How the United States and its NATO allies sabotaged a peace between Russia and Ukraine.

A Son of the New American Revolution, 14 November 2023 by Larry Johnson 

We now know that the United States played the primary role in sabotaging the March 29, 2022 tentative peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine thanks to the recently published article by Hajo Funke and Harald Kujat, HOW THE CHANCE WAS LOST FOR A PEACE SETTLEMENT OF THE UKRAINE WAR — AND THE WEST WANTED TO CONTINUE THE WAR INSTEAD. The United States persuaded its NATO allies that pursuing the war against Russia, using Ukraine as a proxy, offered a legitimate opportunity to destroy Russia. You want a definition of evil? This is it. Instead of helping end the war between Russia and Ukraine, the United States and its NATO puppets condemned hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers to death in a war with Russia they could not win.

In the course of strong arming Ukraine’s Zelensky into rejecting the peace agreement, the West prepared and launched a propaganda campaign that claimed that Ukrainian military forces defeated the Russian forces and compelled them to retreat. It was a lie. As you will read in the timeline below, Putin ordered the withdrawal of Russian forces starting on April 1, 2022 as a good faith gesture about Russia’s seriousness in complying with the 29 March Istanbul Agreement.

Chalk this up as one more massive war crime by the United States and NATO. They are accessories to murder. I have summarized the timeline presented in the Funke/Kujat article if you do not have time to read it in its entirety. I also am republishing their piece for your convenience. All of the death and destruction experienced in Ukraine and Russia could have been avoided. But the West was intent on dethroning Putin and carving up Russia. Once you understand this point I think you will appreciate that Putin and his Generals are no longer of a mind to give the West the benefit of the doubt. Destroying NATO’s designs on Ukraine is now their chief aim in my view.

March 4, 2022 — Putin and Naftali Bennet speak via phone.

March 5, 2022 — At Putin’s invitation, former Israeli Prime Minister Bennett flew to Moscow. Putin, Bennett said, had made some substantial concessions, in particular, he had renounced his original wartime goal of demilitarizing Ukraine. … .In return, the Ukrainian president agreed to renounce joining NATO. The Ukrainians did not agree to peace because they were not allowed to. They first had to ask the Americans about everything they discussed.”

March 6, 2022 — Bennett and Scholz met in Berlin; on March 7, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany discussed the issue in a videoconference; on

March 8, 2022 — Macron and Scholz spoke on the phone; on

March 10, 2022 — Ukrainian Foreign Minister Kuleba and Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov met in Ankara; on

March 12, 2022 — Scholz and Zelensky and Scholz and Macron spoke on the phone; and on

March 14, 2022 — Scholz and Erdogan met in Ankara.

March 15-19, 2022 — Only a month after the outbreak of the war, Ukraine and Russia agreed on the broad outlines of a peace settlement. Ukraine promised not to join NATO and not to allow military bases of foreign powers on its territory, while Russia promised in return to recognize Ukraine’s territorial integrity and to withdraw all Russian occupation troops. Special arrangements were made for the Donbas and Crimea.” 

March 24, 2022 — NATO decided at a special summit on March 24, 2022, not to support these peace negotiations.

March 27, 2022 — Zelensky defended the results of the Ukrainian-Russian peace negotiations in public before Russian journalists

March 28, 2022 — Putin, as a sign of goodwill and in support of the peace negotiations, declared readiness to withdraw troops from the Kharkov area and the Kiev area

29 March, 2002 — Turkiye’s President Erdogan hosted a Ukrainian-Russian peace conference in Istanbul and an armistice agreement was approved in principle.

April 1, 2022 — Putin orders Russian troops to initiate withdrawal from Kiev and Kharkiv in show of good faith in accordance with the armistice agreed to in Istanbul.

April 5, 2022 — NATO was firm in its position that continuing the war is preferred to a cease-fire and negotiated settlement: “For some in NATO, it’s better for Ukrainians to keep fighting and dying than to achieve a peace that comes too soon or at too high a price for Kiev and the rest of Europe.”

