Follow us on social

Nuland fuels theory that Western powers killed 2022 peace deal

Nuland fuels theory that Western powers killed 2022 peace deal

Former US official says that talks 'fell apart' after Kyiv was counseled about Russian conditions that would 'neuter' Ukraine

Analysis | QiOSK

Victoria Nuland, former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs and one of the principal architects of the Biden administration’s Russia policy, has now opined on what is perhaps the foggiest episode in a war distinguished by a nearly impenetrable kind of diplomatic opacity: the April 2022 Istanbul peace talks between Russia and Ukraine.

Furthermore she acknowledges that there was a deal on the table and that Western powers didn’t like conditions that would have limited Ukraine's military arsenal, lending credence to the theory that Ukraine’s supporters had a hand in ultimately scuttling it.

To be sure, neither the topic nor the content of Nuland’s comments is new. She is but the latest in a cavalcade of high-profile insiders, including former Israeli Prime Minister Nafatli Bennett and Ukrainian politician Davyd Arakhamia, whose testimony has shed light on the external pressures possibly informing the Zelenskyy government’s fateful decision to pull the plug on Turkish-brokered talks surrounding a draft treaty that would have ended the Ukraine war.

But, if we are to arrive at something approximating a full and unprejudiced post-mortem, it remains a necessary even if ungrateful task to carefully catalog all of these accounts — especially one from as influential a Russia policy figure as Nuland.

“Relatively late in the game the Ukrainians began asking for advice on where this thing was going and it became clear to us, clear to the Brits, clear to others that (Russian President Vladimir) Putin's main condition was buried in an annex to this document that they were working on,” she said, referencing Russia’s stipulation for hard caps and other limits on military personnel and types of weaponry that Ukraine can possess.

Such concessions, she argued, should be rejected by Kyiv because they would leave Ukraine “basically neutered as a military force.” She intimated, unsurprisingly without indulging specifics, that these anxieties were expressed by Western officials: “People inside Ukraine and people outside Ukraine started asking questions about whether this was a good deal and it was at that point that it fell apart,” Nuland said.

Just who “outside Ukraine” posed these questions and precisely what effect did these pointed queries exercise on Ukrainian officials? The full story of that short-lived diplomatic interlude is unlikely to be unraveled until after the war, in no small part due to the obvious political sensitivities at play. But there is now what appears to be, even in the most conservative estimation, a large body of circumstantial evidence that Western actors, quite possibly hailing from the UK and other countries which were designated as “guarantors” of Ukraine’s security under the Istanbul draft treaty, expressed reservations about the Istanbul format.

The extent to which these Western reservations were decisive insofar as they constituted a hard veto over the peace talks is a trickier question. One can reasonably surmise that Ukraine would have found it difficult to ink a deal that did not command at least tacit support from the Western countries on which it overwhelmingly relies, but it is no less true that the talks were fraught and, though there were positive signs of a slow convergence between the Moscow and Kyiv on key issues, the two sides were a considerable ways off from fully harmonizing their positions when the deal was terminated.

Victoria Nuland's comments lend further credence to the proposition that a settlement between Russia and Ukraine was on the table in Istanbul, that the West played a role in shaping Ukrainian thinking on the desirability of pursuing negotiations, and that Western leaders apparently conveyed the view that it was a bad deal.

Relitigating these details two years later cannot be dismissed as an exercise in political archeology; the facts of what transpired in Istanbul are as relevant as ever in informing our thinking about endgame scenarios as the war roils into its third year.


Victoria Nuland in interview with Mikhail Zygar (You Tube)

Analysis | QiOSK
Starmer Macron Merz
Top image credit: France's President Emmanuel Macron, Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Germany's Chancellor Friedrich Merz arrive at Kyiv railway station on May 10, 2025, ahead of a gathering of European leaders in the Ukrainian capital. LUDOVIC MARIN/Pool via REUTERS

Europe's snapback gamble risks killing diplomacy with Iran

Middle East

Europe appears set to move from threats to action. According to reports, the E3 — Britain, France, and Germany — will likely trigger the United Nations “snapback” process this week. Created under the 2015 Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA), this mechanism allows any participant to restore pre-2015 U.N. sanctions if Iran is judged to be in violation of its commitments.

The mechanism contains a twist that makes it so potent. Normally, the Security Council operates on the assumption that sanctions need affirmative consensus to pass. But under snapback, the logic is reversed. Once invoked, a 30-day clock begins. Sanctions automatically return unless the Security Council votes to keep them suspended, meaning any permanent member can force their reimposition with a single veto.

keep readingShow less
Vladimir Putin
Top photo credit: President of Russia Vladimir Putin, during the World Cup Champion Trophy Award Ceremony in 2018 (shutterstock/A.RICARDO)

Why Putin is winning

Europe

After a furious week of diplomacy in Alaska and Washington D.C., U.S. President Donald Trump signaled on Friday that he would be pausing his intensive push to end war in Ukraine. His frustration was obvious. “I’m not happy about anything about that war. Nothing. Not happy at all,” he told reporters in the Oval Office.

To be sure, Trump’s high-profile engagements fell short of his own promises. But almost two weeks after Trump met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska and European leaders in Washington, it is clear that there were real winners and losers from Trump’s back-to-back summits, and while neither meeting resolved the conflict, they offered important insights into where things may be headed in the months ahead.

keep readingShow less
US Marines
Top image credit: U.S. Marines with Force Reconnaissance Platoon, Maritime Raid Force, 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, prepare to clear a room during a limited scale raid exercise at Sam Hill Airfield, Queensland, Australia, June 21, 2025. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Alora Finigan)

Cartels are bad but they're not 'terrorists.' This is mission creep.

Military Industrial Complex

There is a dangerous pattern on display by the Trump administration. The president and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth seem to hold the threat and use of military force as their go-to method of solving America’s problems and asserting state power.

The president’s reported authorization for the Pentagon to use U.S. military warfighting capacity to combat drug cartels — a domain that should remain within the realm of law enforcement — represents a significant escalation. This presents a concerning evolution and has serious implications for civil liberties — especially given the administration’s parallel moves with the deployment of troops to the southern border, the use of federal forces to quell protests in California, and the recent deployment of armed National Guard to the streets of our nation’s capital.

keep readingShow less

LATEST

QIOSK

Newsletter

Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.