In recent days, the Foreign Affairs article in which Samuel Charap and Sergey Radchenko recalled the salient points of the negotiations between Russia and Ukraine which, thanks to Turkish mediation, had reached the end of March 2022 caused a sensation, but perhaps not enough in Italy. to an agreement to stop hostilities after just over a month of war.
As Roberto Vivaldelli recalls on InsideOver, the American magazine dedicated a long article to the negotiations, complete with unpublished documents and testimonies. “Some observers and officials (including, most notably, Russian President Vladimir Putin) have said that there was an agreement on the table that would have ended the war, but that the Ukrainians backed away from it due to a combination of pressure from part of their Western patrons and Kiev’s assumptions about Russian military weakness” notes Foreign Affairs admitting that “Kiev’s Western partners were reluctant to get involved in a negotiation with Russia”, particularly “in a negotiation that would create new commitments to ensure the security of Ukraine.”
The draft agreement seen by Foreign Affairs envisaged a “neutral and nuclear-free” Ukraine, which would renounce “any intention to join military alliances or to allow the presence of military bases or foreign troops on its territory”.
The possible guarantors of Ukrainian security would have been the 5 permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (therefore including Russia) together with Canada, Germany, Israel, Italy, Poland and Turkey.
The draft agreement also said that if Ukraine was attacked and requested assistance, all guarantor states would be obliged to provide assistance to Kiev which would be granted membership of the European Union.
Despite news of the Bucha massacre emerging in early April, talks continued until the April 15 draft, which predicted an agreement would be reached within two weeks, and then faded away. According to Vladimir Putin, under pressure from the West, and in particular from Boris Johnson, then British Prime Minister, the United Kingdom forced the Ukrainians to continue fighting.
Foreign Affairs does not share Putin’s assessments but admits that “the Western response to these negotiations was certainly lukewarm. Washington and its allies were deeply skeptical about the prospects of the diplomatic path emerging from Istanbul.”
However, as he said Ukrainian presidential advisor Davyd Arakhamiia, “after our return from Istanbul, Boris Johnson visited Kiev and told us that we should not sign anything with the Russians and continue fighting” because “Putin is a war criminal, he must be put under pressure” . Three days later Putin declared that talks with Ukraine had suddenly hit “a dead end.” Something had obviously happened, as it were also confirmed by government sources in Kiev.
Have we perhaps forgotten that in those days the Anglo-American slogan took shape that the war had to continue because it would wear Russia out?
As revealed by Washington Postthe US State Department also opposed the April 2022 deal with Moscow while in an interview on Israeli television former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett confirmed that the US and UK blocked the deal, a theory supported also from the testimony of Ambassador Oleksandr Chalyi, a Ukrainian diplomat present at the negotiations in Turkey.
Chalyi, during a public event in Geneva, recalled how Kiev and Moscow were “close” to ending “our war with a peaceful solution”. Putin, he stressed, “tried to do everything possible to conclude an agreement with Ukraine” and “really wanted to reach a peaceful solution.” And in Istanbul the two sides “managed to find a real compromise”.
It is difficult to accuse Foreign Affairs of being “Putinian” but it must be remembered that the elements that have emerged in recent days and which have caused such a stir were in reality already well known at the time of the negotiations, when highlighting the Anglo-American responsibilities in making the negotiations fail and prolonging a war that proved devastating for the belligerents but also for Europe meant being labeled as pro-Russian.
A narrative that is starting to shake today but which has so far been fully assimilated by most of the media in Italy and Europe, as we have highlighted on several occasions.
It is also difficult to attribute sympathy for the Kremlin to the German Die Welt which dedicated an extensive article to the topic of the negotiations mediated by Turkey, publishing the draft document and highlighting that there were still issues to be resolved regarding the size that the Ukrainian armed forces should have after the signing of the agreement: the Russians asked for no more than 85 thousand soldiers with 342 tanks, 519 artillery pieces, 102 fighter planes, 35 helicopters and 2 major military ships while the Ukrainians claimed to have 250 thousand soldiers with 800 tanks armed forces, 1900 artillery, 160 planes, 144 helicopters and 8 ships.
Without taking anything away from Foreign Affairs and Die Welt, it is worth remembering that Defense Analysis had already reported at the time of the events of the negotiations mediated by the Turks to end the conflict.
On March 30, 2022, an article by Maurizio Delli Santi entitled Russians and Ukrainians continue to fight but are starting to negotiate seriously reported on the progress underway on the negotiations front: it is useful to reread it today also in light of what was exposed by Foreign Affairs.
The topic of the agreement blown up by Anglo-American pressure on Kiev was also mentioned in some interviews given by the undersigned to TGCOM 24 on 4 April 2022 and subsequently on 25 April.
