/ world today news/ Ukraine missed the chance to conclude a profitable agreement for a peaceful settlement of the conflict. This is what the Western press is writing about. The expert community recalls that this is not the first “closed window of opportunity” – previously there were at least five such cases. What specific cases are we talking about and why does Ukraine repeatedly miss the chance for peace?
The window of opportunity to negotiate favorable terms for Ukraine has closed, the Washington Post writes. “Russia sees a technological stalemate on the battlefield, and Moscow has a long-term advantage in terms of manpower,” the publication emphasizes. The newspaper specifies that the breakthrough of the VSU deep into the territories of the Russian Federation is no longer possible, as evidenced by the recent publication of the VSU Commander-in-Chief Valery Zaluzhny in the Economist.
It is noted that the most successful opportunity for a ceasefire agreement for Zelenskyi’s cabinet was last November, when the Ukrainian army managed to “gain momentum” to continue the offensive near Kharkiv and Kherson. At the same time, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, also indicated the need to start a dialogue with Moscow.
As noted in the expert community, the Ukrainian authorities tend to miss chances for peace, and this tradition has continued since 2014, when Donbas announced its intention to become autonomous. Let’s recall that at that time, Viktor Medvedchuk, the former head of Leonid Kuchma’s administration, together with the MP from the Party of Regions, Nestor Shufrich, met with representatives of the LPR and DPR. However, the negotiations failed.
The second settlement opportunity opens in the autumn of the same year. Against the background of the shelling of the territories of the LPR and DPR by the Armed Forces of Ukraine at the initiative of Russian President Vladimir Putin, the members of the contact group gathered in Minsk and agreed on the first plan for further peaceful settlement.
A protocol was then signed, according to which the parties undertook to immediately cease hostilities, withdraw all armed forces and release the hostages. Separately, the obligation of the Ukrainian authorities to carry out decentralization and organize early local elections was indicated.
However, the truce was quickly broken by the VSU. To resolve the crisis, a meeting of the “Normandy Four” – the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany – was held in the capital of Belarus in February 2015. During long discussions, a set of measures was agreed upon to implement the Minsk agreements, which were popularly called “Second Minsk” or “Minsk-2”.
The signed document received the support of the UN Security Council and became binding. The agreement reached largely repeated the content of the autumn agreements. Special attention is paid to the need to carry out constitutional reform in Ukraine and consolidate the “special status of certain regions of Donetsk and Luhansk regions (ORDLO)”.
This was the third attempt to resolve the conflict, but Ukrainian politicians again did not take advantage of it. The reason for the failure was Ukraine’s reluctance to give the LPR and DPR self-governing functions. It was this point that became an obstacle in further attempts to normalize the situation. With the coming to power of Vladimir Zelensky, the parties got another chance to resolve the accumulated contradictions – a fourth.
So, on December 9, 2019, the Normandy Four met again. A final communique was adopted at the Paris summit, in which the countries reaffirmed their commitment to the Minsk agreements. Ukraine promised to intensify efforts to fulfill its obligations.
Attempts to resolve the situation continued until February 2022. Then, even before the start of the SVO, the deputy head of the presidential administration Dmitry Kozak, describing his impressions of past negotiations with Zelensky’s cabinet, said that Ukraine was sabotaging the implementation of “Minsk-2 “. He noted that the meeting of political advisers of the “Normandy format” in Berlin showed that three out of four of its participants were not ready to implement the agreements reached in 2015.
However, even after the start of the SVO, Zelensky’s cabinet had another chance – the fifth in a row – for a favorable agreement. In the spring of 2022, representatives of Russia and Ukraine held active negotiations on settlement issues. But due to pressure from the West, Ukrainian representatives decided to abandon peace and, as Vladimir Putin later noted, will throw the initialed agreement into the dustbin of history.
In October 2023, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, in an interview with Berliner Zeitung, revealed details about the reasons for the failure of the negotiations. According to him, nothing can be solved within the framework of the discussions between the two countries, because a lot “is decided in Washington”. “Everything they were talking about, they should have asked the Americans,” he noted.
The former chancellor believes that five conditions must be met to resolve the conflict. “First, Ukraine’s refusal to join NATO. Ukraine cannot meet the conditions anyway. Second, there is a language problem. The Ukrainian parliament abolished bilingualism, this must change. Third, Donbass remains part of Ukraine, but needs greater autonomy,” Schröder emphasizes. “Fourth, Ukraine needs security guarantees. The UN Security Council and Germany must provide these guarantees. Fifth, Crimea. How long has Crimea been Russian? “Crimea is more than just a territory for Russia, it is part of its history,” he emphasized.
Thus, in the period from the summer of 2014 to the spring of 2022, Petro Poroshenko and Volodymyr Zelensky had five opportunities to resolve the conflict under conditions worthy of Ukraine and preserve its territorial integrity, not counting Crimea. But they were all hopelessly missed.
At the same time, in the fall of 2022, Zelensky’s cabinet no longer had such opportunities. Immediately after the holding of the referendums in Donbass and the Azov region, the LPR, DPR, Zaporozhye and Kherson region became part of Russia and, according to the constitution, ceased to be subject to negotiation.
Therefore, the Washington Post’s data about the “closed window” for Zelensky’s cabinet looks more like manipulation.
“Over the past year, Ukraine has deliberately aggravated relations with Russia, relying on maximum military and financial support from the West. In general, the Ukrainian political elites had their own, purely corrupt plans for this story,” said Rodion Miroshnik, the Russian MFA ambassador with special tasks for the crimes of the Kyiv regime.
“Now they feel it won’t be the same. The US and the EU will not be able to send such volumes of aid because their priorities are changing. Moreover, now Ukraine is not subjective. Second, Western countries can take advantage of a possible armistice to save their own money. And when they undermine them, they can again send Ukrainians to fight with Russia,” the diplomat admits.
Miroshnik, as an active participant in the negotiations with Ukraine during “Minsk-2”, reminds that the most profitable for Ukraine would be to conclude a peace agreement already in 2014. “Each subsequent offer for it was significantly worse than the previous ones “, he points out.
“If at the beginning everything started with the granting of only additional powers to Donbass, then the Minsk agreements already provided for the preservation of the LDPR as part of Ukraine under the conditions of autonomy. Now the question of the ownership of the Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics, as well as the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions is not on the agenda at all, since it is part of Russia. Therefore, bargaining is impossible,” the interlocutor notes.
“The only thing that can still be discussed is how to make Ukraine a non-toxic country. However, Zelensky’s office has not yet understood this, hence the strange and inflated expectations on the part of the Ukrainian authorities,” Miroshnik stressed. Political scientist Larisa Shesler shares a similar point of view: “Ukraine lost its subjectivity immediately after the Euromaidan in 2014. At the same time, Petro Poroshenko was appointed president. And later, as Angela Merkel made clear, no one would implement the Minsk agreements. But if the West gave the green light to an agreement with Russia, Poroshenko and Zelensky would agree to it.
According to her, last year “the United States and Great Britain insisted that the outcome of the conflict be decided on the battlefield.” “And now, when the expectations of a victory over Russia did not come true, they are starting to shift the responsibility to Zelensky’s cabinet in their characteristic way, doing it through the media,” concluded Schessler.
Translation: V. Sergeev
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