Just think, if the neocons hadn’t blocked an almost signed, sealed, and delivered Ukraine-Russia peace agreement early on in the conflict, they’d have more money and weaponry to spend on the Palestinian-Israel war. From Ted Snider at antiwar.com:
On June 13, 2023, taking questions from war correspondents at the Kremlin, Putin confirmed what had already been reported: that Russia and Ukraine had “reached an agreement in Istanbul.” Peace was possible. The tentative agreement would see Russia withdraw to its prewar position in exchange for a Ukrainian promise to give up its NATO aspirations.
But at the June press conference, Putin revealed for the first time just how close Russia and Ukraine had come to peace in the early days of the war. The tentative agreement had been initialed by both sides. “I don’t remember his name and may be mistaken, but I think Mr Arakhamia headed Ukraine’s negotiating team in Istanbul. He even initialed this document.” Russia, too, signed the document: “during the talks in Istanbul, we initialed this document. We argued for a long time, butted heads there and so on, but the document was very thick and it was initialed by Medinsky on our side and by the head of their negotiating team.”
Days late, on June 17, in a meeting with a delegation of leaders of African countries, Putin went further, dramatically holding up the document and revealing it to the world for the first time. “We did not discuss with the Ukrainian side that this treaty would be classified, but we have never presented it, nor commented on it. This draft agreement was initialed by the head of the Kiev negotiation team. He put his signature there. Here it is.”
But the initialled agreement went no further. “We actually did this,” Putin told war correspondents at the Kremlin, “but they simply threw it away later and that’s it.” Talking to the African delegation, Putin said, “After we pulled our troops away from Kiev – as we had promised to do – the Kiev authorities … tossed [their commitments] into the dustbin of history. They abandoned everything.” But Putin did not primarily blame Ukraine. He implicitly blamed the US, saying that when Ukraine’s interests “are not in sync” with U.S. interests, “ultimately it is about the United States’s interests. We know that they hold the key to solving issues.”
