{"id":206084,"date":"2025-05-16T12:22:52","date_gmt":"2025-05-16T12:22:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.gurbuz.net\/?p=206084"},"modified":"2025-05-16T12:25:30","modified_gmt":"2025-05-16T12:25:30","slug":"did-boris-johnson-really-sabotage-peace-talks-between-russia-and-ukraine-the-reality-is-more-complicated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wordpress.gurbuz.net\/?p=206084","title":{"rendered":"„Did Boris Johnson really sabotage peace talks between Russia and Ukraine? The reality is more complicated"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nVolodymyr Zelenskiy welcomes former British PM Boris Johnson to Kyiv, 22 January 2023. Photograph: Ukrainian Presidential Press Service\/Reuters
\nOpinion
\nUkraine
\n This article is more than 1 year old
\nDid Boris Johnson really sabotage peace talks between Russia and Ukraine? The reality is more complicated
\nThis article is more than 1 year oldEmma Ashford
\nA recent study shows the reasons the 2022 talks failed are more nuanced than critics suggest. Compromise may still be possible<\/p>\n

Mon 22 Apr 2024 16.00 CEST
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\nThe war in Ukraine will be a source of fascination and study for historians for decades to come. Even today, two years in, we\u2019re starting to see research into some of the big moments that characterised the early days of the conflict, and which sheds light on the confusing welter of news stories that emerged at the time. Military analysts, for example, have already been able to reconstruct some of the most critical battles of the war\u2019s early days, showing how contingent and critical Russia\u2019s failure to establish a beachhead at Hostomel airport near Kyiv was to the course of the war, when history could easily have gone down a different path.<\/p>\n

Another study, published last week by the historian Sergey Radchenko and the political scientist Samuel Charap, focuses on the poorly understood but consequential peace negotiations that played out between Russia and Ukraine in the spring of 2022 over ending the conflict. These negotiations \u2013 held predominantly in Istanbul \u2013 have become a focus for critics of the war in the US, who often argue that the west, and particularly then British prime minister, Boris Johnson, sabotaged these negotiations and prevented a successful ceasefire. Vladimir Putin would go on to make a similar argument in his now infamous interview with Tucker Carlson.<\/p>\n

As Charap and Radchenko show, the reality is a bit more complicated. Johnson didn\u2019t directly sabotage a ceasefire deal in spring 2022; indeed, there was no deal ready to be signed between Russia and Ukraine. The two sides hadn\u2019t agreed on territorial issues, or on levels of military armaments permitted after the war. Ukraine\u2019s position during the negotiations necessitated security guarantees that western states were hesitant to provide. And there were domestic political questions inside Ukraine related to Russian demands about \u201cdenazification\u201d to contend with.<\/p>\n

At the same time, the article shows that many of the opposing narratives \u2013 that neither Ukraine nor Russia are willing to negotiate, or that Ukraine\u2019s Nato membership isn\u2019t important to Russia \u2013 are also false. The two sides were able to agree on some major concessions, mostly around the question of the postwar European security order, and they were willing to talk, even in the face of a brutal ongoing war. And although there are other reasons why the talks failed, the promise of western commitments undoubtedly did play a role in undermining the Ukrainian willingness to come to an agreement at that time.<\/p>\n

In short, the history of why these talks failed can be helpful for undermining the absolutist narratives that have come to dominate conversations about the war \u2013 and for thinking about the future of the conflict.<\/p>\n

People duck for cover as missile hits Chernihiv in Ukraine \u2013 video
\n1:03
\nPeople duck for cover as missile hits Chernihiv in Ukraine \u2013 video
\nFirst, the narrative that Charap and Radchenko present highlights clearly that both Russians and Ukrainians thought the question of Ukrainian \u201calignment\u201d was important. Would Ukraine be allowed to belong to Nato, or the European Union? Would Ukraine become a neutral country, and what might that mean for its ability to defend itself? Many of Ukraine\u2019s strongest supporters in Washington and in eastern Europe have repeatedly argued that Nato expansion and the issue of Ukraine\u2019s potential accession to the alliance had nothing to do with Russia\u2019s choice to invade, which they typically attribute to cultural chauvinism or imperial delusions. Yet during the earliest concrete negotiations on this topic, both sides focused not on territorial settlements, but on the big picture postwar strategic questions. Clearly, they believed these questions were important.<\/p>\n

