Austrian Chancellor Christian Stocker confirms NATO membership is not on the agenda, reaffirming Austria’s neutrality amid Russian warnings and a renewed debate over the country’s security policy.
So if I read that right Britain is blamed for Ukraine not signing the deal because they said they’d still keep on supporting Ukraine if they continue the war? Seems like the influence of Britain is very much overstated here. You sent a link to an article that has a single other article as its source. From that source article I bring you this:
Still, the claim that the West forced Ukraine to back out of the talks with Russia is baseless. It suggests that Kyiv had no say in the matter. True, the West’s offers of support must have strengthened Zelensky’s resolve, and the lack of Western enthusiasm does seem to have dampened his interest in diplomacy. Ultimately, however, in his discussions with Western leaders, Zelensky did not prioritize the pursuit of diplomacy with Russia to end the war.
As far as I can find the list of Russia’s demands were far from reasonable at the time. Here are a few of them:
Making Russian equal to Ukrainian as joint official languages;
Giving Russia and China absolute power to decide how Ukraine is to deal with any future armed conflict in Ukraine;
Repealing a law Ukraine passed in 2014 that makes it illegal to use Swastikas and Soviet symbols and makes it illegal to deny the holocaust;
Strong limits on Ukraine military size and abilities.
PDF by the Institute of War nonprofit research group - this information is also corroborated by the original foreign affairs source your article is summarizing, this is just a neater list to read through.
Meanwhile Russia made no concessions regarding giving back any of the land they were illegally occupying. Given the above I understand why the deal wasn’t signed at the time. I suspect all that signing that would have done is lead to a revolution in Ukraine to topple the government that signed away their county. I don’t think signing that would have avoided further bloodshed.
The West sinking the peace agreement is widely known. This has been confirmed by both Israeli and Turkish mediators. Also, the Ukrainians themselves confirm that neutrality was the main point and that anything else was merely “cosmetic”.
The Israeli and Turkish mediators confirmed that Ukraine and Russia were both eager to make a compromise to end the war before the US and the UK intervened to prevent peace from breaking out.
Zelensky had contacted former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett to mediate the peace negotiations with Moscow. Bennett noted that Putin was willing to make “huge concessions” if Ukraine would restore its neutrality to end NATO expansion. Zelensky accepted this condition and “both sides very much wanted a ceasefire”. However, Bennett argued that the US and UK then intervened and “blocked” the peace agreement as they favoured a long war. With a powerful Ukrainian military at its disposal, the West rejected the Istanbul peace agreement and there was a “decision by the West to keep striking Putin” instead of pursuing peace.[7]
The Turkish negotiators reached the same conclusion: Russia and Ukraine agreed to resolve the conflict by restoring Ukraine’s neutrality, but NATO decided to fight Russia with Ukrainians as a proxy. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu argued some NATO states wanted to extend the war to bleed Russia:
“After the talks in Istanbul, we did not think that the war would take this long.… But following the NATO foreign ministers’ meeting, I had the impression that there are those within the NATO member states that want the war to continue—let the war continue and Russia gets weaker. They don’t care much about the situation in Ukraine”.[8]
Numan Kurtulmus, the deputy chairman of Erdogan’s political party, confirmed that Zelensky was ready to sign the peace agreement before the US intervened:
“This war is not between Russia and Ukraine, it is a war between Russia and the West. By supporting Ukraine, the United States and some countries in Europe are beginning a process of prolonging this war. What we want is an end to this war. Someone is trying not to end the war. The U.S. sees the prolongation of the war as its interest”.[9]
Ukrainian Ambassador Oleksandr Chalyi, who participated in peace talks with Russia, confirms Putin “tried everything” to reach a peace agreement and they were able “to find a very real compromise”.[10] Davyd Arakhamia, a Ukrainian parliamentary representative and head of Zelensky’s political party, argued Russia’s key demand was Ukrainian neutrality: “They were ready to end the war if we, like Finland once did, would accept neutrality and pledge not to join NATO. In fact, that was the main point. All the rest are cosmetic and political ‘additions’”.[11] Oleksiy Arestovych, the former advisor of Zelensky, also confirmed that Russia was mainly preoccupied with restoring Ukraine’s neutrality.
So if I read that right Britain is blamed for Ukraine not signing the deal because they said they’d still keep on supporting Ukraine if they continue the war? Seems like the influence of Britain is very much overstated here. You sent a link to an article that has a single other article as its source. From that source article I bring you this:
As far as I can find the list of Russia’s demands were far from reasonable at the time. Here are a few of them:
Meanwhile Russia made no concessions regarding giving back any of the land they were illegally occupying. Given the above I understand why the deal wasn’t signed at the time. I suspect all that signing that would have done is lead to a revolution in Ukraine to topple the government that signed away their county. I don’t think signing that would have avoided further bloodshed.
The West sinking the peace agreement is widely known. This has been confirmed by both Israeli and Turkish mediators. Also, the Ukrainians themselves confirm that neutrality was the main point and that anything else was merely “cosmetic”.
Sabotage of the Istanbul Peace Agreement