17 secret documents that could have prevented the war in Ukraine

In 2024, the German daily Die Welt revealed the existence of a 17-page peace agreement that could have ended the war in Ukraine just a few weeks after its invasion by Russia.

Negotiators from both sides had worked tirelessly on it between February and April 2022, and the original version of this special document was made available to the German media.

In March 2022, only a few conditions were missing from the resolution of the conflict, which was supposed to be "negotiated by Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky at a summit meeting – which never took place", highlighted the media La Dépêche.

The conditions of the agreement

While Alexandre Fomine, Russian Deputy Minister of Defence, announced on 29 March 2022 the withdrawal of the Russian army from the Kiev region, hope was beginning to emerge. The first negotiations in Istanbul were taking shape, and the drafting of a peace agreement had begun. Die Welt reports the conditions set out by Moscow to Kiev: renouncing any military alliance, including joining NATO, adopting permanent neutrality, "partial demilitarisation, reducing Kiev's ground forces to 85,000 soldiers instead of a million, maintaining Russian troops in Crimea annexed since 2014..." What could Ukraine expect in return? It's right to self-defence. "In case of armed attack against Ukraine, the guarantor states would have committed to helping Kiev exercise its right to self-defence, as guaranteed by the United Nations Charter, within a maximum of three days," stated Le Figaro.

More than three years after the start of the invasion of Ukraine, the failure of the agreement resonates heavily.

(MH with Manon Pierre - Source: La Dépêche - Illustration: ©Unsplash)