The war in Ukraine will be a source of fascination and study for historians for decades to come. Even today, two years in, we’re starting to see research into some of the big moments that characterised the early days of the conflict, and which sheds light on the confusing welter of news stories that emerged at the time. Military analysts, for example, have already been able to reconstruct some of the most critical battles of the war’s early days, showing how contingent and critical Russia’s failure to establish a beachhead at Hostomel airport near Kyiv was to the course of the war, when history could easily have gone down a different path.
Another study, published last week by the historian Sergey Radchenko and the political scientist Samuel Charap, focuses on the poorly understood but consequential peace negotiations that played out between Russia and Ukraine in the spring of 2022 over ending the conflict. These negotiations – held predominantly in Istanbul – have become a focus for critics of the war in the US, who often argue that the west, and particularly then British prime minister, Boris Johnson, sabotaged these negotiations and prevented a successful ceasefire. Vladimir Putin would go on to make a similar argument in his now infamous interview with Tucker Carlson.
As Charap and Radchenko show, the reality is a bit more complicated. Johnson didn’t directly sabotage a ceasefire deal in spring 2022; indeed, there was no deal ready to be signed between Russia and Ukraine. The two sides hadn’t agreed on territorial issues, or on levels of military armaments permitted after the war. Ukraine’s position during the negotiations necessitated security guarantees that western states were hesitant to provide. And there were domestic political questions inside Ukraine related to Russian demands about “denazification” to contend with.
At the same time, the article shows that many of the opposing narratives – that neither Ukraine nor Russia are willing to negotiate, or that Ukraine’s Nato membership isn’t important to Russia – are also false. The two sides were able to agree on some major concessions, mostly around the question of the postwar European security order, and they were willing to talk, even in the face of a brutal ongoing war. And although there are other reasons why the talks failed, the promise of western commitments undoubtedly did play a role in undermining the Ukrainian willingness to come to an agreement at that time.
In short, the history of why these talks failed can be helpful for undermining the absolutist narratives that have come to dominate conversations about the war – and for thinking about the future of the conflict.
First, the narrative that Charap and Radchenko present highlights clearly that both Russians and Ukrainians thought the question of Ukrainian “alignment” was important. Would Ukraine be allowed to belong to Nato, or the European Union? Would Ukraine become a neutral country, and what might that mean for its ability to defend itself? Many of Ukraine’s strongest supporters in Washington and in eastern Europe have repeatedly argued that Nato expansion and the issue of Ukraine’s potential accession to the alliance had nothing to do with Russia’s choice to invade, which they typically attribute to cultural chauvinism or imperial delusions. Yet during the earliest concrete negotiations on this topic, both sides focused not on territorial settlements, but on the big picture postwar strategic questions. Clearly, they believed these questions were important.
Second, this history refutes the notion that neither Ukraine nor Russia is willing to negotiate, or to consider compromises in order to end this war. Some western supporters of Ukraine point to extreme statements by Russian elites to argue that there can be no negotiated end to this conflict – Russia will never be satisfied until it is victorious. Yet these early negotiations clearly disprove that point. Both sides presented their demands, and traded drafts back and forth with concessions on certain issues. Clearly, they never reached a final deal. But there were already visible concessions occurring during this process, from Russia’s suggestion that Crimea’s status might be open to negotiation, to the back and forth between the two sides on the size of a postwar Ukrainian army.
For those who study political science, this is common to many conflict-related negotiations. Both sides in a war will have preferences and interests, and any peace process must grapple with resolving those competing points of view. The war in Ukraine is not unique or immune to these dynamics. The early negotiations may have failed, but it shows that, in a future window of opportunity, compromise might be possible.
A third and more important point – particularly for those of us in the west – is that the history of the Istanbul negotiations does highlight the somewhat hollow nature of the “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine” slogans so favoured by western policymakers. Bomb-throwers like Elon Musk are technically wrong when they claim that the west torpedoed a concrete peace agreement in spring 2022; they are right in a broader philosophical sense, however, that the scepticism of western leaders about Russian intentions, their commitment to aid Ukraine and their encouragement to Kyiv to fight on all added to the decision of the government to continue to fight rather than negotiate.
Again, this is not particularly surprising to those who have followed the conflict closely. But it does suggest that western leaders should stop implying that there are no divergent interests between Ukraine and its western backers. If western policymakers can step in to persuade Ukrainian leaders to fight on in 2022, they can offer advice about entering into negotiations in 2024 or beyond. As Adam Smith, the Democrat who runs the House armed services committee, put it recently, this is at best disingenuous: “I’ve heard this phrase – ‘nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine’. Forgive me. That is a ridiculous thing for any US diplomat or person in US policy to say. We got partners all over the world and, yes, we listen to them, but when we’re footing the bill, when we are spending so much money over there, we have a say.”
Charap and Radchenko’s history is not without its problems. The authors themselves – perhaps fearful of overstepping the mark – pull their punches too much when analysing why the talks failed. For the authors simply to state that multiple factors contributed to the failure of the talks is unsatisfying, given the obvious implication that Ukraine – encouraged by western backing – decided to roll the dice on the future of the conflict.
But the blame game ultimately matters less than what this account reveals about what all the parties think about the endgame of the Ukraine war; though it’s a history of failed negotiations, it can help to disprove some of the narratives that stand in the way of future talks between Ukraine and Russia, and help us understand the areas that are open to negotiation – and the issues that will be far tougher to resolve.
Emma Ashford is a senior fellow with the Reimagining US Grand Strategy programme at the Stimson Center, Washington DC
-
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
