Went back through the archives here to read information posted at that time in order to address this latest article from Foreign Affairs (May 16/24) At the time of the negotiations it really did appear as if a deal of some kind was close and this would have ended Russia’s special military operation as covered.
Suddenly it all went to hell!
In April it was being reported that Putin and Zelensky would likely be meeting in Turkey suggesting a deal was soon to be at hand.
“Ukrainian negotiator David Arakhamia told a local TV station that the two leaders could soon meet as draft peace-treaty documents reach an advanced stage, reported the Interfax-Ukraine News Agency.
Arakhamia said that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan “called both us and Vladimir Putin yesterday, and he seemed to confirm for his part that they were ready to organize a meeting in the near future.”
Additional coverage of negotiations
I see my thinking at the time was Russia moved troops away from Kiev as a gesture of goodwill-
Pennysays:
March 29, 2022 at 4:30 pm
Hi Brian
listening right now- my first thought regarding Russia’s move away from Kiev…
Russia offered Zelensky a face saving measure- threw a bone to him.
He could then take it back and pound his chest about a gain.
On March 21/22
https://pennyforyourthoughts2.ca/2022/03/21/russian-ukrainian-delegations-maximally-converge-positions-on-ukraines-neutral-status/
It was reported that Ukraine and Russia had converged (come together) on Ukraine’s neutral status and non-accession to NATO
Quoting from the information of the day
“The topic of Ukraine’s neutral status and non-accession to NATO is one of the key points at the talks and this is the point on which the sides have brought their positions maximally closer,” Medinsky said.
I can only agree with the fact there was movement to settling this situation diplomatically.
So let’s read from Foreign Affairs
Or https://archive.ph/ajonZ#selection-1611.71-1611.965
The gist of the linked article is, yes, there were intense talks to bring this situation to an end. Saving many, many lives in the process. According to this report the British leader put the brakes on it. Thanks Boris Johnson aka Bojangles, you definitely do the death dance impeccably (I’d assumed the US was the biggest player in damning the deal)
“What is less understood is the simultaneous intense diplomacy involving Moscow, Kyiv, and a host of other actors, which could have resulted in a settlement just weeks after the war began.
By the end of March 2022, a series of in-person meetings in Belarus and Turkey and virtual engagements over video conference had produced the so-called Istanbul Communiqué, which described a framework for a settlement. Ukrainian and Russian negotiators then began working on the text of a treaty, making substantial progress toward an agreement
What happened? How close were the parties to ending the war? And why did they never finalize a deal?We have examined draft agreements exchanged between the two sides, some details of which have not been reported previously. We have also conducted interviews with several participants in the talks as well as with officials serving at the time in key Western governments, to whom we have granted anonymity in order to discuss sensitive matters. And we have reviewed numerous contemporaneous and more recent interviews with and statements by Ukrainian and Russian officials who were serving at the time of the talks. Most of these are available on YouTube but are not in English and thus not widely known in the West. Finally, we scrutinized the timeline of events from the start of the invasion through the end of May, when talks broke down.
When we put all these pieces together, what we found is surprising—and could have significant implications for future diplomatic efforts to end the war.
Putin and Zelensky surprised everyone with their mutual willingness to consider far-reaching concessions to end the war. They might well surprise everyone again in the future.
Interestingly it looks as if Ukraine was concerned with guarantees from their western allies
But on March 10, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, then in Antalya, Turkey, for a meeting with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, spoke of a “systematic, sustainable solution” for Ukraine, adding that the Ukrainians were “ready to discuss” guarantees it hoped to receive from NATO member states and Russia.
What Kuleba seemed to have in mind was a multilateral security guarantee, an arrangement whereby competing powers commit to the security of a third state, usually on the condition that it will remain unaligned with any of the guarantors.
Skipping through the article, but, please read entirely at link provided
There, they appeared to have achieved a breakthrough. After the meeting, the sides announced they had agreed to a joint communiqué. The terms were broadly described during the two sides’ press statements in Istanbul. But we have obtained a copy of the full text of the draft communiqué, titled “Key Provisions of the Treaty on Ukraine’s Security Guarantees.” According to participants we interviewed, the Ukrainians had largely drafted the communiqué and the Russians provisionally accepted the idea of using it as the framework for a treaty.
The treaty envisioned in the communiqué would proclaim Ukraine as a permanently neutral, nonnuclear state. Ukraine would renounce any intention to join military alliances or allow foreign military bases or troops on its soil. The communiqué listed as possible guarantors the permanent members of the UN Security Council (including Russia) along with Canada, Germany, Israel, Italy, Poland, and Turkey.
Although Ukraine would be permanently neutral under the proposed framework, Kyiv’s path to EU membership would be left open, and the guarantor states (including Russia) would explicitly “confirm their intention to facilitate Ukraine’s membership in the European Union.” This was nothing short of extraordinary: in 2013, Putin had put intense pressure on Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych to back out of a mere association agreement with the EU. Now, Russia was agreeing to “facilitate” Ukraine’s full accession to the EU.
WHAT HAPPENED?
So why did the talks break off? Putin has claimed that Western powers intervened and spiked the deal because they were more interested in weakening Russia than in ending the war. He alleged that Boris Johnson, who was then the British prime minister, had delivered the message to the Ukrainians, on behalf of “the Anglo-Saxon world,” that they must “fight Russia until victory is achieved and Russia suffers a strategic defeat.”
There are large excerpts of the article omitted, so do read it entirely and then share some thoughts?
In closing, at that time, at least in my opinion, it looked as if some sort of deal was close and then it was all gone.
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