There was the MAKING of a peace deal. Until Russian leadership screwed the pooch, deliberately, in December 2021.
Russian negotiators already had
1. Ukraine agreeing not to apply for NATO membership
2. NATO confirming Ukraine wouldn’t be on any pathway to becoming a NATO member if it didn’t apply
3. Zelenskyy had already pledged to undo Poroshenko’s legislation against the Russian language.
But it’s not an autocracy. Z only unpick legislation that the “last” Rada hadn’t put into law. Most of the hardliners in the Rada had already gotten voted out.
But the Rada still had to vote to repeal the legislation they’d already enacted. So all Putin needed to do to test Ukraine on this point was let fresh elections in Ukraine pass unmolested and see if Ukraine kept the promise.
4. On de-nazification, Ukraine had already started diluting the neonazi battalions, and taking power away from their leaders.
But as long as Ukrainian nationalists knew that Wagner PMC, the LDPR leadership and others were Russia’s boots on Ukrainian ground and they were there to prep a hostile takeover, the *volunteer battalions* were about as likely to give up their guns as American patriots are likely to give up guns.
So further movement on this last point was dependent on Russia admitting that Wagner and the Russian tourists in the LDPR were acting on Kremlin direction, then directing a withdrawal of all Russian nationals.
In other words Putin simply had to stop the “vranyo” over who Girkin, Prighozin, the Wagner PMC, Stremousov etc were fighting for. And comply with the ONE obligation Russia had under the Minsk agreements - pull HIS agents out.
If the LDPR genuinely had been a Russian Ukrainian endeavor - newsflash, it wasn’t - then this withdrawal could’ve forced fresh elections in the Donbas backed by Moscow as well as Ukraine and the west.
So why did Putin dismiss all of that in favor of an insistance on NATO
- rewriting the Charter
- demoting its existing members
- torpedoing another accession in progress
- ending the open door policy
- not giving security guarantees to Ukraine
- giving Moscow a veto on NATO operations and deployments EVEN INSIDE NATO COUNTRIES
That was what the December 2021 demands sent to NATO were. There was not a single demand sent to Kyiv. It was all about NATO throwing eastern Europe, the Baltic, and Ukraine, under a Soviet sized megabus.
“Weaken the NATO mutual defense so Russia can invade the Baltic one day, or Russia will invade Ukraine next year!”, was the intent of the Dec 21 demands.
When the negotiations failed last April, Ukraine put all of that on the table again, the Russian negotiating team liked those onions, and recommended the deal. But the message came back from Moscow, NYET. NATO MUST SAY YES TO THE DEC 21 ULTIMATUM.
So it really doesn’t matter which idiot thinks which western leader “torpedoed the deal”. There isn’t any way on God’s Green Earth that even 51% of NATO leaders would’ve agreed to the Russian blackmail demand.
The doable deal was rejected by Putin and his imbeciles, and their counterproposal was a troll move.
So you say.
I know an idiot who thinks that:
“Weaken the NATO mutual defense so Russia can invade the Baltic one day, ...”