April 6, 2022 — Russia completes withdrawal from Kiev suburbs and Kharkiv.

April 9, 2022 — Boris Johnson arrived unannounced in Kiev and told the Ukrainian president that the West was not ready to end the war.

April 25, 2022 — U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the U.S. wants to use the opportunity to permanently weaken Russia militarily and economically in the wake of the Ukraine war.

April 26, 2022 — Meeting with defense ministers from NATO members and other countries convened by Austin in Ramstein, Rhineland-Palatinate/ Germany, the Pentagon chief declared the military victory of Ukraine as a strategic goal.

April 28, 2022 — According to Britain’s Guardian, PM Johnson “instructed” Ukrainian President Zelensky “not to make any concessions to Putin.”

HOW THE UNITED STATES AND ITS NATO ALLIES SABOTAGED PEACE BETWEEN RUSSIA AND UKRAINE

14 November 2023 by Larry Johnson 127 Comments

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We now know that the United States played the primary role in sabotaging the March 29, 2022 tentative peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine thanks to the recently published article by Hajo Funke and Harald Kujat, HOW THE CHANCE WAS LOST FOR A PEACE SETTLEMENT OF THE UKRAINE WAR — AND THE WEST WANTED TO CONTINUE THE WAR INSTEAD. The United States persuaded its NATO allies that pursuing the war against Russia, using Ukraine as a proxy, offered a legitimate opportunity to destroy Russia. You want a definition of evil? This is it. Instead of helping end the war between Russia and Ukraine, the United States and its NATO puppets condemned hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers to death in a war with Russia they could not win.

In the course of strong arming Ukraine’s Zelensky into rejecting the peace agreement, the West prepared and launched a propaganda campaign that claimed that Ukrainian military forces defeated the Russian forces and compelled them to retreat. It was a lie. As you will read in the timeline below, Putin ordered the withdrawal of Russian forces starting on April 1, 2022 as a good faith gesture about Russia’s seriousness in complying with the 29 March Istanbul Agreement.

Chalk this up as one more massive war crime by the United States and NATO. They are accessories to murder. I have summarized the timeline presented in the Funke/Kujat article if you do not have time to read it in its entirety. I also am republishing their piece for your convenience. All of the death and destruction experienced in Ukraine and Russia could have been avoided. But the West was intent on dethroning Putin and carving up Russia. Once you understand this point I think you will appreciate that Putin and his Generals are no longer of a mind to give the West the benefit of the doubt. Destroying NATO’s designs on Ukraine is now their chief aim in my view.

March 4, 2022 — Putin and Naftali Bennet speak via phone.

March 5, 2022 — At Putin’s invitation, former Israeli Prime Minister Bennett flew to Moscow. Putin, Bennett said, had made some substantial concessions, in particular, he had renounced his original wartime goal of demilitarizing Ukraine. … .In return, the Ukrainian president agreed to renounce joining NATO. The Ukrainians did not agree to peace because they were not allowed to. They first had to ask the Americans about everything they discussed.”

March 6, 2022 — Bennett and Scholz met in Berlin; on March 7, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany discussed the issue in a videoconference; on

March 8, 2022 — Macron and Scholz spoke on the phone; on

March 10, 2022 — Ukrainian Foreign Minister Kuleba and Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov met in Ankara; on

March 12, 2022 — Scholz and Zelensky and Scholz and Macron spoke on the phone; and on

March 14, 2022 — Scholz and Erdogan met in Ankara.

March 15-19, 2022 — Only a month after the outbreak of the war, Ukraine and Russia agreed on the broad outlines of a peace settlement. Ukraine promised not to join NATO and not to allow military bases of foreign powers on its territory, while Russia promised in return to recognize Ukraine’s territorial integrity and to withdraw all Russian occupation troops. Special arrangements were made for the Donbas and Crimea.” 

March 24, 2022 — NATO decided at a special summit on March 24, 2022, not to support these peace negotiations.

