Arakhamia: Russia at the negotiations in 2022 proposed to end the war if Ukraine becomes neutral and refuses to join NATO – Meduza

The leader of the Servant of the People faction in the Verkhovna Rada, David Arakhamia, who led the Ukrainian delegation in negotiations with Russia, said that in the spring of 2022, the Russian delegation proposed ending the war if Ukraine refused to join NATO.

“They really hoped almost until the last that they would wait for us to sign such an agreement so that we would take neutrality. This was the biggest deal for them. They were ready to end the war if we accepted – like Finland once – neutrality and made a commitment that we would not join NATO. In fact, this was the key point,” stated Arakhamia in an interview with 1+1 TV channel journalist Natalya Moseychuk (quote from “Ukrainian Truth”).

Answering the question why Ukrainian representatives did not accept this proposal, Arakhamia said that this would require changing the Constitution, which states that Ukraine is going to become a member of NATO. In addition, the politician said, the Ukrainian authorities did not trust the Russians.

“There was no trust in the Russians that they would do this. This could only be done if there were security guarantees. We couldn’t sign something, leave, everyone would exhale there, and then they would come in more prepared – because they came in, in fact, unprepared for such resistance. Therefore, we could only work when we were one hundred percent sure that this would not happen again. But there is no such confidence. Moreover, when we returned from Istanbul, Boris Johnson came to Kyiv and said that we would not sign anything with them at all – and let’s just fight,” he explained.

Russia and Ukraine were negotiating peace at the start of a full-scale war. Several rounds of negotiations took place in Belarus and Turkey. After Russian troops retreated from Kyiv, negotiations were frozen.