DISINFO: US and UK desire to conduct a proxy war doomed Ukraine
SUMMARY
The desire of the US and UK to conduct a proxy war destroyed the Istanbul+ process and doomed Ukraine. At the Istanbul negotiations, Russia and Ukraine were close to an agreement before the US and UK sabotaged it, according to numerous claims by people close to the process. For Washington, there were great incentives to use the large proxy army it had built in Ukraine to weaken Russia as a strategic rival, rather than accepting a neutral Kyiv.
Mediators such as Israel’s former prime minister Naftali Bennett, Turkey’s foreign minister Mevlut Çavusöglü and top official Numan Kurtulmus, have since confirmed that Ukraine and Russia were both eager to make a compromise to end the war before the US and UK intervened to prevent peace from breaking out. Also Ukrainian Ambassador Aleksandr Chalyi, and David Arakhamia, a Ukrainian parliamentary representative and head of Zelensky’s political party. But on April 9, 2022, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson went to Kyiv in a rush to sabotage the agreement and cited the killings in Bucha as the excuse.
RESPONSE
Summary of distortions by pro-Kremlin media of multiple interviews and statements by intermediaries, negotiators or individuals with knowledge of conversations between Russia and Ukraine. The goal of this manipulation is to frame the war in Ukraine as a Western proxy conflict against Russia, deflecting Russia’s responsibility for the brutal invasion of its neighbour.
International fact-checkers have repeatedly debunked these distortions, such as the alleged comments made by Davit Arakhamia, Aleksandr Chalyi and Naftali Bennett. Allegations about Boris Johnson’s role in supposedly derailing an agreement reached in Istanbul have also been debunked multiple times (see here, here and here). Comments by Turkish officials Mevlut Çavusöglü and Numan Kurtulmus criticized some NATO allies for allegedly not wanting the war in Ukraine to end, but this is not evidence that the US and UK sabotaged an agreement.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has strongly denied that Ukraine had agreed to Russia’s proposal in Istanbul, as did Ukrainian presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak, who recalled of the Russian negotiation team: “We realised that these are not people sent for talks, but for our capitulation”. The Wall Street Journal reporter Yaroslav Trofimov also interviewed many of the participants in the conversations, including Kuleba and Johnson, who refuted Russia’s allegations about a deal having been reached before Johnson’s intervention. Other observers have examined the evidence and concluded the same.
Contrary to what this disinformation story claims, the Bucha massacre was not a “pretext”, but a real event with important consequences in Ukraine’s decision-making.
See other examples of similar disinformation narratives, such as claims that Anglo-Saxons forced Kyiv to abandon the results of the negotiations, that Ukrainian negotiator admitted the war could have ended in 2022, that the EU does not want peace, only total defeat of Russia, or that Russia never rejected a peaceful solution in Ukraine, Kyiv refuses to negotiate.