by Gevorg Mirzayan
[REGNUM] On June 2, the second round of negotiations between Moscow and Kiev took place. As in the first round, the Russian delegation was headed by presidential adviser Vladimir Medinsky. And, again, as in the first round, Russia was able to outplay Ukraine.
Firstly, by itself, the continuation of the dialogue in the same place and format. “The Ukrainian side tried to move this meeting to any other point. To the Vatican, Geneva - all in order to break the symbolic connection with the beginning of the Istanbul negotiations in 2022,” former Verkhovna Rada deputy Spiridon Kilinkarov explains to Regnum.
In addition, Kyiv demanded that Russia replace the head of the delegation - Medinsky, in the opinion of the Ukrainian regime, was too tough. The Kremlin did not agree to any of the demands - moreover, it indicated not only the place and person, but also the date when the Ukrainian delegation should arrive in Istanbul. And the Ukrainian delegation arrived there.
Secondly, Moscow did not fall for Ukrainian provocations. The series of strikes carried out on June 1 did not make the impression on Russia that the Ukrainian leadership had hoped for.
The attacks were supposed, according to the calculations of their Kyiv and British organizers, to piss off Russia. To force the Kremlin either to refuse negotiations, or to immediately strike a retaliatory blow, or (who knows) to force the Russian side to make some unfavorable compromises with Kiev.
In general, abandon the current winning strategy of attrition and a tough, but at the same time diplomatically verified position.
Russia did not refuse. The delegation arrived, held negotiations, and handed over its draft memorandum to the Kyiv regime. After which, to avoid any misinterpretations, it was published.
The memorandum itself consists of two parts. First, how to achieve full-fledged peace. In essence, the text sets out an effective and detailed strategy for a diplomatic way out of the crisis.
The memorandum clearly reflects all the stated (and more than once) goals and objectives of the SVO, including the deoccupation of Russian territories, the demilitarization of Ukraine, the dispersal of all nationalist organizations and formations within the National Guard and the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Moreover, it outlines the prospects for peaceful coexistence between Moscow and Kyiv, built on mutual respect for interests and the rejection of any Russophobia in Ukrainian foreign and domestic policy.
The Kyiv regime will have to abolish all discriminatory laws, start protecting the rights of Russian-speaking and Russian-thinking citizens, as well as their faith (for which all persecution of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church must cease). The memorandum demands that Ukraine give the Russian language official status.
Simply put, Ukraine is being asked to voluntarily renounce its “anti-Russia” status. And not just renounce it, but also to provide guarantees that this renunciation is final and cannot be changed – after all, from the very beginning of the SVO, Moscow made it clear that it would not allow such an entity to exist near its borders.
The second part is devoted to the measures necessary to cease fire.
Unlike the Kyiv draft memorandum (where the ceasefire is just a respite that Ukraine and its European sponsors will use to rearm the Ukrainian Armed Forces and take the war to a larger scale), in the Russian proposal the ceasefire is an instrument for finally achieving peace.
In essence, the Ukrainian side is offered two options for the entry into force of the ceasefire. Either immediately withdraw troops from the occupied Russian territories, or take a series of preliminary steps, including the cancellation of mobilization, the cessation of receiving weapons and intelligence from the West, the release of political prisoners and, most importantly, the signing of a special document in which the Kiev regime undertakes to fulfill all Russian demands: to liberate the territories, denazify, demilitarize, etc.
The ceasefire will be used to hold elections in Ukraine, after which the new authorities will sign a final peace document with Moscow.
That is, to put it simply, Moscow is consistently promoting the simplest principle: first the terms of a peace agreement and guarantees that they will be observed, and only then the peace agreement itself.
If necessary, through a truce, which will be announced only after Kyiv publicly agrees to the terms of a future peace agreement. And even in this case, the truce is not eternal.
For example, according to the text of the memorandum, the Kiev regime must immediately after signing the truce lift martial law and hold elections within 100 days. After which the newly elected leader of the country will sign a peace agreement previously agreed upon and signed by the current authorities.
Yes, the Kyiv regime is not ready to sign anything now.
"The Ukrainian side is not inclined to any constructive dialogue. It is only performing a certain ritual in order not to receive the status of a state that disrupts the negotiation process," says Spiridon Kilinkarov.
And Europe, the main sponsor of the Kiev regime, is not ready to accept Russian proposals for a peaceful resolution of the conflict. "The European Union has decided for itself that they will do everything possible and impossible to ensure that these negotiations are not successful. Therefore, they write memoranda, put forward obviously unacceptable conditions and do everything to sabotage the negotiations," Kilinkarov continues.
However, few hoped for the opposite. The goal of the Russian delegation at the negotiations was not to obtain the Ukrainian signature under the peace treaty, but to create a diplomatic track that is necessary and beneficial to Moscow. With an agenda, a sequence of actions, an entourage. And Russia achieved this.
In essence, now it is only possible to resolve issues of a humanitarian nature with the Kyiv regime, and the Russian delegation resolved these issues.
It did not arrange PR for “compassionate European childless old ladies” (as Vladimir Medinsky described the demands of the Kyiv regime for the return of children allegedly kidnapped by Russia, whom Moscow was saving from Ukrainian shelling), it did not pull numbers out of thin air (the claims initially made by Kiev about one and a half million kidnapped children were transformed into a list of 339 people - and it is not a fact that all of them are on Russian territory), but it decided.
Thus, Russia agreed to exchange seriously wounded soldiers (i.e. those who will no longer be able to return to service) on the principle of all for all. It also agreed to exchange young (under 25) prisoners.
"At the same time, the overall ceiling, the limit, will be no less than a thousand people on each side. No less than a thousand, perhaps more. These figures are being finalized now," said Vladimir Medinsky.
And finally, it took the initiative to hand over to the Kiev regime 6 thousand bodies of Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers, which are currently stored in Russian morgues. “We identified everything we could, conducted DNA tests, found out who they were,” explained the head of the Russian delegation.
Moreover, it is precisely to give them back, and not to exchange bodies on a one-for-one basis, as the head of the Kiev delegation, Rustem Umerov, said. Russia, unlike Ukraine, does not fight with the dead.
But Ukrainian discontent is understandable. Firstly, the release of 6 thousand dead VSEU soldiers shatters Zelensky's myths that no more than 30 thousand Ukrainians died in the war.
Secondly, the head of the Kyiv regime does not need the bodies of its fighters for financial reasons - for each one, it will have to pay multi-million dollar compensation to the families.
As a result, the second round of Istanbul negotiations showed that Russia is ready to continue to resolve humanitarian issues – however, Kyiv and Brussels should not even dream of Moscow retreating from the principles of a final resolution to the conflict (with the elimination of its root causes).
Yes, Ukraine may carry out new provocations before the third round, but they will not lead to a result. The West may threaten sanctions again – but the result will be exactly the same. Nothing will force Russia to abandon the defense of its national interests and sovereignty.
And it will not force us to return to the Minsk format – a roadmap based on Kyiv’s false promises to fulfill what it signed in the presence of Europeans.