The New York Times publishes the documentation that recounts the peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in 2022, opening a glimpse into the details of the negotiations, which later failed. The files had already been disclosed by the Wall Street Journal last March, which had published the draft peace treaty drawn up by Russian and Ukrainian negotiators on 15 April 2022, six weeks after the start of the war.
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Russia-Ukraine negotiations, the points of the agreement
Among the points of the agreement largely stipulated during the negotiations in Istanbul in March of that year, Ukraine was to become a permanently neutral state and not join military blocs such as NATO.
Crimea would have remained Russian but without the recognition of Kiev, which would have been forced not to have foreign weapons and to reduce its Armed Forces, which had to go down to 85 thousand personnel, 342 tanks and 519 artillery pieces. The Russian language was to be used on an equal footing with Ukrainian, while the fate of Donbass would be discussed at a later date.
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The reasons for the failure
Now the NYT reveals that one of the points that probably contributed to the collapse of an agreement is the so-called Article 5: in the event of another armed attack against Ukraine, the “guarantor states” that would sign the treaty – Great Britain, China, Russia, the United States and France – would intervene directly in Ukraine’s defense. But Moscow wanted to include a clause according to which “all guarantor states, including Russia”, would have to approve the response if Ukraine was attacked.
Moscow’s right of veto
In short, a sort of right of veto for Moscow, which in fact could have invaded Ukrainian territory again. The clause, deemed absurd, precipitated things: with this change, one of the Ukrainian negotiators said, “we had no interest in continuing the talks.”
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