Can Vladimir Putin Be Negotiated With?
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/can-putin-be-negotiated-with-yes/
As President Donald Trump attempts to engage with Russia to end the conflict in Ukraine, supporters of the proxy war in Washington, Europe, and Ukraine claim that President Vladimir Putin is an evil dictator who cannot be trusted. The implication is that talking with the Kremlin is equivalent to surrender for Kiev because Putin wants all of Ukraine, and will use any pause in fighting to gear up for the next invasion.
However, history disproves that assertion. For Moscow, the war was never about seizing Ukrainian territory or attempting to reconstitute the USSR, but pushing back on NATO expansion after the bloc threatened to add Kiev as a member.
Before the invasion and in the early months of the war, Putin made serious offers to both Washington and Kiev to allow eastern and southern Ukraine to remain under Kiev’s control if the country agreed not to join NATO.
The Joe Biden administration outright refused to negotiate on those terms, even if they were acceptable to Kiev. Preventing those talks from occurring first provoked the Russian invasion, then prevented it from ending within a few months.
As Scott Horton explains in the following excerpt from his latest book, https://libertarianinstitute.org/books/provoked-how-washington-started-the-new-cold-war-with-russia-and-the-catastrophe-in-ukraine/
, there were talks in Istanbul, Turkey that nearly ended with conflict within two months.
A Ukrainian negotiator explained the dialogue was "completely successful" and could have allowed the war to come to an end by April 2022. But Western leaders like then-United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson did not want peace, and pressed Kiev to fight.
You can own a signed copy of Provoked by https://libertarianinstitute.org/donate/
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US, UK Prevent Peace
Early indications that Russia and Ukraine could achieve a quick negotiated solution soon gave way to the reality that the Biden administration was instead determined to drag out the war to “weaken Russia.”
One day after Russian forces invaded Ukraine, State Department spokesman Ned Price was asked about the proposed terms to begin negotiations. Though an innocent third person might have assumed that achieving a ceasefire and early end to the fighting would be the highest priority, Price made it clear this was not the case with the American administration. “Those are not the conditions for real diplomacy,” https://state.gov/briefings/department-press-briefing-march-21-2022
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As Secretary Blinken confirmed in October 2022, the only time he had spoken to Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov since February 15, 2022, nine days before the invasion, was over the release of the basketball player Brittney Griner, who had been convicted of bringing a THC vape pen into the https://state.gov/briefings/department-press-briefing-october-25-2022
.”
Two days after the war began, Zelensky said he wanted to negotiate. “We are not afraid to talk to Russia. We are not afraid to say everything about security guarantees for our state. We are not afraid to talk about neutral status. We are not in NATO now.” But he said the main question was “what security guarantees will we have? And what specific countries will give them? We need to talk about the end of this invasion. We need to talk about a https://president.gov.ua/en/news/zvernennya-prezidenta-do-ukrayinciv-naprikinci-pershogo-dnya-73149
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Belarus Talks
The two sides met in Gomel, Belarus on February 28. Though they did not make a deal, they departed on positive terms and agreed to talk again on https://nytimes.com/2022/02/28/world/europe/ukraine-russia-talks-belarus.html
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Bennett
Both sides trusted former Prime Minister Bennett, so at the same time their agents were meeting in Belarus, Putin and Zelensky were communicating through him, outlining the major points of the ceasefire. As Bennett later explained in an interview, Putin promised not to kill Zelensky and dropped his demand for the “disarmament of Ukraine.” In return, Zelensky vowed to drop his attempts to join NATO. Instead, they agreed on something they called the “Israeli model,” which would keep Ukraine outside of NATO, but well-armed enough to guarantee its own independence. “I had the impression at the time that both sides were very interested in a ceasefire,” https://berliner-zeitung.de/open-source/naftali-bennett-wollte-den-frieden-zwischen-ukraine-und-russland-wer-hat-blockiert-li.314871
. But the Americans decided to “crush Putin rather than to negotiate.” The former PM did not seem to disagree with the policy, but was just being honest about it. “I think there was a decision by the west (a legitimate one) that right now what’s needed is to keep hitting Putin and not to reach a ceasefire. … I’ll tell you what — I’m not sure they were mistaken.” He said he was merely “acting as an intermediary,” adding, “Everything I did was coordinated to the smallest detail not just with the U.S. but also Germany and France.”
