It is obvious at this point that Ukraine’s “path to NATO” appears to have been dropped as a prominent talking point among Ukrainian officials and in Brussels for the time being. This is how Boris Johnson has sabotaged the Ukraine-Russia peace deal in April.
There is accumulating evidence that the conflict in Ukraine could have been finished by now, but key Western supporters of Kiev worked to sabotage the possibility of a peaceful conclusion through discussions. That is what regional Ukrainian media determined as early as May, just after UK’s Boris Johnson traveled to Kiev on a “surprise” trip to meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky for the first time the month before.
A shocking report from Ukrainska Pravda at the time stated the following, but Western mainstream media mostly disregarded it:
According Ukrainska Pravda sources close to Zelenskyy, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Boris Johnson, who appeared in the capital almost without warning, brought two simple messages. The first is that Putin is a war criminal, he should be pressured, not negotiated with.
And the second is that even if Ukraine is ready to sign some agreements on guarantees with Putin, they [the UK and US] are not. Johnson’s position was that the collective West, which back in February had suggested Zelenskyy should surrender and flee, now felt that Putin was not really as powerful as they had previously imagined, and that here was a chance to “press him.”
According to the Ukrainian media English-language report, three days after Johnson left for Britain, Putin decided to go public and stated that negotiations with Ukraine “had turned into a dead end.”
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was striving to mediate between Moscow and Kiev at the time, said that the Istanbul peace talks, which saw senior representatives from each warring side converge in the Turkish capital, was lauded in some quarters as “the quickest way to end the war in Ukraine.”
But as Putin’s operation moved forward, Britain stood out as being the first to prioritize sending military transport planes with heavy weaponry and ammunition to Ukraine. The ‘convenient’ timing of London’s all-out hawkish stance regarding Ukraine was also noted in UK press reports, considering Prime Minister Johnson’s ongoing domestic “Partygate Scandal.”
Remember the tone of the Ukrainian media after the British prime minister arrived in Kiev on April 9 (Johnson was the first leader of a G7 nation to visit, arriving two weeks after Russian military withdrew from districts surrounding Kiev):
Following the arrival of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in Kyiv, a possible meeting between Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin has become less likely.
This week, yet more bombshell smoking gun revelation has emerged regarding the role of strong Western countries in sabotaging the prospective ceasefire between Russian and Ukrainian military.
Fiona Hill, a former US National Security Council officer, has co-written a lengthy essay outlining important phases in Russia’s war and Western efforts to assist Ukraine thus far.
She revealed the following critical confirmation in the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)-run Foreign Affairs journal:
According to multiple former senior U.S. officials we spoke with, in April 2022, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators appeared to have tentatively agreed on the outlines of a negotiated interim settlement: Russia would withdraw to its position on February 23, when it controlled part of the Donbas region and all of Crimea, and in exchange, Ukraine would promise not to seek NATO membership and instead receive security guarantees from a number of countries. But as Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated in a July interview with his country’s state media, this compromise is no longer an option.
This revelation and affirmation from the US side – that a potential deal for Russia-Ukraine peace was on the table – is a big revelation, which will most probably go virtually unnoticed by popular mainstream media coverage.
Of obviously, the conspicuous exclusion in the Foreign Affairs column is Boris Johnson’s aforementioned direct participation in scuttling the prospect for peaceful settlement at what appeared to be a ‘finish line’ moment. It will never be known whether or not the peace would have endured.
What remains obvious at this point is that Ukraine’s “path to NATO” appears to have been dropped as a prominent talking point among Ukrainian officials and in Brussels for the time being. Despite this, there are presently no indications of peace or ceasefire talks on the horizon, as the Kremlin appears set to broaden its war objectives into territorial annexation.