Ukraine’s top negotiator confirms US-UK sabotaged peace deal with Russia

According to Davyd Arakhamia, Russia was “prepared to end the war if we agreed to... neutrality, and committed that we would not join NATO.” But the US and UK stood in the way.

People's Servant Party leader Davyd Arakhamia (2nd from left) at the peace talks between delegations from Russia and Ukraine in Turkey, March 29, 2022. (Photo by Lokman Akkaya/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

A top Ukrainian official has newly confirmed that the war could have ended – and tens of thousands of lives could have been saved – had Ukraine and its NATO allies accepted a peace deal with Moscow weeks after the February 2022 invasion.

Davyd Arakhamia is the parliamentary leader of Volodymyr Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, and head of the Ukrainian delegation at the spring 2022 peace talks held in Istanbul. In an interview last month, Arakhamia acknowledged that the Russians “were prepared to end the war if we agreed to – as Finland once did – neutrality, and committed that we would not join NATO.” For Moscow, he added, Ukrainian neutrality was “the key point” and “the biggest thing for them.”