What happened the last time Russia and Ukraine held peace talks?

Straits Times

12-05-2025

A municipal worker stands in front of an apartment building heavily damaged a day before, by a Russian air strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in the frontline town of Kostiantynivka, in Donetsk region, Ukraine May 8, 2025. Iryna Rybakova/Press Service of the 93rd Kholodnyi Yar Separate Mechanized Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces/Handout via REUTERS
Russia and Ukraine may be on the point of holding peace talks for the first time since the early weeks of the war.
Here is a short guide to what was on the table back in 2022, the last time the two countries held peace talks, and why those talks broke down.
WHERE AND WHEN DID NEGOTIATIONS TAKE PLACE?
Russian and Ukrainian negotiators met in Belarus on February 28, 2022, four days after Russia's full-scale invasion. They later held meetings by video link before meeting again in person in Istanbul on March 29. After that they exchanged multiple drafts until mid-April, before the talks broke down.
WHAT WAS DISCUSSED?
- According to draft documents published last year by the New York Times, Ukraine was prepared to become a permanently neutral, non-aligned and nuclear-free state, with no foreign troops or weapons on its soil. These terms would have barred it from joining NATO but allowed for the possibility of EU membership.
- In return, Ukraine would have received security guarantees from a group of countries including the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council - Britain, China, Russia, the United States and France.
- A partially agreed draft said the guarantor states - including Russia - would respect and observe Ukraine's independence and sovereignty and refrain from the threat or use of force against it.
- The draft proposed holding talks over a period of 10-15 years regarding the status of Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
WHAT WERE THE KEY POINTS OF DISAGREEMENT?
- If Ukraine was attacked, it wanted the guarantors to provide assistance that could include "closing airspace over Ukraine, providing necessary weapons, using armed force in order to restore and subsequently maintain the security of Ukraine as a permanently neutral state". But Russia insisted any decision must be agreed by all guarantor states - meaning Moscow would have a veto.
- The two sides disagreed sharply on the future size of Ukraine's armed forces and its military arsenal. For example, Kyiv was ready to agree to cap the size of its forces at 250,000, with 800 tanks and a maximum missile firing range of 280 km (174 miles). Russia was demanding limits on Ukraine of 85,000 personnel, 342 tanks and a 40 km missile range.
- Moscow demanded that Ukraine recognise Russian as an official state language and end what it considers to be discrimination against Russian-speakers, something Ukraine denies.
- Russia demanded the repeal of what it called "laws of Ukraine on Nazification and glorification of Nazism". Ukraine rejects the Nazism charge as absurd.
WHY DID THE TALKS BREAK DOWN?
By April 2022, the situation on the battlefield appeared to be turning in Ukraine's favour. It had beaten back Russian forces from around Kyiv and shown evidence to the world of alleged Russian war crimes that provoked international condemnation, although Moscow denied them.
Western countries were scaling up military aid to Kyiv and escalating sanctions on Moscow - all factors that made Ukraine less inclined to accede to Russian demands, according to a detailed account of the peace talks in the journal Foreign Affairs by historian Sergey Radchenko and analyst Samuel Charap.
ARE THE 2022 DRAFTS STILL RELEVANT?
U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff said in February that the so-called Istanbul protocols offered "guideposts" for negotiations between the warring sides.
A Kremlin aide said on Sunday that the peace talks being proposed now should take into account the 2022 negotiations and the fact that Russia now controls nearly a fifth of Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in December 2024 that there were no "Istanbul agreements", only talks in which Ukraine had responded to an "ultimatum" by Russia but did not sign anything.
WHAT HAS CHANGED SINCE THE FAILED TALKS?
The original negotiations were focused mainly on sovereignty issues, but Russia's stance has hardened since then to include specific demands on territory. President Vladimir Putin said in June 2024 that Ukraine must withdraw entirely from four regions of the country - Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson - that Russia has claimed as its own but only partly controls.
Ukraine says it will never legally recognise Russian occupation of Ukrainian land. At the same time, Zelenskiy has acknowledged that his forces are unable at this point to take back all the lost territory and that it may be recovered over time by diplomatic means. REUTERS
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