When asked if the U.S. stopped the negotiations, Bennett replied, “Yes, basically they stopped it and at the time I thought they were making a mistake.” He continued, “[T]here’s a not-too-bad chance they could have reached [an agreement] if they didn’t stop it. Not for sure. But I’m not arguing that it was correct to try. In real time I thought it was correct to reach a ceasefire — https://youtube.com/watch?v=qK9tLDeWBzs
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Though Bennett later tried to walk back his claims, saying there was only a 50 percent chance of making a deal at the time, it is obvious he was being honest the first time and trying to get out of https://x.com/naftalibennett/status/1622571402430750721
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Fiona Spills
It was only later we found out that was exactly what had happened: both the Ukrainians and Russians had been prepared to make serious concessions to bring the war to an https://ft.com/content/7f14efe8-2f4c-47a2-aa6b-9a755a39b626
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Nay No Ned
On March 21, State Department spokesman Price shot down a question about the peace talks, saying the president had “made it very clear that he is open to a diplomatic solution that does not compromise the core principles at the heart of the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine.” He elaborated, “[T]his is a war that is in many ways bigger than Russia, it’s bigger than Ukraine.” This was about the whole world order. “[T]here are principles that are at stake here that have universal applicability everywhere, [including] the principle that each and every country has a sovereign right … to determine for itself with whom it will choose to associate in terms of its alliances.”
The reporter got his drift. “But does that mean that if under pressure of negotiation and war, that Zelensky gives up the previous desire to join NATO … that the U.S. wouldn’t go along with … a negotiated agreement?” https://state.gov/briefings/department-press-briefing-march-21-2022
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At that time, Kiev was in a better position to negotiate than at any point after. And by the end of March, Zelensky was signaling that he was willing to make major concessions to achieve an early end to the https://usnews.com/news/world/articles/2022-03-27/ukraine-prepared-to-discuss-neutrality-status-zelenskiy-tells-russian-journalists
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When White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki was asked what the U.S. was doing to encourage diplomacy, she responded only that “[t]he role that we feel we can play most effectively is by continuing to provide a broad range of security assistance, military assistance to them as well as economic and humanitarian assistance to strengthen their hand in these https://whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/2022/03/21/press-briefing-by-press-secretary-jen-psaki-and-deputy-nsa-for-cyber-and-emerging-technologies-anne-neuberger-march-21-2022
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Turkey
On March 29, the parties convened in Istanbul, where they issued the Istanbul Communiqué based on Ukraine’s proposals. The key concession from the Ukrainian side was an offer of “permanent” neutrality, to refrain from developing nuclear weapons, recognize de facto Russian sovereignty over Crimea, punt on the question of the future of the Donbas and promise not to host any foreign forces on their soil. In exchange they would receive security guarantees from Western nations and Russia, including a promise to be allowed to join the https://faridaily.substack.com/p/ukraines-10-point-plan
.’”
Alexey Arestovich
Then-Zelensky adviser Alexey Arestovich, the same man who had seemed to predict the war and accept its inevitability three years before, later said that the talks had been “completely successful.” Having participated in the Istanbul negotiations, he explained that “it was the most profitable agreement we could have done. … We opened the champagne bottle. We had discussed demilitarization, denazification, issues concerning the Russian language, Russian church and much else.” He continued, “And that month, it was the question of the amount of Ukrainian armed forces in peacetime, and President Zelensky said, ‘I could decide this question indirectly with Mr. Putin.’” Arestovich added, “The Istanbul agreements were a protocol of intentions and was 90 percent prepared for directly meeting with Putin. That was to be the next step of https://unherd.com/2024/01/oleksiy-arestovych-zelenskyys-challenger
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Boris Johnson
But then UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson came to town with an offer of https://washingtonpost.com/world/2022/04/09/nato-heavy-weapons-ukraine
.’”
As Michael von der Schulenburg, a former UN assistant secretary-general, later explained: “As late as 27 March 2022, Zelensky had shown the courage to defend the preliminary results of the Ukrainian-Russian peace negotiations in public in front of Russian journalists — despite the fact that NATO had by then already decided at its special summit on 24 March 2022 … to oppose these peace negotiations. In the end, Zelensky gave in to NATO pressures and opted for a continuation of the https://emma.de/artikel/obligation-seek-peace-340199
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Lavrov later said that after a workable proposal was on the table, in mid-April the Ukrainians simply broke off https://tass.ru/interviews/14935127
.” He was obviously being a major hypocrite in saying this, since he was surely playing his own role in the conflict. But he was not wrong.
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Mon, 03/10/2025 - 23:40
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/can-vladimir-putin-be-negotiated