Second, this history refutes the notion that neither Ukraine nor Russia is willing to negotiate, or to consider compromises in order to end this war. Some western supporters of Ukraine point to extreme statements by Russian elites to argue that there can be no negotiated end to this conflict \u2013 Russia will never be satisfied until it is victorious. Yet these early negotiations clearly disprove that point. Both sides presented their demands, and traded drafts back and forth with concessions on certain issues. Clearly, they never reached a final deal. But there were already visible concessions occurring during this process, from Russia\u2019s suggestion that Crimea\u2019s status might be open to negotiation, to the back and forth between the two sides on the size of a postwar Ukrainian army.<\/p>\n

For those who study political science, this is common to many conflict-related negotiations. Both sides in a war will have preferences and interests, and any peace process must grapple with resolving those competing points of view. The war in Ukraine is not unique or immune to these dynamics. The early negotiations may have failed, but it shows that, in a future window of opportunity, compromise might be possible.<\/p>\n

A third and more important point \u2013 particularly for those of us in the west \u2013 is that the history of the Istanbul negotiations does highlight the somewhat hollow nature of the \u201cnothing about Ukraine without Ukraine\u201d slogans so favoured by western policymakers. Bomb-throwers like Elon Musk are technically wrong when they claim that the west torpedoed a concrete peace agreement in spring 2022; they are right in a broader philosophical sense, however, that the scepticism of western leaders about Russian intentions, their commitment to aid Ukraine and their encouragement to Kyiv to fight on all added to the decision of the government to continue to fight rather than negotiate.<\/p>\n

The Observer view: as the world dithers, Ukraine\u2019s plight grows ever more precarious
\nRead more
\nAgain, this is not particularly surprising to those who have followed the conflict closely. But it does suggest that western leaders should stop implying that there are no divergent interests between Ukraine and its western backers. If western policymakers can step in to persuade Ukrainian leaders to fight on in 2022, they can offer advice about entering into negotiations in 2024 or beyond. As Adam Smith, the Democrat who runs the House armed services committee, put it recently, this is at best disingenuous: \u201cI\u2019ve heard this phrase \u2013 \u2018nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine\u2019. Forgive me. That is a ridiculous thing for any US diplomat or person in US policy to say. We got partners all over the world and, yes, we listen to them, but when we\u2019re footing the bill, when we are spending so much money over there, we have a say.\u201d<\/p>\n

Charap and Radchenko\u2019s history is not without its problems. The authors themselves \u2013 perhaps fearful of overstepping the mark \u2013 pull their punches too much when analysing why the talks failed. For the authors simply to state that multiple factors contributed to the failure of the talks is unsatisfying, given the obvious implication that Ukraine \u2013 encouraged by western backing \u2013 decided to roll the dice on the future of the conflict.<\/p>\n

But the blame game ultimately matters less than what this account reveals about what all the parties think about the endgame of the Ukraine war; though it\u2019s a history of failed negotiations, it can help to disprove some of the narratives that stand in the way of future talks between Ukraine and Russia, and help us understand the areas that are open to negotiation \u2013 and the issues that will be far tougher to resolve.<\/p>\n

Emma Ashford is a senior fellow with the Reimagining US Grand Strategy programme at the Stimson Center, Washington DC“<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2024\/apr\/22\/boris-johnson-ukraine-2022-peace-talks-russia<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Volodymyr Zelenskiy welcomes former British PM Boris Johnson to Kyiv, 22 January 2023. Photograph: Ukrainian Presidential Press Service\/Reuters Opinion Ukraine This article is more than 1 year old Did Boris Johnson really sabotage peace talks between Russia and Ukraine? The reality is more complicated This article is more than 1 year oldEmma Ashford A recent … <\/p>\n

\u201e„Did Boris Johnson really sabotage peace talks between Russia and Ukraine? The reality is more complicated\u201c<\/span> weiterlesen<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.gurbuz.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206084"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.gurbuz.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.gurbuz.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.gurbuz.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.gurbuz.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=206084"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.gurbuz.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206084\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":206088,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.gurbuz.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206084\/revisions\/206088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.gurbuz.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=206084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.gurbuz.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=206084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.gurbuz.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=206084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}