Ukrainians have been paying an appalling price for the failure of ensuring reasonable negotiations from 2014 to February 2022 – which could have prevented the invasion by Russia in the first place, and once the war started, could have led to the end of this war.
Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. This war could have been averted, the dreadful fallout of the war on both sides, especially the pains and agonies the innocent Ukrainian victims had to endure with and the irreparable damage the war has incurred on the economy and infrastructure, in particular, is a colossal loss to the civilized society. Although it cannot be compared with the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 in terms of the terrible destruction and death of millions it has brought, still, the anguish of avoiding a possible war will linger on in the minds of a civilized society of the world order for a long time.
Russia and Ukraine did negotiate for peace
There are documentary pieces of evidence of positive initiatives undertaken by both the Russian and Ukrainian stakeholders, initially. Russian and Ukrainian diplomats met on February 28 to begin negotiations toward a ceasefire, in the Gomel region of Belarus that borders Ukraine. These talks fell apart. Then, in early March, the two sides met again in Belarus to hold a second and third round of talks. On March 10, the foreign ministers of Ukraine and Russia met in Antalya, Turkey, and finally, at the end of March, senior officials from Ukraine and Russia met in Istanbul, Turkey, thanks to the initiative of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. On March 29, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said, “We are pleased to see that the rapprochement between the parties has increased at every stage. Consensus and common understanding were reached on some issues.” By April, an agreement regarding a tentative interim deal was reached between Russia and Ukraine.
In a positive development, the Russian forces began to withdraw from Ukraine’s northern Chernihiv Oblast, in early April, and that was quite indicative of Russian forces halting military operations around Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital. But the West were perhaps not happy with the developments and to add fuel to the diffusing fire the United States and the United Kingdom sarcastically claimed that this withdrawal was a consequence of military failure, while the Russians said it was due to the interim deal. It is quite impossible to ascertain the facts but the scorns by the US and UK could not have helped to reduce tensions in the otherwise volatile situation.
US-UK detrimental interventions spoiled the peace talks
Before the deal could move forward, the then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson arrived in Kyiv on April 9. A Ukrainian media outlet – ‘Ukrainska Pravda’ – reported that Johnson carried two messages to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky: first, that Russian President Vladimir Putin “should be hassled, and not negotiated with,” and second, that even if Ukraine signed agreements with the Kremlin, the West was not ready to give its assent. Soon after Johnson’s visit, “the bilateral negotiation process was paused from the Ukrainian end.” A few weeks later, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin visited Kyiv, and following the trip, Austin spoke at a news conference from Poland and boasted, “We want to see Russia weakened.” There is no apparent evidence that Johnson, Blinken, and Austin directly pressurized Zelensky to withdraw from the interim negotiations, but there is adequate circumstantial evidence to suggest that the West had other ideas.
Apparent intent of the US to jeopardize peace negotiations
The lack of willingness to allow Ukraine to negotiate with Russia or the inclined intent to jeopardize any peace negotiation predates these visits and was summarized in a March 10, 2022, article in the ‘Washington Post’ where senior officials in US President Joe Biden’s administration stated that the current US strategy “is to ensure that the economic costs for Russia are severe and sustainable, as well as to continue supporting Ukraine militarily in its effort to inflict as many defeats on Russia as possible.”
Long before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in 2014, the United States through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative of the US Department of Defense – spent more than $19 billion in providing training and equipment to the Ukrainian military (another $17.6 billion since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022). The arming of Ukraine, the statements about weakening Russia by senior officials of the US government, and the refusal to initiate any kind of arms control indicate the real intentions of the West, which are wary about Russia-China coming together and becoming a potent force.
Ukraine and Pakistan will continue to remain neighbours of Russia and India,
Ukraine and Russia are neighbours. You cannot change the geographical location of Ukraine and move it to Chicago in the United States. This means that Ukraine and Russia have to come to an agreement and find a solution between them, for ending the conflict.
