Russia says US "wrecked" Ukraine talks, but peace is still possible
A US official rejects Putin’s claim that NATO sabotaged a "peaceful settlement" with Ukraine early in the war. Whatever happened then, it is not too late for diplomacy in this perilous moment.
 |
| ||||||||||||
 |
In his Sept. 21 speech announcing an escalation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused NATO states of sabotaging a peace deal that could have ended it months ago.
At talks brokered by Turkey in March, Putin said, “Kiev representatives voiced quite a positive response to our proposals... But a peaceful settlement obviously did not suit the West, which is why, after certain compromises were coordinated, Kiev was actually ordered to wreck all these agreements.”
Speaking at the United Nations hours later, President Joe Biden criticized the Russian leader but did not address his claim that the US thwarted negotiations.
Asked about Putin’s remarks, officials from the White House’s National Security Council (NSC) and the State Department offered differing responses.
An NSC official referred me to the Ukrainian government for comment about “their peace negotiations in the spring.” But overall, the official added, “it is inaccurate that the U.S. discouraged Ukraine from seeking a peace agreement. Throughout this conflict, we have said that it is up to Ukraine to make their own sovereign decisions.”
A State Department spokesperson did not address Putin’s rendering of the March-April negotiations, and instead focused on the period before the invasion.
“As part of our efforts to deter President Putin from launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine’s sovereign territory on February 24, 2022, the United States consistently spoke of the two paths Russia could choose: dialogue and diplomacy, or escalation and massive consequences,” the State Department wrote. “We made genuine and sincere efforts to pursue the former, which we vastly preferred, but Putin chose war.”
Asked if it had any response to Putin’s account of the peace talks that occurred after the invasion, the State spokesperson did not respond.
The Russian government has not offered any additional detail or evidence for Putin’s claim that Ukraine and Russia were close to a “settlement,” and that Kiev’s NATO backers intervened to “wreck” it. But the Kremlin is also not the first to assert it. The claim originated with sources to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who described the episode to Ukrainian media outlet Ukrayinska Pravda.
According to their account, talks between Ukraine and Russia collapsed after then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson visited Kiev in April and informed Zelensky that Putin “should be pressured, not negotiated with.” Johnson also relayed that “even if Ukraine is ready to sign some agreements on [security] guarantees with Putin,” Western nations “are not.”
That report was followed this month by an overlooked disclosure from former White House Russia expert Fiona Hill. Citing “multiple former senior U.S. officials,” Hill wrote that “Russian and Ukrainian negotiators appeared to have tentatively agreed on the outlines of a negotiated interim settlement” in April. Russia would withdraw to its pre-invasion position, while Ukraine would pledge not to join NATO “and instead receive security guarantees from a number of countries.”
If the Ukrainian Pravda account is accurate, then it was the UK’s Johnson, presumably acting at the behest of the US, that undermined this agreement.
And even if Putin is exaggerating the negotiations’ progress, or Western responsibility for their collapse, his claim that Russia and Ukrainian officials were close to a “peaceful settlement” signals that one may still be possible.
David Ignatius, the Washington Post foreign affairs columnist, appears to be the only establishment media journalist who reported Putin’s remarks. In Ignatius' view, the Russian leader’s claim about a thwarted peace deal in the spring offers a potential, if unlikely, “off-ramp” today. Invoking the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, Ignatius compared Putin’s comment to the message from Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev that offered President John F. Kennedy “a path to de-escalation.” As with Khrushchev’s private overture to Kennedy, Putin’s claim about peace talks, Ignatius writes, is now Biden’s “letter to answer.”
As for the Ukrainian government, he added, Kiev “needs a reality check about its longer-term battlefield prospects.” That seems unlikely: in response to Putin’s threat that Russia could use nuclear weapons to defend itself, a Zelensky advisor urged the US and other powers to pledge “swift retaliatory nuclear strikes to destroy the nuclear launch sites in Russia,” if Moscow “even thinks of carrying out nuclear strikes” in Ukraine.
If the White House is to heed Ignatius’ advice and pursue an off-ramp with Russia, the US approach to diplomacy may also require a reality check. Despite the State Department’s claim to have “made genuine and sincere efforts” for “dialogue and diplomacy” with Russia prior to the invasion, the available record tells a different story.
As the Ukraine crisis escalated in January, a US official specializing in Russia relayed that “the Russians are still interested in a real dialogue,” according to the Washington Post. Russia’s goal, this official said, is “to see whether Washington is willing to discuss any sort of commitment that constrains U.S. power." But in the ensuing weeks leading up to Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion, Washington made clear that such constraints were a non-starter.
Russia’s core demands came on two tracks. The Kremlin asked the US and NATO to return their nearby military footprint to pre-1990s levels by withdrawing offensive weaponry and troops from states on Russia’s borders. As for Ukraine, Moscow sought guarantees that Kiev would not join NATO and that it would finally implement the 2015 Minsk accords, the agreement to end Kiev’s war with Russia-allied rebels in Ukraine’s Donbas region. That eight-year war, triggered by the 2014-US backed Maidan coup, left an estimated 14,000 dead, with over 80% of civilian casualties since 2018 occurring in the breakaway, rebel-held Donbas regions.
On all fronts, the US and allies balked...
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten