The leader of the “Servant of the People” party, David Arahamia, who led the Ukrainian delegation at the “peace” talks with the Russians in Belarus and Turkey in 2022, said that the Russian delegation promised Kyiv peace in exchange for refusing to join NATO, but the Ukrainians did not believe them. writes Ukrainian Pravda, quoted by News.ro.

Journalist Nataliya Moseychuk noted that at the meeting with the African delegation, Vladimir Putin showed an allegedly already ready draft of a peace agreement with Ukraine, agreed upon during negotiations in Belarus, which was supposed to be initiated in Istanbul (Turkey).

According to Putin, there were 18 articles in the so-called treaty on permanent neutrality and security guarantees of Ukraine, which “explained everything, starting from military equipment and ending with the personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine”, and the document was allegedly signed by the head of the Ukrainian delegation.

Arahamia noted: “Putin for some reason did not publish this document. why do you think If he had such a document, he would have made it public. They even hoped almost to the last that they would force us to sign such an agreement so that we would assume neutrality. It was the most important thing for them. They were ready to end the war if we accepted, as Finland once did, neutrality and promised not to join NATO.”

“First of all, in order to agree to this point, it is necessary to amend the Constitution. Our path to NATO is written in the Constitution. Secondly, I did not believe that the Russians would do it. This could only be done if there were security guarantees. We could not sign something, leave, let everyone relax there, and then they [vor invada] and more prepared – because, in fact, they entered unprepared for such resistance. Therefore, we can only explore this path when there is absolute certainty that it will not happen again. There is no such certainty. Moreover, when we returned from Istanbul, Boris Johnson came to Kyiv and said that we will not sign anything with them and let’s just fight.”

At the same time, Arahamia denied that the Ukrainian delegation was ready to sign such a document and that Johnson would force Kyiv’s hand.

According to Arahamiya, the delegation did not even have the legal right to sign anything – this could happen only theoretically at the meeting between Volodymyr Zelenskyi and Vladimir Putin.

Arakhamia added that the Western partners knew about the negotiations and saw the draft documents, but did not try to make decisions for Ukraine, but rather gave advice.

“In fact, they advised us not to enter into ephemeral security guarantees [cu ruşii – n.r.]which could not have been given then at all,” said Arahamia, who headed the negotiating delegation.

In his opinion, the delegation fulfilled its primary tasks “by 8 points out of 10”, because the Russians “left” (moved away from Kyiv), and then everything went into a purely military direction.

Arahamiya admitted that there was a time when he believed in the possibility of encircling the capital.