Neutrality and ceasefire were parts of the old plan to end the cold war. Ravenous NATO still insists on taking over in all the Warsaw pact countries, while wearing costume halos. Barry
Le Monde diplomatique https://mondediplo.com/2024/06/01edito Ukraine: what might have been by Benoît Bréville Why the silence from French journalists and commentators? They’re normally so fond of secret documents about Russia. They hunt down every hidden plan through which Moscow tries to dissolve the cohesion of democratic societies, every Russian mole lurking in the state apparatus. On 27 April the German conservative daily Die Welt served them on a silver platter a confidential plan from the East: the final version of the peace agreement negotiated by Kyiv and Moscow in the early days of the war – a significant document, which, had it been signed, could have avoided two years of conflict and hundreds of thousands of deaths. The French media have made almost nothing of it (1), perhaps wary of digging into a story in which Western warmongers don’t come up smelling of roses. In Istanbul on 29 March 2022 Russian and Ukrainian delegations met for the seventh round of negotiations in a month, in an evolving military context in which the Russian aggressor had suffered its first setbacks. When the talks ended, both sides hailed ‘significant’ progress and expressed optimism. Kyiv was open to Ukrainian neutrality, Moscow to a ceasefire. However, the talks broke off, for reasons that remain disputed. The document from Die Welt provided some details. The official version is that the revelation of the Bucha massacre in early April convinced President Volodymyr Zelensky that he could not keep negotiating with a country that committed genocide. In reality, the exchanges continued via video-link until 15 April, nearly two weeks after the discovery of Bucha. Those two weeks of negotiations transformed the broad outlines established in Istanbul into a detailed, 17-page text. Reading it reveals both sides’ priorities and the compromises they were willing to make to end the fighting. Rather than territorial conquests, Russia sought security guarantees concerning its borders, stipulating in the very first article the ‘permanent neutrality’ of Ukraine, which would agree to give up all military alliances, prohibit the presence of foreign troops on its soil and reduce its arsenal, while retaining the option of European Union accession. In return, Moscow would commit to withdrawing its troops from areas it had occupied since 24 February, end its attack on Ukraine and agree to the security assistance mechanism requested by Kyiv: in case of aggression against Ukraine, members of the UN Security Council would come to its defence. Why did the Ukrainians ultimately leave the negotiating table with peace seemingly within reach, even though the talks went on after Bucha? For two years, evidence has pointed to the responsibility of the US and the UK, which, over-confident of Moscow’s defeat, firmly rejected the protection mechanism the negotiators had come up with. ‘When we returned from Istanbul, Boris Johnson came to Kyiv [on 9 April] and said that we would not sign anything with them at all, and let’s just fight,’ Ukraine’s chief negotiator, Davyd Arakhamiia, said in November (2). A narrative contested by Johnson, but corroborated by a Wall Street Journal investigation (3). The French media, meanwhile, have studiously ignored it. Benoît Bréville Benoît Bréville is president and editorial director of Le Monde diplomatique. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#30698): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/30698 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/106576167/21656 -=-=- 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]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
