"The NATO question came to the fore a final time after the war had been under way for a month. Israel’s Prime Minister Naftali Bennet, trusted by both sides, served as Putin and Zelensky’s go-between and developed the outline of a ceasefire. Putin dropped his demand for the “disarmament of Ukraine”; Zelensky agreed to drop plans to join NATO. Substantive talks between diplomats from the two countries continued in late March in Belarus and Istanbul: Russia would withdraw from eastern Ukraine; Ukraine would recognize Russia’s possession of Crimea; Ukraine would drop its NATO aspiration and seek security guarantees from individual Western countries.
Zelensky’s advisor, David Arakhamia, later commented, “They were prepared to end the war if we agreed to, as Finland once did, neutrality and committed that we would not join NATO. In fact this was the key point.” The Istanbul negotiations even produced a draft agreement. Zelensky’s aide, Alexey Arestovich, described the negotiations as completely successful: “We opened the champagne bottle.”
But Washington would have none of it. Bennet later explained, “The Americans decided to crush Putin rather than to negotiate.” Shortly thereafter Boris Johnson showed up in Kiev with promises of more weapons and a message from Biden. Horton cites a Ukrainian paper, Ukrainska Pravda: “Putin should be pressured, not negotiated with…. The collective West now felt…that Putin was not really as powerful as previously imagined, and there was a chance to ‘press’ him.”
Following orders, Ukraine abruptly broke off the talks. There are not good sources yet about this American push to throttle an early ceasefire, or, given what we know now about Biden’s condition, who was responsible for it. But Washington decided continuing the war was preferable to a Finlandized Ukraine.
Since then Ukraine and Russia have suffered a million casualties, and Ukraine’s infrastructure may be wrecked for a generation. Russia’s ties to China are closer than at any time since the 1950s."
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