Russia’s original “peace treaty from hell” for Ukraine has been leaked – it reveals the horrors for Latvia

After the full-scale invasion began on February 24, 2022, unsuccessful attempts to conclude a cease-fire soon began – first, Ukrainian and Russian delegations met in a small Belarusian town near the border, followed by talks in Istanbul under the auspices of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. As everyone knows, these talks did not lead to anything – it quickly became clear that Russia was making unfulfillable demands on Ukraine, while the Ukrainian delegations (which included, among others, the Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba, the Minister of Defense Oleksiy Reznikov, the chairman of the largest parliamentary faction Davids Arakhamiya, the then adviser to the presidential office Alexei Arestovičs et al.) the negotiating position was increasingly strengthened by the news about Russia’s losses at the front. Unlike other such cases, there was no ceasefire during the negotiations, so Russia began to suffer losses after initial success until it was driven out of the Kyiv, Sumy, Chernihiv and Kharkiv regions.

Now “Die Welt” refers to the 17-page draft of the “peace agreement”, which was drawn up in Russian and agreed by the parties until April 15, 2022. The main points that Russia wanted to achieve:

— Complete and permanent military neutrality of Ukraine: non-participation in NATO or any other military alliances and no mutual defense agreements with any third country.

— Not to allow the arrival of soldiers of any other country on its territory and not to give access to the military infrastructure of Ukraine (including airports and seaports) to the army, air force and navy of any country. Ukraine is not trying to rebuild its nuclear potential, it is not buying nuclear weapons technology, and it is not developing it itself.

— Ukraine does not participate in any joint military exercises with any country, nor does it participate in any military conflicts of other countries in any capacity (it is not clear if this was also a plan to prohibit Ukrainians from even participating in peacekeeping missions in other countries).

— At the same time, Crimea and Sevastopol are excluded from the intended neutral regime (that is, Ukrainian neutrality does not apply when it is convenient for Moscow to deploy its Black Sea Fleet forces on Ukrainian territory).

— Russia demands to reduce the entire armed forces of Ukraine to 85 thousand personnel (a quarter of a million were already fighting in Ukraine at that time), leaving only 342 tanks, 1029 other armored vehicles, only 519 cannons, 102 warplanes and 35 helicopters, as well as 2 warships throughout the Black and Sea of ​​Azov.

— Moscow has demanded to ban “fascism and Nazism in Ukraine”, despite the fact that they have always been outlawed in Ukraine since 1944.

— Introduce bilingualism and give the Russian language the status of a second state language.

Of course, Russia was not going to leave the occupied areas and insisted that the occupation line should be discussed by Putin and Zelensky personally one on one. It goes without saying that in this “peace treaty from hell” Russia did not foresee any obligations or obligations.

It was planned to attract the permanent members of the UN Security Council (the USA, the United Kingdom, France, China and – no matter how absurd it sounds – Russia itself), as well as Belarus and Turkey, as guarantees for this agreement.

If the Ukrainian delegation had bargained for their country’s possible neutral status and security guarantees when discussing the future of the army, navy and air force, then – as “Die Welt” comments – it was the demand for the status of the state language for Russian that was the last straw that ended the possible agreement. .

“With all my interest in history and experience of army service, I don’t know of a single case when the attacking party actually asks the victims to start truce negotiations on the evening of the first day of the attack,” A. Arestovičs quipped in the summer of 2022, during the successful Ukrainian counter-offensive. But now the Russian “offered peace conditions” can be seen in a different light.

Until now, we assumed that Russian statements about the “resurgence of fascism” and “neo-Nazis in Ukraine” are attempts to attribute concepts to Ukraine in public rhetoric that have a unequivocally negative meaning in the West, thereby defaming opponents. However, the fact that in the draft of the 17-page agreement Russia seriously asks Ukrainians to “ban fascism” shows that Russia itself really believes that “neo-Nazism and the revival of fascism” is taking place in the neighboring country, and bases the invasion on such a premise.

Also, the attempts to impose a catastrophic reduction of the army, navy and air force on Ukraine show that Russia itself takes its slogans of “demilitarization of Ukraine” seriously and acts according to them in the literal sense. Also, Russian policy considers in all seriousness that the Ukrainians might want to deploy nuclear weapons again on their land and would be ready to buy the technologies for their development from abroad, which should be prevented in a hurry – and this probability (according to the Kremlin) is so great that it justifies a military invasion.

Seeing propagandists ranting in the public space for a year now, trying to “sell” Russian voters and taxpayers these fictions about “neo-Nazism and the demilitarization of Ukraine”, one can appreciate the huge cognitive dissonance between propaganda and reality. However, it turns out that the version that the Kremlin feeds the people with war-mongering propaganda is wrong, but the Russian leaders themselves adequately understand the situation and act in a hidden rational manner. It is exactly the opposite – the Kremlin acts on the basis of its irrational fictions and slogans not based on reality, trying to implement its fictions in a literal way and rejecting the facts observed in nature. While intercepted phone conversations of Russian soldiers in the course of 2022 showed Russian soldiers calling home from Donbas and saying “we turned out to be fascists, not Ukrainians”, meanwhile the Kremlin tried to impose “demilitarization and denazification” on Ukrainians, leaving its aggressive, with reality unrelated views.

This is very bad news for Latvia. If the Kremlin is based on absolutely distorted views regarding Ukraine with a population of 40 million, then Moscow will have an even more false impression of Latvia with a population of two million. And the fact that Russia is trying to literally impose its invented goals unrelated to reality on Ukraine gives reason to assume that the same thing would happen to Latvia.

Therefore, the Kremlin’s insults that “Russian speakers are oppressed in Latvia” should be taken literally. The Kremlin really thinks so and believes that the requirement for people living in Latvia to know the national language is “oppression”, which could justify a military invasion. Insulting the Latvians in “aggressive nationalism” and “NATO expansion”, the Kremlin – as in the case of Ukraine – seriously believes that this is the basis for an invasion of a neighboring country. Repeating from time to time the absurd statements that “NATO has expanded to the east, although at one time Gorbachev promised not to do it” (this is a complete fabrication – such a thesis cannot be found in any document, agreement, conference minutes, joint communique or even the participants of these events in private memories), and demanding that NATO “return to the borders of 1997”, Putin takes these slogans literally, not as part of public rhetoric.

Likewise, encroachment on any piece of occupied territory is bad news for Latvia – if Russia decides to invade the Baltic states and occupies even a few hectares, it will not leave this territory no matter what. No amount of talks in Istanbul, protocols in Minsk or condemnation from the UN tribune will help here, as proven by Ukraine’s ten years of harsh experience.

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