Opinion | How Not to Negotiate with Russia

[a425couple]

IMHO - quite informative and interesting.

from
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/01/24/russia-ukraine-war-peace-talks-00079042

Magazine
FOREIGN AFFAIRS

Opinion | How Not to Negotiate with Russia
We’ve already learned a few things about Putin’s approach to peace talks.

Vladimir Putin is seen at an event in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is seen at an event in St. Petersburg,
Russia, on Jan. 18, 2023. | Ilya Pitalev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP

Opinion by DMYTRO KULEBA
01/24/2023 04:30 AM EST
Dmytro Kuleba is the foreign minister of Ukraine.

As Russia’s total aggression on Ukraine nears its first year, some
people in the United States and elsewhere in the West continue to
suggest that Ukraine needs to engage in peace negotiations with Russia
as soon as possible. They may have good intentions, but they don’t seem
to recognize that Russia has not proposed any meaningful talks and
remains focused on destroying Ukraine militarily.

But there’s a bigger point that the “peace at any cost” camp ignores: We
have already spent over eight years negotiating with Russia.

The so-called peace talks known as the Minsk process was initiated in
2014 and included Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany. For eight years,
Ukraine and the West tried to end the war by means of politics and
diplomacy. Ukraine agreed to freeze battle lines and engaged in years of
fruitless negotiations in order to, seemingly, avoid escalation and
preserve peace in Europe.

Needless to say, it didn’t work. While we were holding back, Russia was
building up. The Minsk process ended when Russia unleashed a devastating
total war of aggression on Ukraine at the end of February 2022.

Dmytro Kuleba walks to a press conference at an event.
Ukraine Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, center, walks to a press
conference as he attends the ASEAN Summit in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on
Nov. 12, 2022. | Vincent Than/AP Photo

That’s why the entire international community should carefully study the
lessons of “Minsk” in order to restore international peace and security
today and avoid falling into new Russian traps.

Here are five lessons we learned from negotiations with Russia.

Lesson #1: It’s a mistake to freeze the war and postpone the solution of
territorial problems “for the future.”

The architects of Minsk believed that fixing the status quo and
decreasing hostilities would be enough for the conflict to gradually
ease. This belief, based on a false premise of Russia’s alleged
willingness to compromise, led to a real disaster for Ukraine, the
European order and the world.

In fact, from the inception of the Minsk agreements and throughout the
Minsk process, Moscow was preparing for a full-scale war on Ukraine.
While Russian representatives kept imitating diplomacy, the Kremlin was
quietly building up its military forces and planning to destroy the
democratic international order with a single devastating blow.

Lesson #2: Russia doesn’t negotiate in good faith.

The world saw Minsk as a platform for dialogue and a path to peace,
while Russia saw it as an instrument to steadily pursue its aggressive
goals and destroy Ukraine by means of political pressure and without the
need to launch a full-scale invasion.

From the very onset, Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to
dismantle Ukrainian statehood. If that was achievable by political and
diplomatic means, fine, and he tried to use Minsk to erode Ukrainian
sovereignty. But if that didn’t succeed, he planned all along to
annihilate Ukraine by brute military force.

The Minsk agreements were doomed to fail for only one reason: The
Russian regime never sought fair peace and fair play. Even on the eve of
the full-scale invasion, Putin continued to lie straight into the faces
of world leaders, denying plans to attack.

Deception lies at the core of Russia’s foreign policy and the way it
treats international partners — both in Europe, Africa, Asia and other
regions. Victims, weaklings, henchmen — this is whom Moscow prefers to
see on the other side of the table.

Lesson #3: The de-occupation of Crimea can’t be set aside.

Western strategy to counter the Russian threat should have been based on
decisive steps to de-occupy all Ukrainian territories as early as 2014.

Even now, when I say Ukraine aims to fully restore its territorial
integrity, journalists sometimes decide to clarify: “Including Crimea?”
This question is senseless and only reinforces the Russian narrative
that Crimea is special. No, it’s not. Crimea goes without saying. One of
the gravest mistakes of Minsk was to allow Russia to believe that the
issue of Crimea was off the table.

There is no, and has never been any, difference between Crimea, Donbas,
Kherson, Kyiv and other regions. Each of them is significant for the
real protection of European and world security. When the West agreed to
de facto close its eyes to Crimea’s annexation, it gave the green light
to new Russian imperialist encroachments.

