Another Missed Opportunity for Peace in Ukraine

Ukraine A story in the Financial Times reads like a spy novel, but highlights a familiar, and disappointing, pattern. (Photo by NICK PALEOLOGOS/SOOC/AFP via Getty Images) A story of intrigue that broke in the Financial Times last week reads more like a spy novel than a piece of investigative journalism: In 2022, during the Biden administration, two private American citizens established contact with the presidents of Russia and Ukraine and nearly brought peace to the world. But the story is credible. History will decide its significance. The cast of characters is unexpected. Richard Conn, a Connecticut lawyer, teamed up with Bob Foresman, an investment banker. They successfully enlisted a former East German spy named Matthias Warnig, who called Russian President Vladimir Putin “my friend” and boasted personal access to him, and Alexander Rodnyansky, a Ukrainian film maker who had, reportedly, already helped set up the promising peace talks in Istanbul months before. The team—who gave their back channel the code name “the Platform”—reached deep enough into the Biden administration to carry a message from Eric Green, the senior director for Russia on the National Security Council. The message to be conveyed to Putin by Warnig assured the Russian leader that the U.S. was neither pursuing regime change nor trying to destroy Russia. The Americans, the message said, want peace. Putin sent a message back, saying he had “no choice but to conduct military operations” but that he was “very open to negotiations.” But he wanted negotiations at a higher level and requested that Biden’s national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, call Putin’s aid Yuri Ushakov. In the weeks that followed, the Wall Street Journal has reported, Sullivan held confidential conversations with Ushakov “in an effort to reduce the risk of a broader conflict over Ukraine and warn Moscow against using nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction.” The Financial Times reported three main points to the draft proposal. First, Russia would pull back to its prewar position and maintain control of Crimea and the parts of Donbas it had controlled before the Russian invasion. Second, Ukraine would recognize Russian control over Crimea and allow Russia to establish a land bridge to the peninsula. Third, the ceasefire would be ensured by protection from NATO states while Moscow began discussing a permanent security arrangement with Washington. The Ukrainian opposition MP Oleksiy Goncharenko, who has confirmed the Financial Times story, clarifies that, though Ukraine had to recognize Russian control over Crimea, it did not have to “recognize it as Russian”—that is, de facto and not de jure recognition. Under the proposal, he says, Ukraine had to adopt a law “banning the return of Crimea by military means.” He also added two points to the outline of the proposal: that Russia would return the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant to Ukraine and commit $300 billion in frozen assets to the rebuilding of Ukraine. The reactions from Moscow and Kiev to this proposal were very different. Putin countered that Ukraine could not be allowed to join NATO, but he was willing to discuss the suggested frozen line as well as a security arrangement based on that discussed at the Istanbul talks. “If we can agree on the border and on NATO, then we can discuss everything else,” Putin reportedly told Warnig. But, the Times reports, while Putin went through the document “line by line,” Rodnyansky “could barely get Zelenskyy and his powerful head of the president’s office Andriy Yermak to look at the documents.” They refused to make any concessions on Ukraine’s borders. The hope died in Kiev, and it was buried in Washington. Putin wanted the back channel certified. He had discussed the peace proposal in detail with Ushakov and a small circle of advisors. Now he wanted Ushakov to speak with Sullivan to confirm that “the Platform” had a mandate from the administration. Sullivan, according to Putin, did not oblige, denying the U.S. had approved the channel and insisting on the sufficiency of existing official channels. The back channel was closed. The failure to sustain it in pursuit of peace represents yet another lost opportunity, hitherto unreported. Earlier lost opportunities include the American and European failure to press Ukraine on the Minsk Agreement when Putin was still pursuing it and the collapse of the Istanbul talks after the U.S. and UK pushed Ukraine off the diplomatic path to peace. The story of the short-lived “Platform” back channel reinforces familiar themes of the Russia–Ukraine War. Though Zelensky and his European and American partners were insisting at the time, and continue to insist, that there is “zero evidence” that Putin is willing to negotiate in good faith, per the Times reporting, Putin appears, as he said, to have been “very open to negotiations.” Subscribe Today Get daily emails in your inbox It also undermines the claims of Putin’s uncompromising imperial ambitions and implacable devotion to annihilating Ukraine as a state. If this report is accurate, Putin was willing to return to the prewar borders in exchange for guarantees of Ukrainian neutrality. And, per the report, as in the Istanbul talks before, Zelensky walked away from the chance for a negotiated settlement. While he told them that Putin could not, and should not, be negotiated with, he held in his hand a potential peace framework that Putin was prepared to negotiate. Some former officials pushed back to the Times, saying Ushakov never brought up the topic of the back channel to Sullivan. Green questions the central diplomatic role of some of the figures reported as comprising “the Platform.” But Green not only knew about the channel, but used it to send a message to Putin. If there was a channel, there was a chance. Given the risks of the war, which Biden officials believed included a nuclear exchange, it did not matter how small a chance. But, as at Minsk and at Istanbul, the U.S. declined to pursue a potential pathway to peace.