Updated 00.52 | Published 00.49
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Six weeks into the war, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators produced a draft peace agreement.
Now the Wall Street Journal reveals what was in the document.
According to experts, Putin’s demands may be even tougher today.
Early after the February 2022 Russian invasion, Russian and Ukrainian representatives met on several occasions.
The Wall Street Journal has read a 17-page draft peace agreement that was produced on April 15, 2022. It was never signed, but according to the paper, it is still relevant today and shows the level of submission Russia wants to force Ukraine to. Putin’s demands for peace are also judged to be even tougher now after the latest Russian successes on the battlefield, according to experts the WSJ spoke with.
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full screen Peace talks were held between envoys from Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul in the spring of 2022. Photo: Sha Dati / Xinhua
The newspaper summarizes the document as an attempt to “neuter” Ukraine and lists the main points:
check Ukraine was allowed to apply for EU membership, but would become a “permanent neutral state” not in NATO or other military alliances.
check No foreign weapons would be allowed on Ukrainian soil.
check Ukraine’s military would be limited in detail. The document contained Russian demands for a maximum of 85,000 soldiers, 342 tanks and 519 artillery pieces. The range of missiles would also be limited to 40 kilometers. According to the WSJ, the counter-demands from the Ukrainian negotiators were 250,000 troops, 800 tanks and 1,900 artillery pieces.
check Occupied Crimean peninsula would remain under Russian control.
check Russian would become an official language alongside Ukrainian. According to the document, this demand was unilateral from Russia and not something the Ukrainian negotiators agreed to.
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full screen Vladimir Putin. Photo: Alexander Kazakov / AP
In the document, nothing is mentioned about the areas in eastern Ukraine that Russia already occupied in 2014 and where the front lines of the war now go. According to the WSJ, the idea was for Putin and Zelensky to negotiate the future of Donbas face-to-face, a meeting that never took place.
The draft also mentions which countries would guarantee that the agreement is followed. According to the WSJ, the US, UK, China and France were mentioned. Russia also wanted to add Belarus and Ukraine wanted to add Turkey.
Negotiations continued, also via Zoom, but ended completely in June 2022.
Zelenskyy states today that no new peace talks can begin until Russia withdraws its troops from Ukraine.
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fullscreen Volodymyr Zelenskyj. Photo: Mads Claus Rasmussen / Scanpix Denmark