This is therefore not news that suddenly emerged today. Rather, we should ask ourselves why after two years of low profile on the Istanbul negotiations sabotaged by the Anglo-Saxon powers (which President Recep Tayyp Erdogan referred to on several occasions) which would have averted hundreds of thousands of deaths and injuries, immense destruction and economic disaster of Europe, today some media on both sides of the Atlantic report it in extensive detail.
Putin did not have Navalny killed
Moreover, in the last few hours the Wall Street Journal has revealed that according to various US intelligence agencies, the death of Alexey Navalny in the detention center in Siberia was not ordered by Putin. “US intelligence agencies have determined that Putin most likely did not order Navalny’s death, people familiar with the matter said,” the article said.
The WSJ certainly does not absolve Putin of political responsibility for the death of his opponent in prison but it is worth remembering that Kirylo Budanov, head of Kiev’s military intelligence (GUR), had stated last February 25 that the Russian dissident “died for a blood clot”, therefore “it is a natural death” adding that the news “is more or less confirmed. I may disappoint you, but what we know is that he really died of a blood clot.”
At the time of Navalny’s death, declarations, parliamentary debates and many commentators pointed the finger at the Kremlin, exploiting it for propaganda and disinformation purposes (the Western one, like the Russian one, is definitely the protagonist of the narration of all aspects of the conflict underway in Ukraine) against Russia and Putin with the aim of hindering his victory in the then imminent presidential elections. At the time, pragmatically,
Budanov’s statements threatened to bring down this propaganda castle and were in fact almost completely ignored by politicians and the media in the West.
Defense Analysis had pragmatically highlighted in an interview with TGCOM24 Mediaset how Navalny’s death on the eve of the vote did not entail any advantages for Putin and the Russian Federation.
As the director of TGCOM 24 Paolo Liguori recently underlined, the US press is freer than ours, if anything it is not affected, or is affected to a lesser extent, by the ostracisms we so widespread (the unforgettable lists of proscription of the “Putinians” on the front page of major newspapers) and moreover it is in the overseas media that we have read and still read today the most realistic and least biased reports and analyzes on the military situation, that we have learned that the CIA has had 12 bases for eight years secrets in Ukrainian territory on the border with Russia for clandestine operations and much other information that casts heavy shadows on the Euro-Ukrainian-Atlantist propagandist narrative that has been fed to public opinion for over two years.
Who bombs the nuclear power plant?
In light of these assessments, it would be reasonable to at least now expect a political and media approach to the conflict that is less fan-like and more objective, an expectation that continues to be almost always disappointed, as demonstrated in recent weeks by the story of the drone incursions that have threatened the safety of the Energodar nuclear power plant (ZNPP) in the Zaporizhzhia region.
On April 11, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Mariano Grossi, called for maximum military restraint and full respect for the five concrete principles to protect the Ukrainian nuclear power plant a few days after a series of Drone attacks had “significantly” increased the risk of a nuclear accident at the Ukrainian nuclear power plant.
The power plant has been in the hands of Russian forces since the first days of the war, although the Ukrainians have attempted to reconquer it several times with amphibious assaults across the Dnieper river and bombings.
On April 9, the EU High Representative for Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, wrote in X that “reckless drone attacks against the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant increase the risk of dangerous nuclear accidents. Such attacks must stop. Russia should withdraw from the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant.”
A cryptic statement on closer inspection: Borrell condemns the attacks without attributing responsibility, an aspect which confirms that the EU leaders are aware that Kiev’s forces are attacking the Energodar installations. Otherwise Borrell would have pointed the finger at Moscow without hesitation but, nevertheless, he maintains that the Russians should withdraw from the plant. A statement that is obvious in this case since the EU has always maintained that the Russians should withdraw from Ukraine.
The approach in Washington is similar where State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said that the United States reiterates its “conviction that Russia is playing a very dangerous game with the military seizure of the Ukrainian nuclear power plant.
It is dangerous that they have done so, and we continue to call on Russia to withdraw its military and civilian personnel from the plant, to return full control of it to the relevant Ukrainian authorities, and to refrain from any action that could result in a nuclear accident at the plant. We are aware of the news of a drone attack” against the Zaporizhia plant and “we continue to monitor the conditions also through official reports from the IAEA,” Miller said without commenting on the origin of the drones.
In fact, the EU and the USA limit themselves to condemning the Russian occupation of the plant as dangerous without declaring that it is the Ukrainian attacks that endanger its security. Moreover, not even the IAEA, which has its technicians on site, has ever officially attributed the attacks on the plant to the Ukrainians.
@GianandreaGaian
Photos: Anadolu and Energatom
