MOSCOW, July 17. /TASS/. Ukrainian negotiators fully supported Kiev’s non-aligned status before abandoning talks with Russia in the spring of 2022, Alexey Polishchuk, director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Second CIS Department, told TASS in an interview.
"The non-aligned status was the founding provision of the Russian-Ukrainian draft peace treaty being negotiated in Belarus and Turkey in the spring of 2022. Until unilaterally leaving these talks, the Ukrainian side completely supported it," the diplomat noted.
He stressed that Ukraine must return to the origins of its sovereignty. "Neutrality, the rejection of NATO membership, the departure from Nazi ideology, the respect for the rights of Russian-speaking citizens and ethnic minorities are the best guarantees of Ukraine’s security and statehood," Polishchuk added.
The diplomat reiterated that neutrality and non-bloc status were at the foundation of Ukrainian statehood, being enshrined in the 1990 Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine and confirmed in other documents. "Kiev’s rejection of aspirations for NATO membership is one of the key elements of the Russian president’s initiative on settling the Ukrainian crisis. Just as the withdrawal of troops from constitutional Russian territories and the recognition of new territorial circumstances," he concluded.
Since the onset of the special military operation, Russia and Ukraine have been holding talks, first in Belarus and at the end of March, 2022 - in Istanbul. By this time, the delegations had initialed a draft agreement which included, in particular, Ukraine’s obligations on a neutral non-aligned status and the rejection of stationing foreign arms, including nuclear ones, on its territory.
However, Ukraine unilaterally broke off the negotiation process. As head of the Ukrainian delegation David Arakhamia admitted later, this happened at the insistence of then UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson who made a special trip to Kiev.