NYT published another deepdive on the the peace negotiations in April of 2022.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/06/15/world/europe/ukraine-russia-ceasefire-deal.html
The draft included limits on the size of the Ukrainian armed forces and the number of tanks, artillery batteries, warships and combat aircraft the country could have in its arsenal. The Ukrainians were prepared to accept such caps, but sought much higher limits.
A former senior U.S. official who was briefed on the negotiations, noting how Russian forces were being repelled across northern Ukraine, said Mr. Putin seemed to be “salivating” at the deal.
American officials were alarmed at the terms. In meetings with their Ukrainian counterparts, the senior official recalled, “We quietly said, ‘You understand this is unilateral disarmament, right?’”
Leaders in Poland — early and strong supporters of Ukraine — feared that Germany or France might try to persuade the Ukrainians to accept Russia’s terms, according to a European diplomat, and wanted to prevent that from happening.
To that end, when Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, met with NATO leaders in Brussels on March 24, he held up the March 17 text, said the diplomat, who was present.
“Which of you would sign it?” Mr. Duda asked his counterparts, the diplomat said.
None of the NATO leaders spoke up.
A Breakthrough in Istanbul?
A few days later, on March 29, Russia and Ukraine’s representatives met at an Istanbul palace on the Bosporus. To some, the talks felt like a breakthrough driven by Russia’s battlefield struggles.
After each military setback, a member of Ukraine’s negotiating team said, Mr. Putin “reduced his demands.”
In Istanbul, the Russians seemed to endorse Ukraine’s model of neutrality and security guarantees and put less emphasis on their territorial demands. Afterward, Mr. Medinsky, Russia’s lead negotiator, said Ukraine’s offer of neutrality meant it was “ready to fulfill those principal demands that Russia insisted on for all the past years.”
Ukraine summarized the proposed deal in a two-page document it called the Istanbul Communiqué, which it never published. The status of Crimea was to be decided over a 10- or 15-year period, with Ukraine promising not to try to retake the peninsula by force; Mr. Zelensky and Mr. Putin would meet in person to finalize a peace treaty and strike a deal on how much Ukrainian territory Russia would continue to occupy.
The communiqué, provided to The Times by a Ukrainian negotiator, described a mechanism in which other countries would intervene militarily if Ukraine were attacked again — a concept that the Ukrainians pointedly designated as Article 5, a reference to the mutual defense agreement in Article 5 of the NATO treaty.
In early April, after Russia withdrew from the outskirts of Kyiv, images of massacred civilians in the suburb of Bucha, some with their hands tied with white cloth, shocked the world. For Ukrainians, the idea that their country could strike a compromise with Russia seemed more remote than ever.
But Mr. Zelensky, visiting Bucha on April 4, said the talks would go on, even as Russia dismissed the Bucha atrocities as a staged “provocation.”
see also:
(as a second source)
“Colleagues, I spoke to RA,” Ukraine’s lead negotiator, Davyd Arakhamia, wrote on April 10 in a WhatsApp message to the Ukrainian team. “He spoke yesterday for an hour and a half with his boss.”
“RA” was Roman Abramovich, the Russian billionaire who played a behind-the-scenes role in the talks. His “boss,” Mr. Putin, was urging the negotiators to concentrate on the key issues and work through them quickly, Mr. Arakhamia wrote. (A member of the WhatsApp group showed that message and others to reporters for The Times.)
BUT THEN OH NO!
Mr. Putin’s involvement and intentions during the 2022 talks were subjects of debate in Kyiv and Washington, Ukrainian and American officials said. Was he truly interested in a deal? Or was he merely trying to bog Ukraine down while his troops regrouped?
“We didn’t know if Putin was serious,” said the former senior U.S. official. “We couldn’t tell, on either side of the fence, whether these people who were talking were empowered.”
One Ukrainian negotiator said he believed the negotiations were a bluff on Mr. Putin’s part, but two others described them as serious.
Much of the treaty would “not apply” to Crimea and another to-be-determined swath of Ukraine — meaning that Kyiv would accept Russian occupation of part of its territory without recognizing Russian sovereignty over it.
But crucial sticking points remained. Russia wanted the firing range of Ukraine’s missiles to be limited to 25 miles, while Ukraine wanted 174 miles — enough to hit targets across Crimea. Russia still wanted Ukraine to repeal laws related to language and national identity, and to pull back Ukrainian troops as part of a cease-fire.
The biggest problem, however, came in Article 5. It stated that, in the event of another armed attack on Ukraine, the “guarantor states” that would sign the treaty — Great Britain, China, Russia, the United States and France — would come to Ukraine’s defense.
To the Ukrainians’ dismay, there was a crucial departure from what Ukrainian negotiators said was discussed in Istanbul. Russia inserted a clause saying that all guarantor states, including Russia, had to approve the response if Ukraine were attacked. In effect, Moscow could invade Ukraine again and then veto any military intervention on Ukraine’s behalf — a seemingly absurd condition that Kyiv quickly identified as a dealbreaker.
Russia tried to secure a veto on Ukraine’s security guarantees by inserting a clause requiring unanimous consent.
With that change, a member of the Ukrainian negotiating team said, “we had no interest in continuing the talks.”
And then ghosted.