Lesson #4: Russia does not reciprocate with constructive language and
policy.

How many times have we heard from Russian leaders that they were cheated
or outwitted by others? But this is only a projection of their own
goals, because for Russia, any victory is someone’s defeat. Putin’s
Russia has been inventing complex combinations to deceive others, and
not to find a common interest, even the most pragmatic one.

In Putin’s mind, any compromise is a weakness. This is why the only way
to speak to him is in the language of strength. Today, Putin has made
his final bet by deciding to proceed with a genocidal war of aggression
on Ukraine at any cost. This means there is nothing to talk about with
him anymore. He made his choice and must be defeated.

Lesson #5: Partners should force Russia, not Ukraine, into concessions.

In 2015, Ukraine still stood on shifting sands. We had just begun
rebuilding our army, parts of our territories were occupied and the
economy had just begun recovering from the shock of revolution and war.
Russia had a powerful army, levers of energy pressure and networks of
agents of influence.

Some of our partners thus tried to pressure Ukraine to be
“constructive,” because we had more difficulty saying “no.”

Despite all the flaws of the Minsk process, Ukraine adhered to its
obligations. Together with France and Germany, we sought a transparent
settlement and a just peace. The Russian regime, in its turn, did not
fulfill a single point of the Minsk-1 and Minsk-2 agreements.

Neither the first, a full cease-fire, nor the second, the withdrawal of
all heavy weapons, nor any further points: the permission of OSCE
monitoring, the all-for-all exchange of political prisoners and
prisoners of war and establishing an international mechanism for the
delivery of humanitarian aid.

Since his election in 2019, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has
tried to turn the Minsk process around, drive it out of its dead end,
despite all its flaws. Under his presidency, Ukraine held 88 rounds of
negotiations with Russia. Efforts to find a transparent and honest
solution fell on deaf ears in the Kremlin. Russians did not want a
settlement, let alone a just peace. And Russia was cynical enough to
demand from others that Moscow’s security “concerns” should be heard.

Now that the Kremlin failed to achieve the goals of its full-scale
aggression, it’s now trying to outfox Ukraine and the international
community. Russia’s latest statements hint at their wish to secure a new
“Minsk” agreement, a new trap for the world. But what Russia really
wants is a pause, not peace.

Any hypothetical “Minsk-3” can have only one result: an even bloodier
war, which will affect not only Ukraine, but draw in the entire
Euro-Atlantic space and the world as a whole. Repeating mistakes will
not yield better results.

No other nation craves peace more than Ukraine. But we need a just and
lasting peace which will prevent any new genocidal war against
Ukrainians and other nations. That is why Zelenskyy proposed a Peace
Formula with 10 specific steps covering the restoration of nuclear, food
and energy security in the interests of the entire international community.

If the entire international community takes a strong, consolidated
position, then Russia will have no other option but to stop its killing
of Ukrainians and engage in real substantive negotiations. The united
will of the world is key to effective diplomacy and achieving
sustainable peace for many decades to come.

Furthermore, I believe that the voice of the West is not enough to solve
the global security crisis triggered by Russia’s war and guarantee
long-term international peace. We have reached a turning point when the
position of the states of the Global South can help achieve this result.
The fate of the diplomatic resolution of the war depends on the
countries of Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America stepping up
and using their weight and influence. Every voice and every country is
important, because in the U.N. charter there are no “big” and “small”
states, influential and non-influential ones, champions or outsiders.

Those who sincerely seek peace should join the consolidated
international efforts on implementing the Ukrainian Peace Formula. We
designed it in a flexible way allowing states to commit only to those
elements of the formula which they fully share and take leadership in
certain specific areas of peacebuilding efforts without committing to
the other ones.

The flaws of the Minsk process must not be repeated. In fact, they must
serve as an example of how not to negotiate with Russia. In diplomatic
language, “to minsk, minsking” has become shorthand to describe attempts
to negotiate an end to a war which only brings the opposite result and
allows an aggressor to launch an even bloodier and tougher aggression.

Therefore, my message today is simple. Don’t minsk Ukraine and the world
again!

FILED UNDER: OPINION, FOREIGN AFFAIRS, VLADIMIR PUTIN, VOLODYMYR
ZELENSKYY, UKRAINE,
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