Author: Frand Villier – 06/05/2024
How to prolong a senseless war
by Frand Villier
In Spring 2022, some weeks after the start of the hostilities between Russia and Ukraine, the belligerents were ready to stop their conflict signing a peace treaty. The deal was axed on Ukrainian acceptance of the status of permanent neutrality, what was sought by Moscow with its maladroit intervention of 24 February. This outcome, which would have avoided the current stalemate in Europe, saving hundreds of thousands of Europeans lives, was prevented by the very force at the roots of the crisis: NATO. The above stated is not coming from alternative media outlets or any “Putin understander” author sympathetic to the Russian side. It is the outcome of a well-researched paper produced by two pundits, Samuel Charap and Sergey Radchenko, very close to the Anglo-American establishment, as underlined by the publishing outlet, the historical mouthpiece of the Transatlantic bloc, “Foreign Affairs” journal (see: https://foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/talks-could-have-ended-war-ukraine?utm_source=twitter_posts&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=tw_daily_soc )
Working as every serious researcher should do, i.e. reviewing documents and interviewing the actors of the negotiations, the two authors reconstructed the pace of the Russian-Ukrainian contacts during the first months of the conflict. First of all, it emerges how both Moscow and Kiev engaged in dialogue actively at the highest level, sending senior statesmen to negotiate. Then those assisting the negotiations, first of all the leadership of Turkey and the diplomacy of Israel, were very active in their mediation thus contributing in reaching a settlement satisfactory to all.
By 15 April “a draft agreement” foreseeing the stop of all foreign armies’ war games on Ukrainian territory by way of neutral status and international guarantees to Ukraine’s territorial integrity (to be provided by the five nations of the UN Security Council plus Canada, Germany, Israel, Italy, Poland and Turkey) was ready to be signed to stop the fratricide war. As one of the Ukrainian negotiators, Oleksandr Chalyi, recalled months after, Putin “concluded he had made a huge mistake and tried to do everything possible to conclude an agreement with Ukraine.”
But then Kiev suddenly started to step out from the deal. What happened? On 9 April 2022, Boris Johnson, then London’s prime minister, popped up in Kiev. His message was clear and straightforward: don’t sign anything, the Anglo-American forces across the “West” will be at your side and it is imperative to inflict “a strategic defeat on Russia”.
Charap and Radchenko downplay the thesis of the Anglo-American as the main responsible for the ensuing massacre as a Russian perception of things. But the timeline of the events is clear as well as that without the UK and US incitement the Ukrainian rulers would have never adopted the fool idea of their military possibility vis-à-vis Moscow. Two weeks after Johnson, US Secretaries of State Antony Blinken and of Defense Lloyd Austin arrived to Kiev to buttress the regime’s resolve to go through the military adventure all the way down. In the end, instead of embracing the peace plan, the Europeans followed and the “West” escalated the war sending weapons to Kiev and engaging in the harm-wrestling with Russia through the ever-tightening sanctions regime.
Lesson Learned
Charap and Radchenko’s article in in the end an important signal. What for years European media has been termed conspiracy and “Putin’s propaganda” was the actual reality on the ground. The fact that it was systematically denied reflect once again how media in Europe have abandoned their informative and watch dog function to become the executor of political lines dictated from above, most often from centres of power outside the continent.
Another lesson is the appalling profile of current European leaderships. The article recalls how “Kiev’s Western partners were reluctant to get involved in a negotiation with Russia,” especially “one that would create new commitments to ensure Ukraine’s security.” If it is clear that this was not an Anglo-American goal, all European capitals should have supported such a scenario will all their forces. Whatever the commitment then, it would have been ways less cumbersome that what Europe will have to face as an outcome of two years of war and the destruction of the former Ukraine. EU leaders confirmed their guilty apathy already on act when they did nothing to push for the implementation the 2014 and 2015 Minsk agreements. But this time the blindness and folly were even more unforgivable since, as part of the agreement, Moscow was ready to renounce to other pretention over Kiev and, as a guarantor state explicitly “confirm intention to facilitate Ukraine’s membership in the European Union.”
With EU Parliament approaching we can only hope that these facts will be used during the campaign to strive to remove those politicians responsible for this profound harm inflicted to the whole of Europe.