In the spring of 2022, at the time of the Istanbul communiqué, which could have formed the basis of a peace treaty between Russia and Ukraine, Kiev and Moscow failed to agree “because ultimatums are not negotiated”. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says this, answering a question at the end of the peace summit in Buergenstock, Switzerland.
Last April in Foreign Affairs Samuel Charap and Sergey Radchenko documented how Moscow and Kiev had arrived, at the time, very close to closing an agreement that would have ended the conflict weeks after the large-scale invasion of Ukraine began. Putin, Zelensky recalls, “came with tanks, surrounded our capital” and Russian troops committed “atrocities” like those of Bucha, discovered and revealed to the world in April 2022. The “ultimatums” that Putin imposed then, Zelensky continues, “are not very different from the proposals of two days ago. Putin has no proposals, he only has ultimatums, which give him the opportunity to take a break”. The Minsk agreements “were a pause to prepare the invasion”. Putin needs “breaks”, also because “he has lost the his well-trained army” and therefore he needs time to reorganize, he concludes.
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