Former US Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland said that Ukraine withdrew from the Istanbul agreements with Russia after consultations with its Western partners. One of the reasons for the failure of the talks was the negative position of the US and Britain towards them.
Putin could have gotten this completely castrated, demilitarized Ukraine for next to nothing, Nuland said in an interview with Russian journalist Mikhail Zigar. Ukraine would essentially be weakened as a military force. At the same time, there were no similar restrictions for Russia, she added.
Earlier, the Kremlin shorty said that Moscow was allegedly ready to negotiate with Kiev. The war criminal wants the agreement discussed in Istanbul in 2022 to be the basis.
Nuland said that by the end of the Istanbul talks in spring 2022, the Ukrainians wanted to consult. It then became obvious what trap Putin was setting.
It was late March, early April 2022. Putin’s dream that Kyiv would fall in five days and he would gain control of Ukraine had clearly not come true. The Russian military was bogged down, had done a lot of stupid things, all these 40-mile open columns and so on. They were starting to be pushed out of the north, and it was unclear how long they could hold out. So Russia at that time was interested in at least seeing what it could get, and Ukraine was obviously interested in stopping the war and driving Russia out. There was a lot to discuss, Nuland recalls.
According to her, the partners were not present in the negotiating room and “are not very aware of the details of the agreement.” They only emphasized that they would support Ukraine.
We were never entirely sure how empowered a particular negotiating team was, whether Putin was ready to sign up to what his team had agreed on. Is Zelensky ready? – she adds.
But by the end of the talks, Nuland recalls, the Ukrainian side wanted to consult “about where things were heading.”
And then it became clear to us, the British and everyone else, that Putin’s main condition was buried in an appendix to the document they were working on. It prohibited Ukraine from having certain weapons systems after the agreement was concluded, so Ukraine would essentially be weakened as a military force. At the same time, there were no similar restrictions on Russia. Russia was not required to retreat, it was not required to have a buffer zone on the border with Ukraine, it was not prohibited from keeping any weapons on the border. So people in the Ukrainian delegation and outside it started asking whether this was a good deal. And that’s when it fell apart, she adds.
Nuland suggests that “many people, and perhaps Zelensky himself, suspected that they were about to be trapped.”
Source: Racurs
I am David Wyatt, a professional writer and journalist for Buna Times. I specialize in the world section of news coverage, where I bring to light stories and issues that affect us globally. As a graduate of Journalism, I have always had the passion to spread knowledge through writing.