Negotiations between Ukraine and Russia began on the fifth day of the great war, culminated in a major meeting at the end of March 2022, and “melted” by the end of April.
The course of events at that time was described by journalists, and they were commented on by members of the delegations of the two countries. Numerous details of the negotiations are known, but it is not completely clear at what point the parties decided to stop them and how exactly this happened.
“A week after the start of the great war, Vladimir Putin realized that he had made a mistake and was doing everything he could to make a deal,” said one of the Ukrainian negotiators.
At the same time, it is unclear whether Putin was negotiating seriously or simply trying to gain time. It is known about Volodymyr Zelensky that in the first two months after the full-scale invasion, he was ready to make concessions in order to preserve the country’s independence and the lives of his compatriots. Zelensky was also pushed to negotiate and make concessions by his Western partners — his advisor Andriy Sybiha recalled: “They recommended accepting Russia’s conditions.”
Ukraine has been in contact with Russia through several channels, both official and semi-official.
Volodymyr Zelensky appointed his longtime friend Davyd Arakhamia, who had lived with him in the bunker since the first day of the invasion, as the head of the official delegation. The Ukrainian delegation held its first round of negotiations on the fifth day of the invasion, in the pompous Rumyantsev-Paskevich palace in Gomel, mediated by the dictator of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko.
The Russian and Ukrainian delegations at their first meeting after the start of the Great War. The Ukrainian delegation included Davyd Arakhamia, Mykhailo Podolyak, Oleksiy Reznikov, Rustem Umerov, Mykola Tochytsky, Andriy Kostin, and Denys Kireev, Gomel, February 28, 2022.
The Russian delegation was headed by presidential aide Volodymyr Medinsky. The Ukrainian side doubted that he had direct access to Putin and adequately conveyed the Ukrainian position to him. Therefore, the Office of the President established a parallel, semi-official channel of communication with Putin — through businessman Roman Abramovych. It is known that he was negotiating with the then head of the Crimean Platform and peopleʼs deputy Rustem Umerov — on the eve of the second round of negotiations (March 3 and 7), they were apparently tried to be poisoned.
The positions of the two sides changed as the situation on the front changed. The defense forces were defeated in the south of the country, but they won the battle for Kyiv and blocked the supply routes for the Russian army. It became clear that Great Britain and the United States would supply Ukraine with weapons and ammunition.
Accordingly, if in the first round the Russian delegation demanded that Ukraine surrender, then the parties discussed humanitarian corridors — ways for civilians to get out of the cauldrons. Face-to-face meetings were replaced by video conferences.
Volodymyr Medinsky conducts negotiations with the Ukrainian team via video link, March 14, 2022.
Finally, representatives of the two countries met in Istanbul on March 28-30.
As before, the Ukrainian delegation was headed by Davyd Arakhamia. He brought to Istanbul a framework agreement, which later became known as the “Istanbul Communiqué”. In essence, Ukraine requested security guarantees as if it were a member of NATO — if Russia attacked it again, the guarantor countries would undertake to enter the war on its side. At the same time, the agreement allowed Putin to save face: Ukraine declared its neutral status and readiness to resolve the “Crimean issue” through diplomatic means.
The text of the “Istanbul Communiqué” became known during the negotiations, on March 29. One of the parties leaked its text to Russian opposition journalist Farida Rustamova. The journalist’s choice was most likely not accidental. Rustamova had personal scores with one of the members of the Russian delegation, influential MP Leonid Slutsky (she accused him of sexual harassment).
Mykhailo Podoliak answers journalistsʼ questions after the negotiations, March 29, Istanbul.
Onur Coban / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
One can only speculate about how the negotiations went on.
It is known that after the meeting in Istanbul, the negotiating teams spent two weeks writing and rewriting a draft agreement between Russia and Ukraine — more than ten times. The negotiations lasted at least until mid-April. They continued even after Volodymyr Zelensky visited the sites of mass executions of Ukrainians in Bucha and received news of the deaths of civilians when Russia hit the Kramatorsk train station with a ballistic missile.
On the basis of the Istanbul Communiqué, the parties concluded a major agreement. One of the drafts of this agreement, dated April 15, is publicly available — it was published by the New York Times. From this draft, it is clear that Russia offered Ukraine to agree to empty, meaningless guarantees. The Russian side reserved the right to block any military assistance and at the same time demanded that Ukraine limit the size of the Defense Forces. In fact, Putin again offered Zelensky to surrender — just in a more veiled form.
In the three years since the start of the Great War, analysts have made various assumptions about Putin’s motivations.
Perhaps he took the Istanbul Communiqué as a bluff: it is not difficult to imagine that in his view, Ukraine was offering him what he already had (Crimea), refusing what he could not get anyway (NATO membership), and counting on an unlikely turn of events (that America, which had just withdrawn its military contingent from Afghanistan, would be ready to get involved in a new war). At the same time, for Zelensky, this would be a truly painful compromise: to fulfill the terms of the Istanbul Communiqué, he would have to amend the Ukrainian Constitution.
The negotiations finally died down by the end of April. At the end of April, the US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and the Secretary of State Anthony Blinken arrived in Kyiv — they reported that America would supply weapons to Ukraine. And by the end of May, Ukraine and the US had organized a full-fledged joint military headquarters.
The next key stage of the great war was the counteroffensive in the summer of 2023.