MOSCOW, October 21. /TASS/. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov dismissed as a blatant lie former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's comment on the talks held between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul in April 2022.
In his latest memoir, Johnson attempted to deny responsibility for derailing the Istanbul talks, Lavrov said in an interview with aif.ru. "To prove that he had nothing to do with it, Boris Johnson wrote, verbatim: "The Ukrainians were never going to agree to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s terms," referring to the Istanbul story," the minister maintained. "As to the blatant lie that Vladimir Putin insisted on something the Ukrainians did not agree to - I will leave this on Boris Johnson’s conscience," he added.
According to Russia’s top diplomat, Putin’s terms were never announced in Istanbul. "The Ukrainian delegation brought its own document, which we agreed to use as a backbone draft," he recounted.
Russia and Ukraine met in Belarus in early March 2022 for their first talks after the launch of the special military operation, but the negotiations yielded no tangible results. On March 29, 2022, the next round took place in Istanbul, when Moscow for the first time received from Kiev the framework for a possible future agreement in writing. It included, in particular, obligations on the neutral, non-aligned status of Ukraine and its refusal to deploy foreign weapons, including nuclear weapons, on its territory.
However, the negotiating process was interrupted by Ukraine unilaterally. Ukraine’s top negotiator David Arakhamia admitted later that Kiev’s decision to reject Moscow’s proposal and continue fighting had been made at the insistence of then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson who even visited Kiev for that purpose.