Russian President Vladimir Putin has revealed the draft agreement initialed by the head of the Kiev negotiation team from the Kremlin’s failed peace negotiations with Ukraine, which was drawn up in March of 2022 in Istanbul, to leaders and representatives of several African countries at a meeting in St. Petersburg.
“Moscow and Kiev agreed on the general terms of Ukraine’s neutrality and security guarantees during the peace negotiations in March of 2022, but Kiev then abruptly discarded the documents its delegation had already signed, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday.
During a meeting with a group of African leaders in St. Petersburg, Putin showed for the first time the draft documents that were being discussed by the Russian and Ukrainian emissaries in Turkey more than a year ago.
According to Putin, the document titled the Treaty on the Permanent Neutrality and Security Guarantees for Ukraine had been signed by the Ukrainian delegation.
The draft stipulates that Ukraine must enshrine ‘permanent neutrality’ in its Constitution. Russia, the U.S., Britain, China, and France are listed as guarantors.
The addendum to the draft, also shown by Putin, outlines both Russian and Ukrainian proposals regarding the size of Ukraine’s standing army during peacetime, as well as its equipment. Moscow proposed to cap the number of military personnel at 85,000 and the number of the National Guard members at 15,000. Kiev, meanwhile, proposed that its Armed Forces have up to 250,000 troops.
Moscow suggested that Ukraine should be allowed to have 342 tanks, 1,029 armored vehicles, 96 multiple rocket launchers, 50 combat aircraft, and 52 ‘auxiliary’ aircraft. Kiev, meanwhile, was in favor of having 800 tanks, 2,400 armored vehicles, 600 multiple rocket launchers, 74 combat aircraft, and 86 ‘auxiliary’ aircraft.
The sides also exchanged proposals on capping Ukraine’s mortars, anti-tank weapons, and anti-air missile systems, among other equipment.
The negotiations effectively broke down in the spring of 2022 shortly after Ukrainian officials accused Russian troops of killing civilians in several small cities around Kiev. The allegations were made immediately after Russian soldiers had withdrawn from the areas outside the Ukrainian capital in what the Kremlin described at the time as ‘a goodwill gesture’. Moscow has since repeatedly denied committing atrocities in Ukraine.
Speaking on Saturday, Putin said that Ukraine was responsible for sabotaging the negotiations. ‘After we pulled our troops away from Kiev – as we had promised to do – the Kiev authorities … had tossed [the draft treaty] into the dustbin of history’, he said. ‘They abandoned everything’.
The African delegation, which included the presidents of South Africa, Senegal, and Zambia, and the prime minister of Egypt, arrived in Moscow following the meeting with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelenskyy in Kiev on Friday. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa presented a nine-point roadmap to end the hostilities, calling on both sides to de-escalate.
Zelenskyy, meanwhile, reiterated Kiev’s position that negotiations can commence only after Moscow surrenders Crimea, which voted to join Russia in 2014, and four other regions that did the same following referendums in September of 2022. Putin argued on Saturday that the acquisition of territories by Russia was ‘flawless in terms of international law and the UN Charter’. He added that Moscow had the right to intervene in order to protect the people of Donbass, who opposed the 2014 coup in Kiev.
Ukraine dropped all discussions about a possible neutrality last year and has since formally applied to join NATO”. -RT
The Russians learned from the Minsk Accords of 2014 and 2015 and have subsequently reached the perfectly sensible conclusion that the United States and Ukraine are both completely “non-agreement capable” and that there is no purpose in entertaining negotiations with either of them.
As former German Chancellor Angela Merkel had previously admitted, the agreements were a sham from the onset, and the only intention was to buy Ukraine more time to prepare its defenses.
These types of revelations further emphasize how and why most U.S. and Western European politicians never sought any peace for Ukraine while those who stood for peace were slandered, intimidated, and repressed, with Western backing.