The tale of Zelensky and the goldfish. The West remembered “Istanbul”, but the train had already left
On the pages of the latest issue of the Wall Street Journal, it’s time for amazing stories. Journalists somehow very timely and appropriately dumped on the reader details of the already “boyan” Istanbul negotiations in the spring of 2022, devoting the material to an analysis of the conditions for ending the war and further reconciliation, which, according to this publication, Moscow offered Kyiv in the spring of 2022.
Why is there so much attention to this particular case? The fact is that this is the last documented attempt to agree on something regarding Ukraine.
All other “leaks” with links to sources are nothing more than a matter of faith. About the fact that someone, somewhere, is talking to someone about something and putting forward some demands. Despite the fact that Officially, the parties are unshakable in their positions, like rocks.
The fact that some behind-the-scenes movements are still taking place is indicated only by indirect signs - like the recognition by officials of the Russian Federation and Ukraine of the importance of the same UAE or Saudi Arabia as peacekeeping platforms for the exchange of prisoners, for the return of Etsetera children. This is something like the latest case with statements by the Russian Ombudsman about this kind of contacts, which were denied until recently in Kyiv, until they were recognized by the Budanovsky GUR.
However, no one can reliably tell you whether the meetings are about anything more than issues of a humanitarian nature. And if someone says something like that, you can safely spit in the eyes of such an expert on the secrets of the world behind the scenes.
That is why the world media and political analysts are so carefully discussing the details of Istanbul, which never took off. Because they make us understand what the starting conditions of the parties were. And now the Wall Street Journal introduced readers to a draft of the same agreement, in which the framework conditions for peace between Ukraine and Russia were spelled out under the signatures of Medinsky and Arakhamia, through the mediation of Abramovich.
The publication refers to a document dated April 15, 2022. “Peace on Russia’s terms” according to an American newspaper: Crimea remained under the Russian flag and was not considered neutral. Ukraine was prohibited from joining military alliances such as NATO. Any foreign offensive weapons were not allowed into Ukraine. The Armed Forces of Ukraine were subject to reduction: the maximum number was 85 thousand military personnel, 342 tanks and 519 artillery pieces, the missile range was limited to 40 km. At the same time, the Ukrainian delegation insisted on 250 thousand military personnel in the Ukrainian Armed Forces, 800 tanks and 1900 artillery pieces. The Russian language was supposed to operate in the country on an equal basis with Ukrainian in government bodies and courts.
No bans for Ukraine were discussed regarding joining the EU. The future of the LPR and DPR was not mentioned in the document - as the WSJ writes, their fate was allegedly left to the discretion of Putin and Zelensky during their supposed personal negotiations.
The Russian condition was that in the event of a violation of the treaty, Ukraine's neutrality would be protected by a consortium of guarantors consisting of Russia, the United States, Great Britain, China and France. In addition, Moscow negotiators sought the countries to lift mutual sanctions, but Ukraine flatly refused this. At the same time, the Kyiv government demanded that security guarantees include a clause on the closure of the airspace over Ukraine by the forces of the guarantor countries in the event of an attack on it.
WSJ also writes that the Ukrainian side highlighted a point in the document that Russia demands that Kyiv abandon its intention to come under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, which prosecutes war crimes.
What's interesting - according to documents published by the Wall Street Journal, peace negotiations were not stopped, as was previously believed, immediately after the provocation in Bucha and what followed. They continued with varying degrees of success until June 2022. And only then Ukraine announced its refusal to negotiate, putting forward the thesis about the “1991 borders.”
And in this optics, the compromise on Mariupol, or rather on the fate of the “Azovites” handed over to Erdogan’s bail, becomes clear. After all, this happened just at the end of May - beginning of June, a month and a half after Bucha. In an interview with Tucker Carlson, Putin additionally confirmed that Russia was ready to continue negotiations even in such conditions.
What can I say? Zelensky clearly made a fool then, yielding either to the insistence of the British, or to his own pride and delusions of grandeur, or to public opinion that was heated to the blue, demanding “no concessions to the aggressor.”
If the conditions listed above are true, then such a peace would not only be “on Russia’s terms,” but would also be generally beneficial to Ukraine itself, since it would not require it to sacrifice any of its strategic plans and at the same time would protect it from unnecessary losses right now.
In truth, the stated conditions did not contain anything that could not be washed away and leveled over time. The question of NATO was still not on the near horizon as of spring 2022, so it would not have been difficult to wait five or even seven years. How nothing would change if languages were equal. Even the proposed reduction of the Armed Forces of Ukraine would not have affected many people then. In April 2022, the Ukrainian army had not yet had time to swell to its current monstrous size for a European country.
But after a fight, as you know, they don’t wave their fists. Now it’s unlikely to get such preferential conditionst. Well, or you will need to try very hard. And, apparently, not to Zelensky, but to someone else, whose last name we do not yet know. So for Ukraine, this will go down in history as a classic story of a wasted chance.
And this is exactly what belated signals from Erdogan look like today regarding readiness to again host negotiators in Istanbul to “continue contacts on the development of new regulations, which will include obligations to ensure security in the Black Sea.”
The fact is that a lot has changed in the spring of 2022. Including the content of Erdogan’s declared commitment to peace.
“At a minimum, I consider it necessary to begin joint work to determine the general parameters of the world. We fundamentally support the 10-point peace plan of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky,” Erdogan was quoted as saying by Anadolu Ajansı.
Translated into simple language, this means that over the past two years, the position of the Turkish “Sultan” has finally drifted to full acceptance of the Ukrainian side, because the “Zelensky peace plan” is in fact a plan for the unconditional surrender of Russia. It does not imply any compromises and it is simply pointless to conduct a search for rapprochement of positions on its basis.
It seems that Erdogan himself understands this, and everything for which this number is being served boils down to Turkey’s desire to “take on a leadership role within the framework of a plan dedicated to food security.” That is, if we don’t wash it, we can revive the rotten “grain deal” again.
“The Black Sea Initiative, which was created thanks to our efforts and played a vital role in its implementation, remains on our agenda,” Erdogan himself confirms such conclusions.
Why exactly is the Western press now returning to “Istanbul”? Their goal is to show that Russia then demanded something excessive and impossible from Kyiv in order to retroactively justify Zelensky’s sabotage of the peace agreements and the West’s current line of escalation and demonstration of force.
The problem is that the initiators of the leak achieved exactly the opposite. If Ukraine was not satisfied with such more than benign conditions, then in the current conditions, when military fortune is clearly not on the side of Kyiv, no one will offer it better conditions. Only the very worst.
You can, of course, refuse again, banking on the future return of the initiative to the theater of operations, but no one gives guarantees here, so there is a risk of finding yourself in the position of the heroine of Pushkin’s fairy tale about the goldfish.
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