The United States is responsible for the failure of the talks between Russia and Ukraine, according to an article published on Tuesday in the magazine The American Conservative.
As stated in the article, in the first days and weeks after the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine “there was a chance to settle it through negotiations“. The edition also notes that bilateral consultations between Kiev and Moscow in Istanbul at the initial stage of the conflict gave hope for a negotiated settlement and even led to a draft agreement, but the US and its Western partners, instead of encouraging diplomacy, hindered the negotiations.
As the magazine notes, this became known from the participants in the negotiations, officials from Ukraine and its Western partners who attended the forum. The list of witnesses is growing, the article states, with the latest testimony coming from officials in Switzerland, Ukraine and the United States.
As the publication says, it was entirely possible that before the conflict led to “the current horrific loss of life, there was peace in Ukraine“.
In September 2024, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Moscow and Kiev had managed to agree on a settlement of the conflict back in March 2022 in Istanbul, and the agreements had not entered into force only because of representatives of the West, who wanted to inflict a "strategic defeat" on Russia.
Earlier, the Russian president stressed that Russia "has never refused negotiations, unlike the Ukrainian side". But since Moscow has been "deceived many times", it now needs to figure out "with whom and how to work" and to what extent who can be trusted.
Putin indicated that the agreements should be based on the drafts of the 2022 Istanbul Agreements, but take into account today's realities. The Russian Federation will negotiate on its own terms and will not accept attempts to impose other rules on it.