https://contra.substack.com/p/us-led-west-opposed-peace-deal-in?r=lj90&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
U.S.-Led West Opposed Peace Deal in Ukraine
Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Russia and Ukraine seemed eager to end the fighting early last year. But the U.S. and its allies had other plans.
Pedro L. GonzalezFeb 7
Naftali Bennett, then the prime minister of Israel, found himself praying aboard a cramped, decrepit plane last year as it sailed over Kazakhstan. The long flight, arranged with help from the Mossad, was bound for Moscow on a desperate mission: broker peace between Russia and Ukraine just after the two countries had gone to war.
According to Bennett, Russian President Vladimir Putin made two major concessions during their March 5 meeting. First, he renounced “den**ification”—that is, regime change in Kiev. Second, he dropped his demand for Ukraine’s demilitarization. Bennett said President Volodymyr Zelensky agreed to abandon Ukraine’s pursuit of NATO membership in exchange. Both Putin and Zelensky seemed eager to end the fighting. But the U.S. had other plans.
Bennett said a “decision by the West” was made “to keep striking Putin” through Ukraine. “They blocked it and I thought they were wrong,” he said. Bennett noted that the governments of Germany and France were pragmatic toward the idea compared to the U.S. and the U.K., which took a more belligerent attitude against Russia.
Considering the U.K. is little more than a neutered lapdog of D.C., it is more than likely that it was the U.S. who decided to keep the war going. Indeed, Bennett said he deferred “to America in this regard.”
In an interview with author and comedian Hanoch Daum, Bennett provided a behind-the-scenes look at his efforts to establish a ceasefire and how it initially showed promise until being doomed by imperial intrigue. It was the first time time he talked about his attempt to mediate peace between the two countries.
“There are many Jews in Ukraine and Russia,” Bennett told Daum about his motives, “and as prime minister of the Jewish state I have a responsibility.” It was a race against time to end the war before many civilians were k**led.
His solution was “creating contact with both sides and trying to mediate,” leveraging his good relations with Putin and Zelensky. “I was under the impression both sides very much want a ceasefire,” he said. Bennett maintained contact with the governments of Germany, France, the U.K., and the U.S. throughout the negotiations, keeping them appraised as talks, mostly by phone, progressed. While Putin was open to diplomacy, the U.S. was not, according to Bennett.
I knew that the trust I had formed with Putin was a rare commodity. America didn’t know how to communicate at that time, neither does it know today. I don’t think there was anyone else who had the trust of both sides. Maybe [Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan] to a degree. That’s one thing. The second thing, I set a rule, a lot of humanitarian aid, but no supply of weapons. I informed Putin of wh**ever I did. I told Putin [by phone call], “I’m setting up a field hospital in Lvov.” So he said, “If you give me your word that it won’t be a hiding place for weapons or soldiers, that it won’t be used for military purposes, then no problem. I’ll ensure it’s not bombed.
Bennett described Putin as “pragmatic” and not “Messianic” but governed by limited, concrete objectives, contra the Western portrait of him as a madman bent on world domination.
Putin does not think of himself as an imperialist, Bennett said, but as someone fighting against imperialism in the form of NATO expansionism. “Putin’s perception was . . . when the [Berlin] Wall came down, we reached an agreement with NATO, that they wouldn’t expand NATO and would not touch the belt countries that envelop Russia.” Bennett noted that incorporating Ukraine into NATO has long been central to Russia’s security concerns, which Bennett likened to the Monroe Doctrine. The U.S. wouldn’t tolerate China incorporating Mexico into a hostile military alliance. Why would Russia allow the U.S. to do the same with Ukraine?
“So I called the Americans, [Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken], [President Joe] Biden, and [Jake] Sullivan, the National Security Advisor, and I said, ‘I have Putin’s ear, I can be a pipeline.” According to Bennett, “Zelensky initiated the request to contact Putin. Zelensky called me and asked me to contact Putin.” Bennett reiterated Zelensky contacted him to help mediate peace talks. “Keep in mind, he knows that his days are numbered, that he’ll be k**led.”
At the time, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was concerned about the looming German energy crisis and its ramifications. “I tell [Scholz] about my discussion with Putin and Putin says, ‘We can reach a ceasefire.’”
Bennett began coordinating with other countries while taking calls from Putin and Zelensky.
“So I start talks back and forth, Putin-Zelensky, Zelensky-Putin.” To his surprise, both sides were willing to make concessions after an initial round of posturing. “Drafts are exchanged, not only through us, directly as well. They’re in Belarus in a city called Gomel.” On Feb. 28, delegations from Ukraine and Russia held talks in Gomel region, Belarus. Bennett said that though “the world looked down on” the attempt at diplomacy, he “considered it a good thing that they were talking and exchanging.”
