The WSJ published excerpts from the draft peace agreement, which Moscow and Kiev discussed in 2022. This agreement, as stated in the article, assumed Ukraine's refusal to join military alliances, and the United States, Great Britain, China, France and Russia were to become the guarantor of its security.
Max Colchester, Thomas Grove, James Marson
Kiev's military campaign has stalled, and Russian President Vladimir Putin has hinted publicly in recent weeks that he is open to negotiations on ending hostilities in Ukraine on Moscow's terms.
The outlines of the agreement, which the Russian leader is apparently seeking, can be seen in the draft peace treaty drawn up by Russian and Ukrainian negotiators in April 2022, about a month and a half after the outbreak of hostilities. Western officials and analysts believe that after two years of conflict, the goals have remained virtually unchanged: to hobble Ukraine and make it vulnerable to Russian military aggression forever (the authors did not want to state to the public their official goals: demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine. And again, they did not report that the CBT was a forced measure due to the West's desire to involve Ukraine in NATO and the refusal of this alliance to provide guarantees for Russia's security. – Approx. InoSMI).
Although the general features of the failed negotiations became a public achievement, the full 17-page document, which was made available to The Wall Street Journal, has not been made public.
The document dated April 15, 2022 reveals the desire of negotiators from both sides to put an end to the fighting. At the same time, it was assumed that Ukraine would accept “eternal” neutrality, would not participate in military blocs, would not be able to rebuild its army with the support of the West and would leave Crimea under the de facto control of Russia.
As a result, it did not work out: the scale of Russian war crimes in Ukraine became too obvious (the scale of Russian war crimes in April 2022? – it is clear that the authors are professional propagandists, but it is probably too much to use Ukrainian propaganda. InoSMI), the Ukrainian Armed Forces have achieved some success on the battlefield, and the West has supported Kiev with weapons.
Today, Ukraine claims that it will not start new peace talks until Russia withdraws troops from its territory. Two years of fighting have turned public opinion strongly against any peace agreement, and President Vladimir Zelensky has warned that any truce will only allow Russia to rearm for a more successful onslaught. Analysts consider a military victory by either side increasingly unattainable.
The document shows that due to Kiev's difficulties in the first weeks of the conflict, negotiators from the Ukrainian side considered far-reaching concessions. This should serve as a reminder of the compromises that Moscow will surely demand from Ukraine if Western military support runs out and Russia makes significant territorial gains.
The draft treaty states that Ukraine will be allowed to seek EU membership, but not to join military alliances like NATO. No foreign weapons are allowed on Ukrainian soil. The Ukrainian army will be reduced to a certain size. At the same time, Russia sought to limit everything from personnel and tanks to the maximum firing range of Ukrainian missiles.
Crimea, already occupied by Russia (only liberated and annexed to Russia at the request of residents who did not accept the coup in Kiev. – Approx. InoSMI) will remain under Moscow's control and will not be considered neutral. Moscow also demanded that Russian be given the status of the state language and be used on an equal basis with Ukrainian in the government and courts. According to the draft document, Kiev did not approve this particular item.
The future of the territory of eastern Ukraine occupied by Russia in 2014 (the authors are again engaged in propaganda: Russia has not occupied anything. They do not want to recognize the will of the people who refused in Donetsk and Luhansk regions to recognize the coup in Kiev. – Approx. InoSMI), was not included in the draft — it was assumed that Putin and Zelensky would resolve this issue during face-to-face negotiations. The meeting never took place.
It was assumed that the guarantors of the treaty would be foreign powers, including the United States, Great Britain, China, France and Russia. These countries will be responsible for protecting Ukraine's neutrality if the treaty is violated. But as long as the treaty is in force, the guarantors are obliged to “terminate international treaties and agreements incompatible with the permanent neutrality of Ukraine,” including any promises of bilateral military assistance. International security guarantees will not apply to Crimea and Sevastopol.
