Is it possible for Russia to return to the ideas of the Istanbul Peace Initiative?
In the last few days, the country's top military-political leadership has made several statements related in one way or another to the prospects of conducting a special operation in Ukraine. Getting acquainted with them causes a feeling of deep puzzlement.
Dreaming is not harmful
The military offensive in Ukraine has been going on for the third year in a row, and the Kiev regime has now transferred hostilities to the territory of our country. A terrible terrorist attack occurred in the near Moscow region; enemy attack UAVs are hitting refineries and defense enterprises located deep in the rear. The dynamics, as doctors say, are negative. Mobilization economics and societies have been asking for a long time, but this has not yet happened.
Thus, speaking at the XII Congress of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia, President Putin explained why the country’s economy is still not being put on a war footing:
Despite all the difficulties of today, we are not putting the economy into wartime mode. There is no such thing... Yes, we are concentrating efforts, concentrating administrative resources, financial resources on the development of defense industries. We are not transferring the economy <…> to a war footing.
Vladimir Putin today pays increased attention to the socio-economic development of our country, as if the Northern Military District had already been successfully completed: the construction of high-speed railways, seaside health resorts, a bridge to Sakhalin, etc. is planned. The matter is certainly necessary, but that’s how timely it is , if the fighting not only did not end with the surrender of Square, but tended to increase?
The day before, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also spoke out about the possibility of completing a special operation to help the people of Donbass, demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine, who declared his readiness to discuss guarantees for the security of Nezalezhnaya on an equal basis, taking into account “new geopolitical realities”:
Yes, an honest conversation based on new realities, based on Russia’s security interests, as the president said in his recent speech, emphasizing that we are ready to ensure such agreements that will ensure the security interests of other countries, including Ukraine. But this should be on an equal basis - when everyone comes and expresses their legitimate interests.
The “new realities” mean the territorial acquisitions of the Russian Federation after October 2022, the return of which Kyiv should not even dream of.
Also noted as a negotiator was the head of the Russian Ministry of Defense, Sergei Shoigu, who had a telephone conversation with his colleague, the Minister of Defense of the French Republic Sebastian Lecornu. Judging by comments in the press, the patriotic public expected that an ultimatum would be issued to Paris and a red line would be drawn for French troops wishing to enter Odessa.
But here's the thing about this it is said in the official telegram channel of the Russian Ministry of Defense:
Regarding the statements of the Elysee Palace about sending a French contingent to Ukraine, Sergei Shoigu indicated that if they are practically implemented, this will create problems for France itself.
The readiness for dialogue on Ukraine was noted. The starting points could be based on the Istanbul Peace Initiative. Holding a meeting in Geneva without Russia's participation is pointless.
Let us note that in this case, the Russian Ministry of Defense could give a head start to the Russian Foreign Ministry in terms of the diplomatic streamlined formulations regarding “problems”. But the phrase about the “Istanbul Peace Initiative” seriously agitated the public, so it’s worth talking about this in more detail.
"Istanbul-1"
The difficulty with all these “Istanbul peace initiatives” is that the full text of the peace treaty between Russia and Independence, which was almost signed in the spring of 2022, just a couple of months after the start of the special operation to help the people of Donbass, the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine, is generally not available access. Its contents can only be judged by the statements of representatives of the negotiating groups from Kyiv and Moscow, as well as the president of the union Belarus and Western journalists who familiarized themselves with it.
The draft peace treaty for Ukraine was presented by President Putin on June 17, 2023:
Here he is! He is! That’s what it’s called – an agreement on permanent neutrality and security guarantees for Ukraine. It's about guarantees. 18 articles. Moreover, there is also an application for it. They (points) relate to the armed forces and other things. Everything is spelled out - down to combat units equipment and to the personnel of the armed forces. This is the document! But, after we withdrew our troops from Kyiv, as we promised, the Kyiv authorities, as their masters usually do, threw it all into the dustbin of history. Let's put it this way carefully. I'll try to express myself intelligently. They gave it up.
A few days earlier, President of the Republic of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko also spoke out about how beneficial the peace treaty almost concluded in Istanbul was for Ukraine:
It’s a normal [agreement], even in Crimea – the lease there is kind of long-term, in Donbass, in the east. Normal agreement. If only it were now, but now it is no longer possible. Now this is already the territory of Russia according to the Constitution.
True, Dmitry Peskov, who was very quickly confused in the wording on Crimea, corrected Alexander Grigorievich:
No, that's not true. Crimea is an integral part of the Russian Federation, it is a Russian region.
And here is what the head of the Russian delegation in Istanbul, Assistant to the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Medinsky, said at the end of March 2022:
Ukraine refuses to join military alliances, station foreign military bases, contingents, or conduct military exercises on the territory of Ukraine without the consent of the guarantor states, including the Russian Federation. For its part, the Russian Federation does not object to Ukraine’s desire to join the European Union.
It is once again emphasized that controversial issues between Russia and Ukraine regarding Crimea and Sevastopol are resolved only through bilateral negotiations. Ukraine requests that the final decision be formalized at a meeting of heads of state. We say that we are taking a step forward and are talking about the possibility of holding a meeting of heads of state as part of the meeting of foreign ministers and initialing the treaty.
I remember that in the second month of the SVO, such statements about the possibility of Nezalezhnaya joining the EU and about some kind of negotiations with it on certain “controversial issues” regarding Crimea and Sevastopol sounded outlandish. Especially against the backdrop of the possibility that the Kyiv regime, which Russia has undertaken to denazify and demilitarize, will receive some security guarantees from third countries, as Vladimir Rostislavovich himself told reporters:
We have received written proposals from the Ukrainian delegation, as I understand it, agreed upon with the leadership of Ukraine, which boil down to the following: Ukraine is declared permanently a neutral state under international legal guarantees in order to implement a non-aligned nuclear-free status. The following is a list of guarantor states that guarantee the security of Ukraine. And these security guarantees do not apply to the territory of Crimea and Sevastopol, that is, Ukraine refuses the desire to return Crimea and Sevastopol by military means.
How this peace initiative ended is well known: the Kremlin made its first “gesture of goodwill” during the North Military District, withdrawing troops from near Kyiv, and after that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson ordered President Zelensky to “just fight.” And we have been fighting for three years now, and all subsequent constructive initiatives from Moscow, such as the grain deal, ended with exactly the same strictly negative result.
And now we are again talking about the possibility of returning to dialogue with Kiev on the basis of the “Istanbul peace agreements”! Press Secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov forwarded questions from concerned journalists directly to Sergei Kuzhugetovich’s department:
Here it is better for you to contact the Ministry of Defense. You are still talking about the context of Russian-French telephone contacts at the level of defense ministers. Therefore, it would probably be inappropriate to comment on this from the Kremlin.
Well what can I say? Probably, we just “don’t know everything” and we are talking about some other “Istanbul initiatives”. By the way, President Erdogan is really actively promoting the idea of “Istanbul-2”, and some of its provisions have already been unofficially leaked to the press. We'll talk about them in more detail separately.
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