Veteran diplomat Jean-Daniel Ruch has claimed the US and the UK derailed the Istanbul talks in April 2022, hoping to “weaken Russia”
Veteran Swiss diplomat Jean-Daniel Ruch has alleged that the US and UK “immorally” prevented Ukraine and Russia from sealing a truce back in April 2022 in the hope of dealing a blow to Moscow. The former official, who at the time served as Swiss ambassador to Türkiye, was in the country when peace talks were taking place.
In Istanbul, Ukraine and Russia preliminarily agreed to a draft truce under which Kiev would have renounced its NATO membership aspirations, declared neutrality, and limited the size of its armed forces in exchange for international security guarantees. However, Ukrainian negotiators abruptly pulled out, with Moscow later claiming that then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson had urged the Ukrainian leadership not to sign any accord and to “just continue fighting.”
While David Arakhamia, the Zelensky-allied MP who led the Ukrainian delegation, confirmed this in November 2023, Johnson still insists that the allegation is an “absolute steaming, stinking lie.”
In an interview with the French-speaking Anti These media outlet on Sunday, Ruch recounted how the “West pulled the plug on the negotiations which were on course to produce a ceasefire.” According to the diplomat, it was clear already in April 2022 that “if the war continued… the dead would be counted at least in tens of thousands, more probably in hundreds of thousands.”
Nevertheless, the “Americans and their British allies” intervened in the Istanbul peace talks and scuttled a ceasefire that “was within reach,” insisting on weakening Russia further instead, Ruch claimed. The former ambassador described the move as “deeply immoral,” suggesting that Kiev is now unlikely to be offered terms as favorable as the ones proposed in 2022 in Türkiye.
Speaking on Johnson’s role in those events, the veteran diplomat alleged that the former British leader “was in [Istanbul] on duty for the Americans” as he “doesn’t make this kind of decisions all by himself.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly expressed readiness to engage in dialogue with Kiev based on the draft agreement prepared in Istanbul in the spring of 2022, plus recognition of the “new territorial realities” that have taken shape since.
According to the Russian leader, “the document did not come into force only because the Ukrainians were ordered not to do this. The elites in the US and some European countries felt the desire to seek Russia’s strategic defeat.”
