The Nov. 24 admission by Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada majority leader David Arakhamia regarding the decision by then-U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson that Ukraine was to turn down the March/April 2022 peace treaty with Russia, has triggered no little controversy. Of note, Oleksiy Arestovych, Kiev’s resident contrarian and former advisor to the Head of the Office of the President, as reported by RT, posted on Telegram Nov. 26 that the actual responsibility for Ukraine’s present mess lies with those who had Ukraine turn down very favorable terms and promised Ukraine real support for waging a real, big war—but failed to provide it. In other words, “they screwed us over.”
He went on to claim that Ukraine “had won its war” by managing to survive in the first few months of the conflict. After that: “This war of ours could have well ended with the Istanbul Agreements.” But instead, after the Istanbul talks, the conflict entered another phase in which Ukraine had no chance of winning without securing massive Western arms supplies, including warplanes and long-range missiles. “But nothing came. We paid a huge price for that.”
