Index – Abroad – Russians and Ukrainians negotiated in secret

In the early morning hours of February 24, 2022, the Russian Air Force launched strikes against various targets across Ukraine. At the same time, infantry and armor poured into the country from the north, east and south. In the days that followed, the Russians tried to encircle Kiev.

These were the first weeks of the invasion, when it still looked like Russia could take Ukraine in a blitzkrieg. Looking back, it seems almost a miracle that it didn’t turn out that way.

What happened on the battlefield is relatively easy to understand. Less understandable is the simultaneous intensive diplomatic activity of Moscow, Kiev and several other actors, which could have led to an agreement just a few weeks after the outbreak of the war, writes Samuel Charap, RAND Corporation’s senior staff member, and Sergey Radchenko, a professor at Johns Hopkins University.

By the end of March 2022, a series of face-to-face meetings in Belarus and Turkey and virtual discussions via video conference resulted in the so-called Istanbul Communiqué, which described the framework for resolving the conflict. Ukrainian and Russian negotiators then began working on the text of the treaty and made significant progress toward an agreement. However, the negotiations broke down in May. The war continues today and since then has claimed tens of thousands of lives on both sides.

What happened? How close were the parties to ending the war? And why were they never able to finalize the agreement?

To shed light on this critical episode of the war, the authors examined draft agreements exchanged between the two sides. They also interviewed several participants in the negotiations, as well as key Western government officials at the time, who spoke on condition of anonymity. In addition, a number of contemporaneous and recent interviews and statements with Ukrainian and Russian officials serving during the negotiations were reviewed. Most of these are available on YouTube in Russian or Ukrainian – so they are not widely known in the West.

Putin blamed the Ukrainians

Many, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, say there was a deal on the table that would have ended the war, but the Ukrainians walked away from it because of pressure from their Western patrons and Kiev’s own assumptions that the Russians were seen as weak. Others dismissed the negotiations altogether, claiming that the parties were acting only for appearances to buy time for military operations, or that the draft agreements were frivolous.

Although there is some truth in these interpretations, they leave more in the dark than they illuminate. They gloss over a fact that, in retrospect, seems extraordinary: Amidst Moscow’s unprecedented aggression, the Russians and Ukrainians nearly finalized an agreement that would have ended the war and provided multilateral security guarantees to Ukraine, paving the way for neutrality and later EU membership. towards membership.

However, the final agreement proved to be unworkable for several reasons. Kiev’s Western partners have been reluctant to hold talks with Russia, especially those that would have imposed new obligations on them to guarantee Ukraine’s security. The public mood in Ukraine, with the disclosure of the Russian atrocities in Irpiny, was understandably negative towards such an initiative. Also, with Russia’s failure to encircle Kiev, President Volodymyr Zelensky became increasingly confident that he could win the war with enough Western support. In the end, the parties went too high, too soon. They tried to reach a comprehensive settlement, even when even a basic ceasefire proved out of reach.

The Russians wanted to eliminate Zelensky

What did the Russians want to achieve by invading Ukraine? On February 24, 2022, Putin gave a speech in which he justified the invasion with the vague goal of “de-Nazifying” the country. The most reasonable interpretation of “de-Nazification” was that Putin sought to overthrow the government in Kiev, possibly kill or capture Zelensky.

Yet, as the documents reveal, Moscow began to look for compromise solutions days after the invasion began. The war, which Putin had previously expected to be easy, turned out to be far from easy, and this early openness to negotiations suggests that he seems to have quickly given up on the idea of ​​full regime change. Zelensky, as before the war, immediately wanted to negotiate personally with Putin. Although the Russian president refused to negotiate directly with Zelensky, he appointed a negotiating team. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko played the role of mediator.

The negotiations began on February 28 at one of Lukashenka’s rural residences, near the village of Lyashkavych, located about 45 kilometers from the Belarusian-Ukrainian border. The Ukrainian delegation was led by David Arahamiya, a faction leader in Zelenskyi’s party, and included Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznyikov, presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak and other high-ranking officials. The Russian delegation was led by Vladimir Medinsky, chief adviser to the Russian president, who was previously the minister of culture. Among others, the deputy ministers of defense and foreign affairs took part in the delegation.

Tough conditions

At the first meeting, the Russians imposed harsh conditions, practically demanding the capitulation of Ukraine. However, as Moscow’s position on the battlefield continued to deteriorate, the conditions put forward at the negotiating table became less demanding. Thus, on March 3 and March 7, the parties held a second and third round of negotiations, this time in Kamjanyuki in Belarus.

The Ukrainian delegation came up with its own demands: an immediate ceasefire and the creation of humanitarian corridors that would allow civilians to safely leave the war zone. During the third round of negotiations, the Russians and Ukrainians appear to have examined the drafts for the first time. According to Medinsky, these were Russian drafts brought from Moscow by Medinsky’s delegation, which reflected Moscow’s insistence on Ukraine’s neutral status.

Why did the negotiations break down? Putin claims that Western powers intervened and scuttled the deal because they were more interested in weakening Russia than ending the war. He claimed that then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, on behalf of “the Anglo-Saxon world”, conveyed the message to the Ukrainians that they must “fight Russia until victory is achieved and Russia is strategically defeated”.

A former U.S. official who dealt with Ukraine at the time said the Ukrainians consulted Washington only belatedly, even though the treaty outlined in the Istanbul Communiqué would have imposed new legal obligations on the U.S. — including going to war with Russia if it again invade Ukraine. So instead of accepting the Istanbul Communiqué and the diplomatic process that followed, the West increased military aid to Kiev and stepped up pressure on Russia, including through an ever-tightening sanctions regime.

In reality, however, the Russians and Ukrainians never reached a final compromise text. But they went further in that direction than it was previously understood, reaching a comprehensive framework for a possible agreement.

So the Russians and the Ukrainians never reached a compromise. However, the documents remind us that Putin and Zelensky were willing to consider extraordinary compromises to end the war. Thus, if and when Kiev and Moscow return to the negotiating table, they can come up with drafts that can be useful in creating lasting peace, the authors write.

(Cover photo: A Ukrainian soldier hides a gun on firing positions as the Russian-Ukrainian war continues in Liman, Ukraine’s Donetsk region on April 13, 2024. Photo: Wojciech Grzedzinski / Anadolu / Getty Images)

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