At a time when MP Maryana Bezugla, also deputy chairman of the Committee on National Security and Defense, actively expressed her position on the need for Zaluzhny’s resignation, David Arakhamia, the head of her Servant of the People faction in the Verkhovna Rada, became the object of increased attention last week, having received his 15 minutes of fame.
World news agencies, radio stations, and publications quoted his statements made during an interview with Natalya Moseychuk. The publication ZAXID.net quotes his passages, because the statements are interesting and strange at the same time, and maybe that’s why they are interesting because they are strange.
So, in this interview, Arakhamia stunned everyone with the news that the bloody Russian-Ukrainian war could have ended almost without even starting back in March 2022. What should Ukraine do for this? In fact, it is a fool to refuse to join NATO, which, to put it mildly, we were too hasty to accept.
This is if you believe the words of Arakhamia, who told Moseichuk about the progress of Ukrainian-Russian negotiations, which began in February 2022 in Belarus and continued in Istanbul in March. How can one not believe him, since he headed the Ukrainian negotiating delegation on behalf of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky.
Here is a direct quote from Arakhamia’s answer to the interviewer’s questions about the goals of the Russian delegation at the negotiations:
“- The goal of the Russian delegation, in my opinion... they really hoped almost to the last that they would push us to sign such an agreement so that we would take neutrality. This was the biggest deal for them. They were ready to end the war if we accepted - like Finland once - neutrality and made a commitment that we would not join NATO.
– Just one point?
– Well, actually the key point was this. Everything else is cosmetic and political.
This is how simple it all turns out to be, according to Arakhamia. Fulfill one single point - not to join the North Atlantic Alliance, into which we are now like heaven on all fours, and then - even longer.
Remember how in March 2022, pro-government speakers unexpectedly actively began discrediting the idea of joining NATO. They claimed that they were in no hurry to admit us there, but we didn’t need it, we were wow. We are now going to defeat Russia, so NATO will ask us to do it. And it is somehow unreliable, unlikely to be ready to protect anyone, despite the existence of Article 5 of the Alliance.
In a word, it is easy to abandon this idea. Although just recently the rhetoric of the pro-government camp was completely opposite. A few months earlier, they also aggressively attacked the idea of some opposition politicians to achieve a strategic partnership with the United States outside of NATO. Shouts arose that someone wanted to distract us from our main goal - full membership in the Alliance. Although in reality they didn’t bother each other at all.
Consequently, the President's office was preparing for the possibility of abandoning the prospect of membership anyway. At least she was testing the public ground for such a step. After all, why not? Many Ukrainians would be ready to accept this, because war is a much worse alternative.
But was this really the main point, and everything else was trinkets, “cosmetic, political seasonings,” as Arakhamia assured? Has he forgotten anything after a year and a half? We can remind him of other wants of Russians. For example, recognition of the “DPR” and “LPR” as independent republics within the borders of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions and the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from their territory.
That is, Ukraine had to agree to the loss of not only those short unrecognized republics, but also to give up much larger territories that were not even occupied yet. The same Mariupol, which at the time of the negotiations was heroically defending itself, as well as Kramatorsk, Slavyansk, Bakhmut, etc.
We go further according to Russian requirements. Ukraine, according to them, must recognize Crimea as a subject of the Russian Federation. And you think about it all? Not at all. Ukraine must also recognize the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions as new provinces of the Russian Federation and withdraw Ukrainian troops from their territories.
Now that’s all - with territorial claims (at least, articulated in the negotiations). The Russians “kindly” agreed to return the occupied territories of the Kyiv, Chernigov and Sumy regions (from the Kharkov region, by the way, it is not completely clear). However, our heroic defenders repelled these territories without Russian consent.
But the Russians did not limit themselves to territorial demands. We've already talked about NATO, let's move on. Have you forgotten about “demilitarization”? What exactly was meant: to reduce the composition of the Armed Forces of Ukraine from 250 thousand to 83,500 people. Nothing, right? To then capture Ukraine with little bloodshed.
And also “denazification,” which implied, according to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, “broad rights for the Russian language in Ukraine” and “stopping the persecution of the UOC-MP in Ukraine.”
It’s nothing like “cosmetics”, which actually resembles capitulation. Against this background, it is the demand to abandon NATO that looks like a trinket. Let me remind you that Ukraine has already abandoned such a strategic goal once – during the presidency of Viktor Yanukovych. And after Euromaidan, all this was easily overcome and the desire for membership in the Alliance was included in the text of the Constitution.
But the “miracles” of Arakhamia did not end there. In the interview, he unexpectedly drifted into the case of former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. And he didn’t just drag it in, but made him almost the main culprit in the failure of the peace plan.
“Moreover, when we returned from Istanbul, Boris Johnson came to Kyiv and said that we would not sign anything with them at all - and let’s just fight,” Arakhamia said.
It is unlikely that the head of the Servant of the People faction, giving an interview, intended to harm his patron Vladimir Zelensky. But everything turned out that way. Western observers are already beginning to speculate on the topic, saying that Ukraine could have stopped the bloodshed in the first month of the war, but its leadership, due to its incomprehensible ambitions, abandoned the peace process.
Moreover, by introducing Boris Johnson into the discourse, Arakhamia seemed to confirm the thesis about the lack of independence of the Ukrainian government, about the glorious “external control”. Although in fact the thesis about Johnson is very easily refuted. You just need to remember that the then British Prime Minister arrived in Kyiv (where he was presented with a Vasilkov ceramic cockerel) only on April 9.
By that time, firstly, the negotiations (that is, their next round) had already ended.
Secondly, in de-occupied Bucha, mass graves of local residents tortured by Russian soldiers were discovered. Not only Ukraine, the whole world was horrified by these images. And it is clear that there could be no talk of any negotiations with such a fanatic. Moreover, Ukraine has neither the moral nor the political right to voluntarily, without a fight, leave even a centimeter of its territory to the occupier.