When no breakthrough was achieved there, Bennett realized they were running out of time before the war reached a much more devastating stage. He kept trying to find a solution, maintaining constant communication with other governments. “I explained it to the Americans. Everything I did was fully coordinated with Biden, with [French President Emmanuel Macron], with [then-Prime Minister of the U.K. Boris Johnson], with Scholz, and obviously with Zelensky.”
He was confident peace was possible, contra Washington, who didn’t believe it was—or rather, didn’t want to see a ceasefire born. Bennet’s interviewer asked the obvious: “Maybe they didn’t want you to succeed.”
Yet he tried, encouraged by both Putin and Zelensky’s willingness to move forward.
Bennett arrived in Moscow for a trip to the Kremlin on March 5. It was a cold and rainy day, and he had spent hours reading about the histories of Ukraine and Russia, consulting experts, and learning everything he could to increase the chance of success. It paid off.
“When I met Putin, he made two big concessions that are obvious now, that weren’t at the time.” Importantly, Putin “renounced the den**ification, i.e. taking out Zelensky.”
“Are you going to k**l Zelensky?” Bennett asked. “I won’t k**l Zelensky,” Putin replied. Zelensky had been hiding in a “secret bunker” at the time, Bennett said. “I have to understand that you’re giving your word that you won’t k**l Zelensky.” Putin said again, “I won’t k**l Zelensky.”
“After the meeting, in the car from the Kremlin to the airport, I contacted Zelensky by WhatsApp or Telegram,” Bennett said. “I call Zelensky and say, ‘I came out of a meeting, he’s not going to k**l you.’ [Zelensky] asks, ‘are you sure?’”
“100 percent, he won’t k**l you.”
Bennett recalled: “Two hours later, Zelensky went to his office, and did a selfie in the office, [in which the Ukrainian president said,] ‘I’m not afraid.’” Also, on March 7, after Putin reportedly promised to spare him to Bennett, Zelensky filmed himself saying, “I’m not hiding and I’m not afraid of anyone,” in his p**********l office for the first time since the war started.
Juxtaposed against a Western media machine that insisted that a mad Russian autocrat wouldn’t stop at Kiev but reach further and further, Bennett was on the verge of a breakthrough.
When Zelensky and Putin expressed concerns about Western security guarantees—Zelensky wanted them but worried about their fragility while Putin saw them as “no different than NATO”—Bennett proposed the “Israeli model” of self-sufficiency: no guarantees beyond one’s own military force as deterrence against foreign aggression. According to Bennett, Ukraine and Russia were amenable to the idea—“they both accepted.”
After the meeting in Moscow, Bennett began bringing other countries up to speed on the good news. And then it happened.
Bennett was “blocked” by “the West” from pursuing peace. He said that if he had been negotiating directly on behalf of his Israel’s national interests, he would have ignored the call and stood firm. “Here, I don’t have a say,” he said. “I’m just the mediator, but I turn to America in this regard, I don’t do as I please.”
It was later reported that Boris likely played some part in the effort to stop negotiations. But the U.K. is virtually irrelevant in this context. There is only one superpower on the world stage capable of k*****g a peace deal in Ukraine when both Zelensky and Putin are prepared to sign on the dotted line: the United States. It’s has happened before, too.
As I previously wrote about in Contra, Maurice Gourdault-Montagne, a former top foreign policy aide to late French President Jacques Chirac, revealed last year that the U.S. k**led similar diplomatic talks in 2006.
France was the mediator this time, but the objective was the same: satisfy Russia’s security concerns while guaranteeing Ukrainian sovereignty. Chirac was deeply pro-Ukraine but also viewed Russia as a peer with legitimate concerns about NATO being used as a tool of U.S.-led imperialism. Gourdault-Montagne said that the peace plan entailed “a reciprocal protection of Ukraine, by Russia on one hand, and NATO on the other; this would have been overseen by the Russia-NATO Council, which had been created in the early 2000s.”
The Russians agreed, so the French diplomat turned to Washington. That was where the road to peace ended. In an interview with Europe 1, Gourdault-Montagne said:
Then I went to the Americans, to Condoleezza Rice in Washington, who was Secretary of State at the time, and who had been my counterpart during the Iraq War—I knew she was, I would say, hardline, but also sometimes pragmatic. Well, she told me, this was completely unexpected for me, she looked at my piece of paper, and she said: “You, the French, for a long time you held up the first wave of East European countries joining NATO, you will not hold up the second wave.” That is when we understood that the American plan was to, in the fullness of time, bring Ukraine into NATO.
Someone, maybe Mark Twain, said that history doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme. What Bennett revealed is a reminder that the U.S. has been calling the war tune for decades.
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