Earlier, the German newspaper published the text of the agreement, which the parties were close to concluding in Istanbul in 2022. It established Ukraine’s neutral status and gave it guarantees of non-aggression by Russia in the future. Only parts of the DNR and LNR would be officially transferred to Moscow.
According to the newspaper, Kiev abandoned the deal after Russia put forward additional conditions. Among them were a demand to make Russian the second official language in Ukraine, to lift mutual sanctions and to stop lawsuits in international courts. As a member of the Ukrainian delegation noted in a conversation with journalists, “this was the best deal we could have made.”
“Looking back, we can say that Ukraine had a stronger negotiating position then than it does now. If the costly war had ended in about two months, it would have saved countless lives,” Welt writes.
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