Former Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland has confirmed that the U.S. and U.K. did tell Zelenskyy not to sign the peace agreement that was being negotiated in Istanbul in March-April of 2022. According to RT, Russian journalist Mikhail Zygar, former editor-in-chief of the liberal news channel Dozhd, asked Nuland in a Sept. 5 interview to comment on reports that the peace process between Moscow and Kiev in late March and early April 2022 collapsed after then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson traveled to Ukraine, and told Volodymyr Zelenskyy to keep fighting.
“Relatively late in the game the Ukrainians began asking for advice on where this thing was going and it became clear to us, clear to the Brits, clear to others that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s main condition was buried in an annex to this document that they were working on,” she said. The proposed agreement included limits on the kinds of weapons that Kiev could possess, as a result of which Ukraine “would basically be neutered as a military force,” while there were no similar constraints on Russia, the former diplomat explained. “People inside Ukraine and people outside Ukraine started asking questions about whether this was a good deal and it was at that point that it fell apart,” Nuland said.
During her conversation with Zygar, Nuland confirmed that both Moscow and Kiev were eager to seek a diplomatic solution a month after the outbreak of the fighting. “Russia had an interest at that time in at least seeing what it could get. Ukraine, obviously, had an interest if they could stop the war and get—and get Russia out,” she said. U.S. officials “were not in the room” during the talks in Istanbul, only offering Kiev “support” in case it were needed, she claimed.