@kravietz Interesting. But the author says "This is completely different from what everyone has been reading in Foreign Affairs lately".
That's not true at all. Factually, it's more or less the same when it comes to the terms that were being offered.
There can then naturally be different interpretations regarding what results could theoretically have been achieved, had the negotiations continued, but that is speculation.
I would say the main difference is in the conclusions drawn by authors — Radchenko (FA) conclusion was that the peace deal was „nearly there” but Ukraine cancelled it under pressure from UK-US. Szeligowski and Kumoch conclude Russia never participated in these talks to negotiate and peace deal, they just came for Ukraine’s capitulation. Based on the diplomatic context they provided, not just reading of the various drafts, their version is much more fact supported — Radchenko’s selective reading of the draft alone misses this whole context.
It’s true, but I read it as limited to “West forced Ukraine” claim, implying West’s exclusive influence here. But earlier they wrote the following:
Further, such monocausal accounts elide completely a fact that, in retrospect, seems extraordinary: in the midst of Moscow’s unprecedented aggression, the Russians and the Ukrainians almost finalized an agreement that would have ended the war and provided Ukraine with multilateral security guarantees, paving the way to its permanent neutrality and, down the road, its membership in the EU.
I think this “almost finalized an agreement that would have ended the war” was a far stretch interpretation by Radchenko and Charap which was unsupported by neither documents nor the events. Unfortunately, it also plays into the Russian narrative, which is why their article caused so much outrage.
@kravietz Yes, that's unfortunate, they shouldn't have put it that way, and I don't actually feel the article as a whole is that categorical. Radchenko has also been quite nuanced in his public comments. Haven't heard any from Charap though.
Well, you can see for yourself how the Foreign Affairs tweet is formulated, can’t you? Do you see any nuance here? No, it says straight away “could have resulted in a settlement jus weeks after the war began”.
Charap had a chance to correct the wording or comment on it, but he didn’t. If researchers normalize clickbaits, they are themselves become clickbait authors 🤷Because this is literally how Putin and Lavrov could then claim “it’s not even us who said that, it was Western researchers”.
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