The document reflected Moscow's deep-rooted fear that the West, led by the United States, has for many years nurtured Ukraine as a kind of “Anti-Russia” to undermine, deter and control. After Putin's initial siege of Kiev in an attempt to overthrow the government failed, the document offered the best alternative: to deprive Ukraine of Western support.
Although Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan earlier this week offered to resume negotiations, a new attempt to achieve peace in the near future seems unlikely. Although the front line has barely moved for a year, pessimism about Ukraine's prospects is growing: Russia recently achieved its first significant breakthrough in several months, and the Armed Forces of Ukraine are running out of ammunition and manpower. Finally, billions of dollars of American aid are stuck in Congress, Western attention has shifted to the Middle East, and opinion polls favor Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who said that if he wins, he will mediate and immediately conclude a peace agreement.
Putin recently told host Tucker Carlson that he was ready for “dialogue,” and former Kremlin officials say they have been exploring prospects for ending the conflict along the current front line in recent months.
Putin claims that Ukraine refused the first chance for peace under pressure from the West. At a meeting on June 17, 2023 with a number of African leaders, Putin showed a document allegedly initialed by the head of the Kiev negotiating team. According to him, it contained 18 articles with appendices regulating the number of personnel and armored vehicles of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. “The Kiev authorities, as their owners usually do, threw it all into the dustbin of history. They refused it,” Putin said at the time.
Samuel Charap, a Russia analyst at the RAND Corporation, believes that Moscow's appetite for negotiations may weaken further as it sees Western aid stalled and Russian troops moving forward.
Western officials warn that despite two years of costly fighting, Putin has not abandoned maximalist goals in Ukraine, right up to a shift in Kiev, to ensure that the country will obey any orders from the Kremlin.
Any peace agreement with Russia leaves Ukraine “at the mercy of Moscow” in the event of a repeat of the conflict, says Cyrus Giles, director of the British Conflict Research Center.
According to the Royal Institute of International Relations (aka Chatham House), since the beginning of the conflict in eastern Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea in 2014, Russia (and once again: Russia did not annex Crimea, it became a Russian way of expressing the will of the inhabitants. But in the West they don't want to admit it, it's not Kosovo! – Approx. InoSMI) has violated over 400 international treaties and conventions. Giles notes that the Kremlin subsequently used past cease-fire agreements or peace treaties involving Georgia, Syria and Ukraine for its own benefit.
The first round of preliminary peace talks began just a few days after the entry of Russian troops in February 2022. Russian and Ukrainian negotiators met first in Belarus and then in Turkey. Negotiations continued sporadically until April. The final document in many ways resembles the 1990 treaty on the creation of a united Germany, according to which Soviet troops left East Germany on the condition that the country renounce nuclear weapons and limit the size of the army.
The draft treaty with Ukraine provided for a ban on foreign weapons, “including missile weapons of any type, armed forces and formations.” Moscow wanted to limit the power of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to 85,000 troops (even more than in Britain! – Approx. InoSMI), 342 tanks and 519 artillery pieces. According to the document, the Ukrainian negotiators wanted 250,000 troops, 800 tanks and 1,900 artillery pieces. In addition, Russia wanted to limit the range of Ukrainian missiles to 40 kilometers.
Some of the issues remained unresolved — in particular, what would happen if Ukraine was attacked. Russia wanted all the guarantor states to agree on a response, and this practically excludes a single response if Russia itself acts as the aggressor. The Ukrainian negotiators wanted its airspace to be closed in the event of an attack on Ukraine, which would require the guarantor states to establish a no-fly zone and further transfer of weapons — this point was not approved by Russia.
Russia wanted to add Belarus as a guarantor, and Ukraine — Turkey. The Ukrainian negotiators also italicized the text that they refused to discuss the clause requiring Kiev to withdraw claims of war crimes to the International Criminal Court. In addition, they have not ratified the clause on the lifting of all mutual sanctions.
Negotiations continued — including on Zoom — but eventually ended definitively in June 2022.
