Welt: Russia disrupts peace talks with Ukraine in 2022 by demanding to make Russian the second official language
The parties then reached a consensus on almost all points, but Russia put forward additional conditions
Kyiv refused to continue peace talks with Moscow after the meeting in Istanbul in 2022 because Russia set additional conditions for ending the war. Among them was a demand to make Russian the second official language in Ukraine, to lift mutual sanctions and to stop lawsuits in international courts.
Source. This was reported by Welt with reference to the draft agreement.
The publication disclosed the details of the draft agreement of 15 April 2022. It showed that Moscow and Kyiv were close to making peace, as they had agreed on the main points. Only a few points remained unresolved, which were to be discussed in person by Presidents Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy that month.
In particular, the issue of the permissible number of personnel and military equipment in the Ukrainian army was a matter of dispute. Moscow wanted to limit the size of the Armed Forces to 85,000 people, while Kyiv insisted on 250,000. The same was true for tanks (342 vs. 800), artillery (519 vs. 1900) and fighter jets (102 vs. 160).
At the same time, Ukraine agreed to remain neutral, not joining any military alliances, including NATO; not to allow foreign troops on its territory; not to provide infrastructure to other states and not to participate in military exercises with them.
Among other agreed points was the refusal to produce and acquire nuclear weapons. Ukraine also expressed its readiness to prohibit the concepts of "fascism", "Nazism" and "aggressive nationalism" by law.
In turn, Russia agreed that the permanent members of the UN Security Council – the UK, China, the US and France – should provide Ukraine with security guarantees, provided that they did not extend to Crimea and Sevastopol. However, the draft lacked consensus on Donbas.
The Wall Street Journal and Foreign Affairs magazine, which also obtained the draft treaty and the preliminary Istanbul agreement, previously pointed out that the question of the future of the separatist regions in eastern Ukraine was not raised in the documents at all, and was supposed to be discussed at a personal meeting between Zelenskyy and Putin.
The Kremlin denies that the failure to sign the peace agreement in April 2022 was Russia's fault. According to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, the blame lies with the British leadership. "It was direct pressure from London," he told RBC.
In particular, he referred to the intervention of the then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The head of the Ukrainian negotiating delegation, David Arakhamia, said that he advised "not to sign anything" with Russia, adding: "Let's just fight."
Johnson himself claimed that he did not forbid Volodymyr Zelenskyy to sign a peace agreement, but only expressed concern about the content of the document.
Background. As a reminder, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told journalists of several Russian media outlets that Russia has no plans to stop military operations in Ukraine during the negotiations on the conflict.
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