Zelensky was never against Russia
We need to remember that Volodymyr Zelensky who won by a landslide (73%) margin in the Ukrainian Presidential Election in 2019 against Petro Poroshenko, the fancied candidate of the West, made his intentions clear about his approach towards Russia. He addressed the nation in a pre-election campaign and said “We will not be able to avoid negotiations between Russia and Ukraine”. In December 2019, Zelensky and Putin met in Paris, alongside the then-Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel and France’s President Emmanuel Macron (known as the “Normandy Four”). This initiative was driven by Macron and Merkel. As early as 2019, France’s President Emmanuel Macron argued that it was time for Europe to “rethink… our relationship with Russia” because “pushing Russia away from Europe is a profound strategic error.”
In March 2020, Zelensky said that he and Putin could work out an agreement within a year based on the Minsk II agreements of February 2015. “There are points in Minsk. If we move them around a bit, then what bad can that lead to? As soon as there are no people with weapons, the shooting will stop. That’s important,” Zelensky said in an interview with Guardian. In a December 2019 press conference, Putin said, “there is nothing more important than the Minsk Agreements.” At this point, Putin remarked that all he expected was that the Donbas region would be given special status in the Ukrainian constitution, and during the time of the expected Ukraine-Russia April 2020 meeting, the troops on both sides would have pulled back and agreed to “disengagement along the entire contact line.”
ROLE OF French PM MACRON
It was clear to Macron by 2020 that the ambit of the negotiations was about something more than just Minsk and Ukraine; it was about the creation of a “new security architecture” that did not isolate Russia – and was also not subservient to Washington. Macron developed these points in February 2021 in two directions and spoke about them during his interview with the Atlantic Council (a US think tank). First, he said that NATO has “pushed our borders as far as possible to the eastern side,” but NATO’s expansion has “not succeeded in reducing the conflicts and threats there.” With NATO’s eastward expansion, he made it amply clear that it was not going to increase Europe’s security. Second, Macron said that the US unilateral withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 2019 – and Russia’s mirroring that – leaves Europe unprotected “against these Russian missiles.” He further said, “As a European, I want to open a discussion between the European Union and Russia.” Such a discussion would pioneer a post-Cold War understanding of security, which would leave the United States out of the conversation with Russia. None of these proposals from Macron could advance, not only because of hesitancy in Russia but also principally because they were not seen favourably by Washington.
‘Normandy Four’ without Biden
Biden, meanwhile, chose to intensify threats and sanctions against Russia based on the claims of Kremlin interference in the United States 2016 and 2018 elections. Confusion prevailed about whether US President Joe Biden would be welcomed into the ‘Normandy Four’. In late 2020, Zelensky said he wanted Biden at the table, but a year later it became clear that Russia was not interested in having the United States as a part of the ‘Normandy Four’. Putin said that the “”Normandy Four was “self-sufficient.” Biden, meanwhile, chose to intensify threats and sanctions against Russia based on the claims of Kremlin interference in the United States 2016 and 2018 elections. By December 2021, there was no proper reciprocal dialogue between Biden and Putin. Putin told Finnish President Sauli Niinistö that there was a “need to immediately launch negotiations with the United States and NATO” on security guarantees. In a video call between Biden and Putin on December 7, 2021, the Kremlin told the US President that “Russia is seriously interested in obtaining reliable, legally fixed guarantees that rule out NATO expansion eastward and the deployment of offensive strike weapons systems in states adjacent to Russia.” No such guarantee was forthcoming from Washington. The talks fizzled out.
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Washington was more inclined to derail peace-process
The record shows that Washington rejected Macron’s initiatives as well as entreaties from Putin and Zelensky to resolve issues through diplomatic dialogue. Up to four days before the Russian invasion, Macron continued his efforts to prevent an escalation of the conflict. By then, the appetite in Moscow for negotiations had dwindled, and Putin rejected Macron’s efforts.
An independent European foreign policy was simply not possible as envisaged by Macron and as the former leader of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev had proposed in 1989 while talking about his vision for a “common European home” that would stretch from northern Asia to Europe). Nor was an agreement with Russia feasible if it meant that Russian concerns were to be taken seriously by the West.
Ukrainians have been paying a terrible price for the failure of ensuring sensible and reasonable negotiations from 2014 to February 2022 – which could have prevented the invasion by Russia in the first place, and once the war started, could have led to the end of this war. All wars end in negotiations, but these negotiations to end wars should be permitted to restart in the absence of interventions from the US and the UK.
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