In what very much sounds like a signal for beleaguered Ukraine, with NATO backing, to propose a ceasefire and renewed peace negotiations with Russia, a lead article in today’s online Foreign Affairs reminds Western decision-makers that less than two months into the war, agreement was reached in Istanbul "that would have ended the war and provided Ukraine with multilateral security guarantees, paving the way to its permanent neutrality and, down the road, its membership in the EU.”
Samuel Carrap, a senior analyst at the Rand Corporation and Sergey Radchenko, an historian of the Cold War at John Hopkins University, concede that “after the past two years of carnage, all this may be so much water under the bridge. But it is a reminder that Putin and Zelensky were willing to consider extraordinary compromises to end the war. So if and when Kyiv and Moscow return to the negotiating table, they’ll find it littered with ideas that could yet prove useful in building a durable peace.” Otherwise, the article is unremarkable, except for its meticulous reconstruction of the negotiations resulting in the Istanbul communiqué on March 29th and its collapse following the visit to Kyiv of then UK foreign minister Boris Johnson on April 9th, 2022. The reasons for the breakdown are widely accepted, including on most of the Marxist left, and confirmed by Carrap and Radchenko: “Instead of embracing the Istanbul communiqué and the subsequent diplomatic process, the West ramped up military aid to Kyiv and increased the pressure on Russia, including through an ever-tightening sanctions regime”. They depart from the conventional narrative, however, in suggesting that the Ukrainians were not simply the pawns of the Western powers but exercised some autonomy in both fashioning the deal with the Russians and then scuttling it. "According to participants we interviewed, the Ukrainians had largely drafted the communiqué and the Russians provisionally accepted the idea of using it as the framework for a treaty”, they write. Later, the Ukrainian reversal and decision to continue fighting rather than talking was based on their early success in halting the Russian invasion and confidence they could win back all of their occupied territory, a decision decisively encouraged by the unprecedented military and other support they were receiving from the US and its NATO allies. Full at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/talks-could-have-ended-war-ukraine?utm_medium=newsletters&utm_source=fatoday&utm_campaign=The%20Talks%20That%20Could%20Have%20Ended%20the%20War%20in%20Ukraine&utm_content=20240416&utm_term=FA%20Today%20-%20112017 -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#29935): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/29935 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/105561161/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
