Since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and for two and a half years, Russian President Vladimir Putin has declared himself ready for peace negotiations. He argues, however, that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and “the West” are the ones making it difficult for them to start. On February 6, 2024, in an interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson (accused of being receptive to Russian conspiracy theories and propaganda), Putin stated that “by law the president of Ukraine has established a ban on starting negotiations with Russia. He has signed an executive order prohibiting everyone from negotiating with Russia.”

This claim is incorrect, as shown by DW’s fact-checking. In Ukraine there is no law prohibiting iti in the country or other countries to conduct negotiations with Russia. What Vladimir Putin is apparently referring to is Decree 679/2022 of the Ukrainian president, which ratifies a decision of the National Security and Defense Council and contains the following sentence: “The National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine finds that it is impossible to conduct negotiations with the President of the Russian Federation V. Putin.” It is therefore a finding of reality, not a prohibition by law.

After all, recently Zelensky reported to the BBC that “the whole world must put pressure on Russia to come to the negotiating table”. Moreover, after the Switzerland Peace Conference in June, which was held without Russian participation, Zelensky stated that Russia should also participate next time.

Does the West not want peace?

“The West has no interest in starting peace negotiations (…) Neither the US nor NATO show the slightest interest in a fair settlement of the conflict in Ukraine” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov estimates.

This claim is incorrectaccording to DW’s investigation. In this conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the West participates in many different roles. As Jonas Dredger from the Leibniz Institute in Frankfurt (PRIF) points out to DW, the West on the one hand supports Ukraine and imposes sanctions on Russia, but on the other hand it also appears as a mediator or guarantor of security. “The fact that most of the economic and diplomatic support to Ukraine, as well as aid in equipment, comes from the West”says the German analyst, “interpreted by the Russian side as follows: If all this had not happened, we would have already conquered Ukraine, dictating the terms of peace to it. Or Ukraine would have been in such a difficult position that it would have accepted all of Russia’s demands. But it is wrong, from a logical and political point of view, to interpret this attitude of the West as rejecting any peace negotiation”.

Besides, notes Jonas Dredger, it is inevitable that the West will participate as a guarantor of security for Kiev in a future negotiation. This happens in many wars and crises around the world. When someone has waged war on you, you can’t so easily trust them, assuming they simply won’t do it again. Here you need the intervention of a third party, whom you consider prudent, but also capable of military action, should the need arise.

For his part, the experienced negotiator and former head of the Munich International Conference on Security, Wolfgang Isinger, points out to DW: “If you want to induce two warring parties to agree to an armistice or even to peace, you are not going to start, carry out, or finish the negotiation, unless the leaders of both sides are convinced that they are not going to achieve anything by military means”. Right now, Isinger estimates, nothing leads us to the conclusion that Russia sees no point in continuing military operations and would prefer to take a seat at the negotiating table.

Is Istanbul a lost opportunity?

The Russian network RT, which has been sanctioned by the EU, claims that “the West told Zelensky to reject a peace treaty”. As evidence, an interview with Victoria Newland is cited, in which the former spokeswoman for the US State Department supposedly admits that the British and Americans had intervened at the last minute so that Ukraine did not sign a peace treaty with Russia in the negotiations that took place in the spring of 2022 in Istanbul. This claim is often repeated on social media – in English, German, French and Italian, among others.

And this claim is falseaccording to DW’s investigation, although it is not new. It had been fully replicated by Russia in the negotiation period (March-April 2022). In fact, Putin connected the visit of then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to Kiev, in April 2022, with the alleged attempt by Western countries to end the negotiations in order to seek a military victory over Russia. Johnson himself denied this scenario.

Newland has responded to these complaints by speaking to Russian journalist Mikhail Sigar, who lives in exile in Berlin. The former spokeswoman for the State Department says that the Americans were not present at the negotiation and initially did not know the details of the agreement. Only towards the end of the negotiation did the Ukrainians ask for their opinion. “There it became clear to us that in an annex to the agreement Putin had ‘hidden’ his main demand, limiting the weapons systems that Ukraine will have after signing the agreement, which implies a weakening of military power,” emphasizes Newland. On the contrary, no restrictions were foreseen for Russia, not even the withdrawal of its troops or the creation of a neutral security zone. “And so the participants in the Ukrainian delegation, as well as others, began to question whether this agreement was really a good one,” reports Victoria Newland.

But the German researcher Jonas Dredger also believes that there can be no talk of a “lost opportunity” in Istanbul. “We now have enough documents to know that there were no signed texts from this negotiation,” he points out. “There was not a single reference to fundamental issues, which would be necessary for the completion of the agreement, such as the territorial one.” It remained unclear what would happen to the territories Russia had seized since 2014 or early 2022. Consequently, the German analyst sums up, the deal was far from being completed and there are many reasons why it was not completed after all.

Do you negotiate when you hope to win?

A major obstacle to the start of negotiations, estimates Jonas Dredger, is that Russia has now increased its demands. According to Moscow, Ukraine should not only abandon its NATO membership aspirations, but also withdraw its troops from the four Ukrainian provinces, which Russia has annexed through illegal referendums, without yet fully conquering them. on the battlefield.

Wolfgang Isinger warns: “If Moscow thinks that we here in the West are tired of the war and are not willing to continue providing aid to Ukraine, then they will come to the following conclusion: There is no need for any negotiation, we can achieve our military goals this way. That is, to subjugate Ukraine or at least to consolidate the annexation of eastern Ukraine to the Russian Federation…”

Edited by: Yiannis Papadimitriou