Czy porozumienie w Stambule mogło przynieść pokój?

A number of political or expert reflections on the Russo-Ukrainian negotiations in Belarus and Turkey in February–April 2022 have been published in fresh months. While these contributions contain fresh details and interesting perspectives, most of them either ignore altogether or do not feature prominently Moscow’s abysmal evidence in implementing political and safety arrangements with the erstwhile russian republics. Much of the fresh debate about the chances of a peaceful alternate past does not consider past experience and assumes implicitly that the Kremlin would observe any signed agreement. specified a supposition runs counter to observable Russian behaviour in comparable situations.

The evidence of Moscow’s fulfilment of crucial articles in – not to mention the spirit of – security-related deals with erstwhile russian republics is disastrous. Russia itself frequently complains loudly about expected misbehaviour by its weaker negotiating partners before, during and after the signing of a document. Kremlin spokespersons have consistently demanded the full implementation of those articles in which they are most interested, as well as acceptance of Moscow’s own explanation of them. At the same time, the Kremlin has been flexible concerning its own material obligations – be they those emerging from multilateral or bilateral agreements between Moscow and another post-Soviet states. The Kremlin’s political unreliability has frequently afraid precisely those Russian obligations that were critical for the accords to make any sense.

Russia’s broken promises

Cases of Kremlin legal nihilism and Russian non-fulfilment of signed accords with tragic consequences have been legion over the last 35 years. many older agreements between Moscow and Kyiv that were foundational for the global relations of the post-Soviet space have been broken. The most consequential were the December 1991 Belovezha Accords between Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, which dissolved the russian Union, an event that Putin famously described in 2005 as “the top geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century”. In this historical and full ratified treaty, the 3 countries established the Commonwealth of Independent States and consensually fixed and promised to respect their fresh state borders – including that of Crimea, Sevastopol and Donbas that belonged to Ukraine. Article 5 of the Belovezha Accords states that: “The advanced Contracting Parties admit and respect each other’s territorial integrity and the inviolability of existing borders within the Commonwealth.”

Another historical paper followed almost precisely 3 years later – the by now infamous Budapest Memorandum on safety Assurances. In this appendix to the 1968 atomic Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Moscow, Washington and London, during the last and fateful CSCE summit at Hungary in December 1994, promised Kyiv, in exchange for Ukraine handing over of its atomic warheads to Russia, that they would respect Ukraine’s state borders, territorial integrity and political sovereignty. For a short time after the break-up of the USSR, Kyiv had the world’s third-largest arsenal of atomic weapons. It committed in 1994 not only to dismantle its unusable strategical rockets but besides to transfer to Russia all another weapons of mass demolition and material that could be utilized to build them. The same applied to Ukraine’s various inherited transportation systems, specified as bombers or missiles.

The 3 depositary states of the NPT, including Russia, state in the 1994 memorandum’s first two articles:

“1. The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of large Britain and Northern Ireland, reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine, in accordance with the principles of the CSCE Final Act, to respect the independency and Sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine. 2. The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of large Britain and Northern Ireland, reaffirm their work to refrain from the threat or usage of force against the territorial integrity or political independency of Ukraine, and that no of their weapons will always be utilized against Ukraine but in self-defense or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.”

These promises have been broken by Moscow since 2014 in always more egregious ways. Russia not only set up alleged “people’s republics” on Ukrainian dirt but besides officially annexed Ukrainian regions in March 2014 and September 2022, including in the second case territories and even full cities that it does not control.

Most of the deals signed in connection with the Russo-Ukrainian War were besides violated by Moscow. The most infamous of them were the alleged Minsk Agreements, which Kyiv signed at gunpoint in 2014 and 2015. In the September 2014 Minsk Protocol (“Minsk-I”), the Russian ambassador to Ukraine undersigned to “withdraw illegal armed groups and military equipment as well as fighters and mercenaries from the territory of Ukraine”. In the February 2015 Minsk Package of Measures (“Minsk-II), Moscow again promised a “withdrawal of all abroad armed forces, military equipment, as well as mercenaries from the territory of Ukraine under the supervision of the OSCE [as well the] [d]isarmament of all illegal groups”. The Kremlin never gave any sign of starting in earnest to fulfil these and another promises and most likely never intended to do so.

The Moldovan and Georgian cases

Of Russia’s broken agreements, those which might be most crucial for assessing the chances of a putative Istanbul deal in 2022 are, however, those that do not concern Ukraine and that were signed erstwhile Putin was not president. That is due to the fact that these – at first glance unrelated – annulments indicate a wider pathology in Russia’s approach to its s0-called close abroad (i.e. the post-Soviet space). Treaty violations unrelated to Ukraine illustrate the existence of a broader pattern of behaviour that does not just concern Ukraine and is not only shaped by the personality of Putin.

