Russia offered to end war if Ukraine dropped NATO bid: Kyiv official

Russia offered to end Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in the spring of 2022 if Ukraine agreed to drop its ambitions to join NATO, according to the head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky‘s political party, who was present at peace negotiations.

David Arakhamia, leader of the Ukrainian political party Servant of the People, revealed part of the purported deal during an interview with Ukrainian journalist Natalia Moseychuk on Friday. The Kyiv official previously led the Ukrainian delegation that held peace talks with senior Russian officials in the months following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Both sides of the war have laid out conditions for a ceasefire in the conflict in recent months, but many war analysts doubt neither Zelensky nor Russian President Vladimir Putin currently has a serious urge to end the 21-month-long fight.

According to Arakhamia, however, there was a drafted peace agreement between Ukrainian and Russian negotiators early in the war. Arakhamia said that Moscow pledged to end the fighting if Ukraine’s agreed to remain neutral and forego its bid to join NATO.

“They really hoped almost to the last that they would put the squeeze on us to sign such an agreement so that we would take neutrality,” Arakhamia told Moseychuck, according to an English translation of his comments by the Kyiv Post. “It was the biggest thing for them.”

“They were ready to end the war if we took…neutrality and made commitments that we would not join NATO. This was the key point,” the Ukrainian official added.

Ukraine has aimed to become a member of NATO for decades, and in September 2022, Kyiv announced its bid for a fast-tracked membership in the military alliance. Russian officials have warned that fighting would only escalate if Ukraine was admitted into NATO, which would solidify Kyiv’s alliances with Western countries like the United States and the United Kingdom.

Arakhamia said changing Ukraine’s intentions to join NATO would require an amendment to the country’s constitution since Kyiv’s parliament voted to adopt an amendment in February 2019 that stated Ukraine’s goal of becoming a member of both NATO and the European Union.

Arakhamia also said that Ukrainian officials did not trust Russia to uphold their end of the bargain.

“There is no, and there was no, trust in the Russians that they would do it. That could only be done if there were security guarantees,” he told Moseychuck.

Elsewhere in the interview, Arakhamia brought up former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson‘s surprise visit to Kyiv in April 2022. He said Johnson encouraged Ukraine to not “sign anything” with Russia and “just fight.”

The Russian Embassy in the U.K. reacted to Arakhamia’s interview in a post to X, formerly Twitter, on Sunday. The message put the blame on Johnson for interrupting negotiations between Ukraine and Russia.

“In the Spring of 2022 Russian and Ukrainian delegations were on the verge of negotiating an end to the conflict, assuring Ukraine’s military non-alignment and protection of rights of Russian speakers,” the Russian Embassy’s post read. “A text was on the table in Istanbul, almost ready to be signed.”

“However, according to Arakhamia, during his visit to #Kiev Prime Minister @BorisJohnson pressured the Ukrainian side ‘not to sign anything’ and ‘just keep on fighting,'” the X post continued. “Thus, evidently, with substantial #UK input, an off-ramp for a negotiated solution was missed—with tragic consequences for Ukrainian statehood, economy and population.”

Newsweek reached out to Russia’s Foreign Ministry on Monday night via email for comment.

Reuters reported in September 2022 that people close to Kremlin leadership confirmed that Russian negotiators had struck a provisional deal with Kyiv that would keep Ukraine out of NATO, but Putin rejected the deal and continued with his invasion. Sources who spoke with Reuters said the Russian leader told his negotiations that the deal “did not go far enough and that he had expanded his objections to include annexing swathes of Ukrainian territory.”

Russia currently occupies large parts of southern and eastern Ukraine, and Kyiv has said that the war will not end unless the annexed territory is returned to Ukraine’s control.

Zelensky said earlier this month that reaching an end to the war would require “the restoration of territorial integrity, rights and the freedom of citizens. Another stage of the war is the restoration of justice.”

“The restoration of sovereignty is the main principle for ending the hot stage of the war,” the Ukrainian president added. “Everything will end in peace.”