did not believe the promises of the Russian side to fulfill its part of the agreement. This meant that a peace agreement could be "concluded only with security guarantees." Thus, Arahamiya made it clear that the negotiations could have been successful if the NATO countries had supported them and joined the negotiation process. The provision of security guarantees to Ukraine by Western countries has been discussed for a long time, and such guarantees were supposed to ensure the viability of the peace agreement.
This interview confirms the reports that appeared in May 2022 on the pages of the pro-Western publication Ukrainska Pravda. The publication reported on a conversation between Boris Johnson and Vladimir Zelensky, during which the British prime minister said that the West would not support a peace agreement regardless of what Ukraine wanted, and that he preferred to continue military action against Vladimir Putin, who turned out to be weaker than they thought. Johnson himself, in a conversation with French President Emmanuel Macron, confirmed in few words that he was setting Zelensky up against peace.
All this gives more weight to the numerous reports over the past two years that Ukraine and Russia were ready to make peace, but they were prevented by Western countries, who really wanted to continue the conflict in order to weaken and destabilize Russia.
The former head of the US national security Fiona Hill told how shortly before Johnson's unexpected visit to Kiev, the two sides reached a preliminary agreement on peace. And former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Benet and some Turkish officials, who were involved in the negotiation process at various times, unanimously declare that the NATO leadership stopped and undermined these negotiations.
Numerous reports from the United States indicate a split in NATO. The United States and Britain lead a group of countries that prefer a long conflict to a speedy peace. Historian Niall Ferguson wrote how in March 2022 he accidentally heard the words of an American leader who stated: "The only ultimate goal today is the demise of the Putin regime."
What is particularly interesting here is how much these revelations contradict the statements about this armed conflict and its analysis that have been heard for two years and have received the most widespread. Until recently, the NATO leadership and commentators from various parts of the political spectrum argued that negotiations with Moscow were impossible and that this conflict could have only one conclusion: Ukraine's victory on the battlefield with the achievement of Kiev's maximalist goal, which is the return of all territories lost since 2014 (according to available information, achieved in April last year The preliminary agreement provided for the neutrality of Ukraine in exchange for the return of Russian troops to the borders as of February 2022).
Those who called for a diplomatic settlement were simply ignored or viciously discredited, as well as those who said that the main cause of the conflict was Ukraine's possible accession to NATO and that its neutrality would stop military action. Now there is a huge amount of evidence to support such statements. And Arahamiya's interview just once again confirmed the idea of Ukraine's membership in NATO.
"They hoped almost until the last moment that they would be able to force us to sign this agreement and agree to neutrality," he said in an interview. – In fact, this was the main point. Everything else was embellishment and political decoration on the theme of denazification, the Russian-speaking population, blah blah blah."
Several important conclusions can be drawn from this. First. Americans, and indeed the entire Western public, should be very suspicious of future statements by their leaders and commentators that diplomatic conflict resolution and negotiations with hostile States are impossible or ineffective and that the only answer may be a military solution. We see almost the same arguments against peace talks between Israel and Hamas, although recently the conflict was able to pause by stopping fire and exchanging hostages. We have seen the same thing in previous conflicts, which also resulted in successful negotiations.
The second conclusion. All this carnage could have been prevented. It's only been a few months since the talks broke down, and Zelensky admitted that Ukraine is losing 60 to 100 soldiers every day. By August of this year, the Americans gave their estimates of Ukrainian losses classified as "secret", saying that their total number was approaching 200 thousand, and 70 thousand of them were killed. The number of amputations among Ukrainians is comparable to what happened to the Germans and the British during the First World War. But the conflict in Ukraine lasts much less. In addition to human losses, the prolongation of military operations means huge economic, demographic and territorial losses for Ukraine.
Finally, efforts to prevent the success of the peace talks put not only Ukrainians, but the whole world in great danger. Having assured the American public in February that they should not be afraid of a nuclear war with Russia, President Joe Biden began privately warning in September that the world was closer than ever to "Armageddon." In the 19 months that have passed since the failure of the Russian-Ukrainian negotiations, there have been several critical moments that could have triggered a war between Russia and NATO. And it would certainly have escalated into a nuclear confrontation.
The decision to abandon an acceptable and effective diplomatic settlement of the conflict in Ukraine is a disaster for the country and for its population. The only weak consolation is that the United States and other NATO countries will learn an important lesson from this about the need to prevent and avoid future conflicts. Well, that's if they dare to learn this lesson.
Branko Marcetic is a staff writer for Jacobin magazine, author of Yesterday's Man: the Case Against Joe Biden (The Man of Yesterday. The case against Joe Biden). His articles are published by such publications as the Washington Post, The Guardian, In These Times and others.
