3. When mediation derails negotiation

The West is not interested to see peace prevail in Ukraine, because the “Russo-Ukrainian war”, as it defines the conflict, is being waged at a safe distance, implements NATO’s policy of “containment” directed at Russia, and brings profit.

Preliminaries

Western mediation efforts over the war in Ukraine continue, often in coordination with international organizations such as the United Nations and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). These efforts are meant to focus on promoting dialogue, implementing ceasefires, and facilitating negotiations aimed at achieving a peaceful resolution to the conflict in Ukraine.

Still, some important facts cast doubt about sincerity and honesty of Western mediation. Sometimes, as the developments of the last decade show, Western modulation derails negotiations.

It happened in Kiev during the so called “Revolution of Dignity” that toppled the democratically elected, though corrupt, President of Ukraine in 2014.

It happened to the Minsk Accords torpedoed by Kiev with the blessing of the benevolent West.

It happened at least thrice during Putin’s “special military operation” (SMO) in Ukraine.

Many people start suspecting the West of the desire to cause harm to Russia rather than do good to Ukraine.  These suspicions were bolstered up by former German chancellor Angela Merkel’s interview to the Zeit on December 7, 2022. As the interview shows, the Minsk agreements were never meant to be carried out by Kiev.

Western mediation during the Maidan riots in 2014

The inefficiency of Western mediation became evident during the Maidan riots in 2014 when representatives of the West signed “The Agreement on the Settlement of the Political Crisis in Ukraine” asmediators.

The Agreement on the Settlement of the Political Crisis in Ukraine was an agreement signed on 21 February 2014 by then-President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, and the leaders of Ukraine's parliamentary opposition, with mediation from the European Union and Russia. The agreement aimed at avoiding a violent regime change in Kiev.

To avoid bloodshed Yanukovych accepted all the demands of the opposition: a return to the 2004 Constitution, establishing a parliamentary-presidential system of government, early presidential elections by the end of 2014, and the formation of a "government of national trust".

Russia understood that it was pointless to sign it, since it was unable to enforce it. The signing was formally witnessed by the Foreign Ministers of Germany and Poland, Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Radosław Sikorski, as well as the head of the Department for Continental Europe of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Eric Fournier.

Although signed, the agreement was not implemented. Western mediators failed to use their influence to quell the unrest. No attempt was registered for the “mediators” to preach the famous motto of democracy “the ballot is stronger than the bullet”. Only their sabotage of mediation left room for the Maidan extremists to enforce their agenda.

Thus, Vladimir Parasyuk became known for his Euromaidan speech on 21 February 2014, in which he rejected the terms of an agreement between opposition leaders and Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. In his speech, Parasyuk delivered an ultimatum, demanding Yanukovych's resignation and vowing his group would storm Yanukovych's Mezhyhirya Residence at 10 a.m. the next day without it. The next morning, when it became clear that Western mediators had let him down, Yanukovych left the country.

To cover up their direct participation in the violent regime change, Radek Sikorski later resorted to casting slurs at the Agreement that he had himself signed:

“Basically what we were proposing was the person who had just killed a hundred people was staying as their president for almost a year.” [Reid, 2015: 269]

Though corrupt, Yanukovych was never blood-thirsty, and to accuse him of standing behind the murders on the Maidan is a vulgar lie and cynical manipulation. The Maidan murders were never investigated. Instead, the post-Maidan self-proclaimed government took pains to cover up evidence pointing to their complicity in indiscriminate killings on the Maidan. Western sabotage of mediation paved the way to the carnival of deaths in hundreds of thousands.

The Minsk Accords

The Minsk I was drafted by the Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine, consisting of Ukraine, Russia, and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), with mediation by the leaders of France and Germany in the so-called Normandy Format. After extensive talks in Minsk, Belarus, the agreement was signed on 5 September 2014 by representatives of the Trilateral Contact Group and by the then-leaders of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) and Lugansk People's Republic (LPR). This agreement followed multiple previous attempts to stop the fighting in the region and aimed to implement an immediate ceasefire. The agreement failed to stop fighting.

The Wikipedia gives an ambiguous statement to the reader:

“the agreement was signed on 5 September 2014 by representatives of the Trilateral Contact Group and, without recognition of their status, by the then-leaders of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) and Luhansk People's Republic (LPR).”

Words underlined by me are strange: after all, the signing itself is an act of recognition of the opponent. Thus, Ukraine’s signature on the Agreement is an act of recognition of both people’s republics. “Recognition” is not supposed to be put into some special wording. That is why the phrase “without recognition of their status” is formally correct, but contextually meaningless and false: why would you sign an Agreement if you consider it invalid?

Minsk II was signed on 12 February 2015. This agreement consisted of a package of measures, including a ceasefire, withdrawal of heavy weapons from the front line, release of prisoners of war, constitutional reform in Ukraine granting self-government to certain areas of Donbas and restoring control of the state border to the Ukrainian government. The agreement's provisions were never fully implemented.

As it is clear from former German chancellor Angela Merkel’s interview to the Zeit on December 7, 2022, the Minsk agreements were never meant to be carried out by Kiev that had signed them, their sole function being to provide Kiev with a pause in hostilities so as to bolster up its military readiness for war.