March 27, 2022 — Zelensky defended the results of the Ukrainian-Russian peace negotiations in public before Russian journalists

March 28, 2022 — Putin, as a sign of goodwill and in support of the peace negotiations, declared readiness to withdraw troops from the Kharkov area and the Kiev area

29 March, 2002 — Turkiye’s President Erdogan hosted a Ukrainian-Russian peace conference in Istanbul and an armistice agreement was approved in principle.

April 1, 2022 — Putin orders Russian troops to initiate withdrawal from Kiev and Kharkiv in show of good faith in accordance with the armistice agreed to in Istanbul.

April 5, 2022 — NATO was firm in its position that continuing the war is preferred to a cease-fire and negotiated settlement: “For some in NATO, it’s better for Ukrainians to keep fighting and dying than to achieve a peace that comes too soon or at too high a price for Kiev and the rest of Europe.”

April 6, 2022 — Russia completes withdrawal from Kiev suburbs and Kharkiv.

April 9, 2022 — Boris Johnson arrived unannounced in Kiev and told the Ukrainian president that the West was not ready to end the war.

April 25, 2022 — U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the U.S. wants to use the opportunity to permanently weaken Russia militarily and economically in the wake of the Ukraine war.

April 26, 2022 — Meeting with defense ministers from NATO members and other countries convened by Austin in Ramstein, Rhineland-Palatinate/ Germany, the Pentagon chief declared the military victory of Ukraine as a strategic goal.

April 28, 2022 — According to Britain’s Guardian, PM Johnson “instructed” Ukrainian President Zelensky “not to make any concessions to Putin.”

BEGIN FUNKE AND KUJAT ARTICLE

Berlin, October 2023

In March 2022, direct peace negotiations between Ukrainian and Russian delegations and mediation efforts by the then Israeli Prime Minster, Naftali Bennet created a genuine chance for ending the war peacefully only four to five weeks after Russia had invaded Ukraine. However, instead of ending the war through negotiations as Ukrainian President Zelensky and his government appeared to have wanted, he ultimately bowed to pressures from some Western powers to abandon a negotiated solution. Western powers wanted this war to continue in the hope to break Russia. Ukraine’s decision to abandon negotiations may been taken before the discovery of a massacre of civilians in the town of Bucha near Kiev.

In the following is an attempt of a step-by-step reconstruction of the events that led to the peace negotiations in March and their collapse in early April 2022…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

CONCLUSION: MISSED OPPORTUNITY

Based on the publicly available reports and documents, it is not only plain that there was a serious willingness to negotiate on the part of both Ukraine and Russia in March 2022. Apparently, the negotiating parties even agreed on a draft treaty ad referendum. Zelensky and Putin were ready for a bilateral meeting to finalize the outcome of the negotiations. Fact is that the main results of the negotiations were based on a proposal by Ukraine, and Zelenskyy courageously supported them in an interview with Russian journalists on March 27, 2022, even after NATO decided against these peace negotiations. Zelensky had already expressed similar support beforehand in a sign that proves that the intended outcome of the Istanbul negotiations certainly corresponded to Ukrainian interests. This makes the Western intervention, which prevented an early end to the war, even more disastrous for Ukraine. Russia’s responsibility for the attack, which was contrary to international law, is not relativized by the fact that responsibility for the grave consequences that Ukraine’s Western supporters that ensued must also be attributed to the states that demanded the continuation of the war. The war has now reached a stage where further dangerous escalation and an expansion of hostilities can only be prevented by a cease-fire. It may now be the last time that a peaceful resolution through negotiations could be achieved. There are peace proposals from China, the African Union, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, and a proposal developed at the invitation of the Vatican as early as June 2022. On 3 October this year, we presented the German Government our own peace proposal that tried to incorporate all other peace proposals made earlier. See Ending the war by a negotiated peace – Legitimate self-defense and the quest for a just and lasting peace are not contradictory HERE.

Since the failed Istanbul negotiations The course of the war and the current extremely critical timing should be reason enough for a responsible world community and UN member states to rethink and press for a ceasefire and peace negotiations.  https://sonar21.com/how-the-chance-was-lost-for-a-peace-settlement-of-the-ukraine-war/

November 17, 2023 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Ukraine, USA, weapons and war