At the two-day Ukraine Peace Summit in Switzerland, 78 countries signed a document Ukraine's territorial integrity should be a basis for a peace agreement between Moscow and Kyiv.
Russia, which did not participate in the international summit, had earlier set Ukraine's ceding of territory occupied by Moscow — and some territory Russian forces do not control — as a precondition to begin peace talks.
Russia is demanding Ukraine's "capitulation" as a prerequisite for negotiations.
But Russia maintains that it is Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and allies who are thwarting peace efforts.
On June 17, Russia's ambassador to the United Nations, Vassily Nebenzia, raised a draft peace treaty between Russia and Ukraine from 2022, which he claimed was scuttled at the behest of former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
"The only logical conclusion that we made as a result is that the Zelenskyy regime is incapable of negotiations."
That is false.
published a draft treaty that Russia and Ukraine negotiated directly from February to April 2022; it proves that Moscow, not Kyiv, sabotaged the peace prospects.
The spoke with more than a dozen Russian, Ukrainian and Western officials close to the talks.
Oleksandr Chalyi, a member of the Ukrainian negotiating team, told the they were very close to reaching a "peaceful settlement" by the end of April 2022.
While there were sticking points, both sides appeared open to compromise on the status of Ukraine's occupied Crimean Peninsula, Ukraine's potential accession to the European Union, caps on the size of Ukraine's military and the types of armaments it could possess, and a removal of sanctions on Russia.
Ukraine likewise was open to forgoing membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and becoming a "permanently neutral state" that would never allow foreign troops to be based on its territory.
The repulsion of Russian forces from Kyiv in April 2022 altered Ukraine's negotiating calculus. Russia's early failures boosted Ukraine's morale and galvanized international support. Johnson's April 9 visit to Kyiv underscored the development with military aid to help Ukraine "fight against Russia's brutal and unprovoked invasion."
Johnson that Putin is a war criminal who should be pressured, not negotiated with, fueling claims by Nebenzia and others that the former British prime minister sank the peace deal.
Still, for Johnson to scuttle, while the actions of Russian forces arguably made Ukrainians less willing to negotiate.
After the battle of Kyiv ended with the withdrawal of Russian forces on April 2, a wealth of evidence emerged of Russian troops' massacres in Bucha and other cities and towns in the Kyiv region.
Russia's actions "a genocide," and international watchdogs accused Moscow of war crimes, . Yet Zelenskyy did not give up on negotiations.
However, one hurdle could not be overcome.
As part of a negotiated settlement, Kyiv sought a security mechanism whereby its allies would be treaty-bound to intervene militarily if Russia invaded Ukraine again.
But "Russia inserted a clause saying that all guarantor states, including Russia, had to approve the response if Ukraine were attacked. In effect, Moscow could invade Ukraine again and then veto any military intervention on Ukraine's behalf — a seemingly absurd condition that Kyiv quickly identified as a dealbreaker,"
One member of the Ukrainian negotiating team told the that conditions demanded by Moscow ended Kyiv's "interest in continuing the talks."