In October 1994, Moscow signed the “Agreement between the Russian Federation and the Republic of Moldova regarding the legal status, procedure and period for the withdrawal of the Russian Federation Military Units/Formations, temporarily situated in the territory of the Republic of Moldova”. In its crucial second article, the Kremlin promised:

“The Russian side shall in accordance with method capabilities and the time required to arrange the fresh deployment site for the troops, retreat these military forces within 3 years of the date this agreement enters into force. applicable steps for the withdrawal of the Russian Federation military units from the territory of the Republic of Moldova, within the framework of this deadline will be synchronized with the political settlement of the Transnistrian conflict and the determination of a peculiar position for the Transnistrian region of the Republic of Moldova.”

In the same year, the Republic of Moldova adopted its fresh post-Soviet constitution in which it defined itself as a neutral state. Article 11 of the inactive current 1994 Moldovan constitution states: “The Republic of Moldova proclaims its permanent neutrality. […] The Republic of Moldova does not admit the stationing of any abroad military troops on its territory.”

Nonetheless, the remnants of the 14th Russian Army, now called the “Operational Group of Russian Forces”, stay on the Republic of Moldova’s territory against its will and in contravention of the 1994 Russia-Moldova treaty. Nor was the territorial conflict in Transnistria resolved within the three-year period mentioned in this document. Moldova’s constitutional exclusion of any possible accession to NATO and of the hosting of abroad troops on its territory – besides major topics in the ongoing debate about a possible Russian-Ukrainian compromise – were then as now ignored by Moscow. Russian troops stay in Moldovan territory 30 years later, in violation of Moldova’s constitution. At the same time, the alleged “Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic” remains a breakaway pseudo-state and satellite of Russia.

Russia’s attitude to Georgia and the August 2008 ceasefire agreement between Moscow and Tbilisi tell a somewhat akin story. The deal was signed by the 2 countries’ then presidents, Dmitrii Medvedev and Mikheil Saakashvili. It was besides called the “Sarkozy Plan” after the then president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy. France at that time held the presidency of the European Union, which had mediated the deal. The agreement ended the five-day 2008 Russian-Georgian War. Article 5 prescribed a return of Russian troops, which a fewer days before had entered Abkhazia and the Tskhinvali Region (South Ossetia), to their first positions in Russia: “The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation will be withdrawn to the line before the start of armed actions.”

Nonetheless, Moscow left a crucial number of its troops on Georgian territory, in a manifest violation of the August agreement. Worse still, it recognized Abkhazia and alleged South Ossetia as independent states at the end of August 2008. Moscow’s first approval and signing of the soon-to-be abandoned Sarkozy Plan was, it turned out, not only designed to deceive Georgia. It was besides meant to mislead the European Union, with which Moscow had wanted to keep good relations in that period.

What if?

Perhaps, contrary to what most serious analysts have concluded, there was a slim chance that Kyiv might have signed a paper with Moscow in Istanbul in the spring of 2022. We will never know for sure. What we do know from fresh experience is how and why post-Soviet Russia engages in peace talks. The Kremlin sees specified putative deals as 1 of respective instruments in its hybrid warfare against post-Soviet states that do not accept Russian hegemony.

We would most likely have seen Russian behaviour at and after the Istanbul talks that follows a acquainted pattern from the past: having invaded a post-Soviet state, Moscow pushes through a slanted agreement at gunpoint. As the 2 Minsk Agreements indicate, an Istanbul agreement would have in itself already been a transmogrification of global law. In a second step, Moscow would not even implement any crucial points from the imbalanced document. Under any pretext, Moscow would de facto retreat its approval for the agreed deal while continuing to insist on the implementation of those points that it favours.

Moscow’s possible signing of a paper in Istanbul in 2022 – if 1 allows for the anticipation of specified a script at all – might have resulted in a temporary lowering of tensions. However, judging from erstwhile Russian behaviour, the apparent deal would have, as in the case of the Minsk accords, resulted in another subversion of global law. Above all, a hypothetical Istanbul accord would, most likely, not have been observed by Moscow. It would have neither prevented Russia from further meddling in the interior affairs of erstwhile russian republics, nor led to a decline in Russian military aggressiveness and territorial appetite. On the contrary, the next Russian invasion has typically been worse than the last.

This article is based on a SCEEUS commentary

Andreas Umland is an analyst with the Stockholm Centre for east European Studies (SCEEUS) at the Swedish Institute of global Affairs (UI).

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