- Russia was more interested in Ukraine adopting a neutral status, according to the authors' conversations with Ukrainian negotiators. In turn, the Ukrainian side confirmed that it wants to obtain serious security guarantees
- By the end of March 2022, Ukrainian and Russian negotiators had drawn up a joint statement that would become the basis for a future peace treaty.
- However, the talks ended in failure. Sharab and Radchenko argue that this happened for four main reasons
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Russia attacked Ukraine on February 24, 2022, but four days later the two sides sat at the negotiating table.. Sharab and Radchenko argue that this happened because the Ukrainians were afraid of the possibility of losing the war quickly, while the Russians became convinced that their offensive was not achieving immediate results and that they could extract concessions from Ukraine through diplomatic channels.
Behind the scenes of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine
The talks began on February 28, 2022 in Belarus. The Ukrainian delegation, which is close to Volodymyr Zelensky, was headed by Davut Arachamija, and the Russian delegation was headed by Vladimir Putin’s advisor, Vladimir Medinsky. As Sharap and Radchenko described, during the first meeting, the Russians had to demand Ukraine's surrender. The Ukrainians rejected this request, and the lack of Russian progress on the front in the following days allowed them to negotiate more effectively.
During subsequent meetings – on March 3 and 7 – “the Ukrainian delegation presented its own demands: An immediate ceasefire and the establishment of humanitarian corridors that would allow civilians to leave the war zone safely.” According to the authors, the initial version of the joint statement was to be created on March 7, which was to become the basis and Russia was to demand Ukraine’s neutrality in the peace treaty.
During the meetings held remotely between the two delegations in March, Ukraine's request for a security guarantee in the event of another Russian attack was to be clarified. After the end of the Cold War, talks took place once (in 1994) about providing security guarantees to Ukraine, but they ended with the signing of the so-called peace agreement. Budapest Memorandum. Although it was mistakenly believed that security guarantees were negotiated at the time, in reality they were merely “assurances” and did not oblige the guarantor states to provide armed assistance to Ukraine in the event of an attack.
The breakthrough in negotiations came in the last days of March in Istanbul. Russia and Ukraine then announced that they had developed a joint text for the statement, the so-called Istanbul Statement. What was inside had never been made public. But according to Sharap and Radchenko – who had access to the document and talked about it with the participants in the negotiations – the Ukrainian side wrote the statement, and the Russians accepted it as the basis for the subsequent peace treaty.
Under the treaty, “Ukraine will become a permanently neutral, non-nuclear state. Ukraine will abandon any intention to join military alliances or allow foreign military bases or forces on its territory.” – We read in the “Foreign Affairs”.
Ukraine will also receive security guarantees in the event of another attack. The guarantor states must first consult with Ukraine and each other, and then provide assistance to Ukraine: impose a no-fly zone, provide weapons, or intervene militarily on Kiev's side. Poland was also to be among the guarantor countries.
Moreover, Ukraine was to have an open door to EU membership“The guarantor countries (including Russia) will clearly confirm their intention to facilitate Ukraine’s membership in the European Union,” we read in the text in “FA”. In addition, the text of the statement assumed that Russia and Ukraine would peacefully resolve the issue of the status of Crimea within 10 to 15 years.
Sharap and Radchenko also rated both Russia and Ukraine were willing to make far-reaching concessions. Ukraine had to adopt a neutral position (Arashamiya later claimed that this was the most important issue from the Kremlin's perspective), and Russia had to withdraw its opposition to Ukraine's EU membership and open the issue of Crimea's membership, which it had rejected. It was previously considered closed.
The text of the statement, which was then amended in April 2022, was to become the basis for the peace treaty to be signed by Putin and Zelensky. In the following months. However, as Sharap and Radchenko note, the text of the statement did not include important issues such as the location of the border or the withdrawal of Russians from the occupied territories of Ukraine.
Why did the negotiations fail?
Sharab and Radchenko appreciate that Four main factors contributed to the collapse of peace talks in late April.
First, “Washington and other allies were deeply skeptical about the prospects for the diplomatic path that would emerge from Istanbul,” we read in FA magazine. This is because the United States did not believe that the negotiations could be successful, and moreover, the Ukrainians did not consult with Washington on the issue of security guarantees during the talks with the Russians.
Under the future treaty, the United States will be one of the guarantor countries, and will – if necessary – have to go to war with Russia. “Instead of engaging in the Istanbul Process and subsequent diplomatic actions, the West increased military aid to Kiev and increased pressure on Russia, including through an ever-tightening sanctions regime,” Sharab and Radchenko wrote. They also mention Boris Johnson's visit to Kiev on April 9, which convinced Ukrainians that an agreement with Putin “would be a victory for Moscow.”
Secondly, the discovery of Russian war crimes in Bucha and Irbin also contributed to the abandonment of peace talks. Despite this, the talks continued, but – as the authors say – the climate of the talks was no longer what it was before.
Third, after the Russians withdrew from Kiev, the Ukrainian authorities were convinced that, with the help of the West, they would be able to turn the scales of victory in their favor. But not at the negotiating table, but on the battlefield. As Sharap and Radchenko remind us, at the end of April, Ukraine announced that the initial condition for any treaty should be Russian withdrawal from Donbass. This was not mentioned in the previously agreed upon communication.
Fourth, the authors claim, negotiators made a mistake when they tried to design an ambitious peace treaty, instead of focusing first on important details: the terms of the ceasefire, the border route, and humanitarian corridors. Given the generality of the arrangements and the exclusion of the United States from this process (at the stage of preparing the statement), Sharab and Radchenko believe that the West, and above all Washington, decided not to participate in the diplomatic process.
In summary, the authors argue that the conclusions of the negotiations in the first months of the war were that Ukraine and Russia had already managed to bring relatively significant concessions to the diplomatic table. “thus, Political scientists conclude that if Kiev and Moscow return to the negotiating table, they may return to several ideas that might be useful in building lasting peace..
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