MOSCOW, March 1. /TASS/. The draft treaty with Ukraine that was discussed at the talks in Istanbul in 2022 is no longer on the table, so the Kremlin won’t publish it, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
"The conditions that existed in March 2022 do not exist now, and there’s a different legal status of the territories that became regions of the Russian Federation," he said in comments on a Wall Street Journal report that set out the highlights of the proposal.
The newspaper said the draft agreement did not rule out the withdrawal of Russian forces from the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions. After the negotiations failed - in September 2022 - the residents of these regions initiated a referendum, where they decided to join Russia by an overwhelming majority.
"Indeed, there was an agreed text, but we would not like to publish it," Peskov said. "The entire negotiation process was halted by the decision of the Ukrainian side - on the command that was received from the UK."
The treaty, which had been negotiated over several rounds of meetings between representatives of Ukraine and Russia, was scrapped in March 2022. Russian President Vladimir Putin, when he received representatives of seven African countries, who came to Russia last June to present their peace proposal on Ukraine, showed the African leaders the treaty, which was initialed and included 18 articles and annexes. It included provisions on neutrality and security guarantees.
In November 2023, David Arakhamiya, head of the Servant of the People faction in the Ukrainian legislature, said in an interview with 1+1 television that Kiev refused to accept the agreement after the then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson visited Ukraine. The UK official then suggested that Kiev should not sign anything but keep fighting.