Putin was disappointed by Merkel’s admission:

"It appears to me that nobody planned to live up to these Minsk agreements… They (the participants – ed.) lied to us, and the only reason for these processes was to pump Ukraine up with weapons and get it ready for military action. Well, we can see that. Maybe we were too late to realise what was happening. Maybe this (the war – ed.) should have been started earlier."

The after-SMO peace talks

There have been several rounds of peace talks after the beginning of the special military operation (SMO) on February 24, 2024. The West refused to call the hostilities an “operation” calling them an “invasion” and “war”. As French Senator Cédric Perrin characterized the difference:

“The Russians made a monumental mistake at the outset … by not operating as  Western doctrine would have it, i. e., by bombing the areas which today allow the Ukrainians to respond to them.” [Baud, 2024: 9]

The first meeting was held four days after the start of the invasion, on 28 February 2022, in Belarus. It concluded without result, with delegations from both sides returning to their capitals for consultations. A second and third round of talks took place on 3 and 7 March 2022, on the Belarus–Ukraine border, in an undisclosed location in the Gomel region of Belarus. A fourth and fifth round of talks were respectively held on 10 and 14 March in Antalya, Turkey.

“On March 27, Zelensky publicly defended his proposal, and on March 28, as a gesture of support for this effort, Vladimir Putin eased the pressure on the capital and withdrew his troops from the area. Zelensky’s proposal served as the basis for the Istanbul Communiqué of March 29, 2022, which was a ceasefire agreement, a prelude to a peace agreement. Boris Johnson intervened and Zelensky withdrew his proposal, exchanging peace and the lives of his men for support “for as long as it takes.” [Baud, 2024: 102]

The Ukrainian-Russian peace negotiations in March 2022 were held under the mediation of the then Israeli Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett, supported by President Erdogan and former German Chancellor Schröder. The peace plan for Ukraine was drawn up by retired General H. Kujat and Professor Emeritus H. Funke.

During a series of meetings, by the end of March Russia and Ukraine negotiators produced the Istanbul Communiqué, "Key Provisions of the Treaty on Ukraine's Security Guarantees" - a framework of a possible agreement. The agreement would have declared Ukraine to be a neutral state, put a limit on its military, and list Russia and Western countries, including the US and the UK, as guarantors, obliged to assist Ukraine in case of aggression against it.

On March 28, 2022. President Zelensky publicly affirmed that Ukraine was ready for neutrality combined with security guarantees as part of a peace agreement with Russia.  But on April 9 British Prime Minister Boris Johnson made a surprise visit to Kiev.  During this visit, he reportedly urged Zelensky not to meet Putin because Putin was a war criminal and weaker than he seemed.  He should and could be crushed rather than accommodated; and even if Ukraine was ready to end the war, NATO was not.

Zelensky’s proposed meeting with Putin was then called off. 

Nevertheless, Ukraine and Russia were on the brink of an agreement in Istanbul in spring 2022, with both sides considering “far-reaching concessions", only to have the settlement vetoed.

As David C. Hendrickson explained in “National Interest”:

“The hardline approach, suffused with anger, that arose after February 24 in the United States and Europe ruled out any negotiated settlement between Russia and Ukraine. How could Zelensky make peace with Putin if the West did not do so? A separate Russian-Ukrainian peace, absent a larger peace between Russia and the West, was inconceivable then because it would require Ukraine to entrust its fortunes to the Russians.” https://nationalinterest.org/feature/reconstructing-istanbul-accords-208818?page=0%2C2

This is how Michael von der Schulenburg, a German former diplomat with the United Nations and with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) summerizes the consequences of the abortive talks:

1. Just one month after the start of the Russian military intervention in Ukraine, Ukrainian and Russian negotiators had come very close to an agreement for a ceasefire and to an outline for a comprehensive peace solution to the conflict.

2. In contrast to today, President Zelensky and his government had made great efforts to negotiate peace with Russia and bring the war to a quick end.

3. Contrary to Western interpretations, Ukraine and Russia agreed at the time that the planned NATO expansion was the reason for the war. They therefore focused their peace negotiations on Ukraine’s neutrality and its renunciation of NATO membership. In return, Ukraine would have retained its territorial integrity except for Crimea.

4. There is little doubt that these peace negotiations failed due to resistance from NATO and in particular from the USA and the UK. The reasons is that such a peace agreement would have been tantamount to a defeat for NATO, an end to NATO’s eastward expansion and thus an end to the dream of a unipolar world dominated by the USA.

5. The failure of the peace negotiations in March 2022 led to dangerous intensification of the war that has cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, especially young people, deeply traumatized a young generation and inflicted the most severe mental and physical wounds on them. Ukraine has been exposed to enormous destruction, internal displacements, and mass impoverishment. This si accompanied by a large-scale depopulation of the country. Not only Russia, but also NATO and the West bear a heavy share of the blame for this disaster.

6. Ukraine’s negotiating position today is far worse than it was in March 2022.  Ukraine will now lose large parts of its territory.

7. The blocking of the peace negotiations at that time has harmed everyone: Russia and Europe – but above all the people of Ukraine, who are paying with their blood the price for the ambitions of the major powers and will probably get nothing in return.      

https://michael-von-der-schulenburg.com/how-the-chance-was-lost-for-a-peace-settlement-of-the-ukraine-war/

I am ready to subscribe to every point of Schulenburg’s convincing analysis.