I am inclined to minimize the significance of Johnson’s visit, in part because stark differences over the peace deal had already emerged and in part because the message Johnson conveyed in Kyiv had already been repeatedly communicated before his arrival. 

Immediately after the outbreak of war, Western governments declared a total economic and financial war against Russia. Western authorities froze $300 billion of Russian reserves and expected a withering blow against Russian financial and military power. Defense ministries were gearing up for large-scale arms transfers to Ukraine. In his speech in Warsaw on March 26, 2022, President Joe Biden called for Putin’s removal, saying that his invasion of Ukraine stemmed from a “craving for absolute power and control.” Biden called for “swift and punishing costs” that would be “unprecedented and overwhelming.” There was no hint of compromise in the Biden administration’s approach. 

The hardline approach, suffused with anger, that arose after February 24 in the United States and Europe ruled out any negotiated settlement between Russia and Ukraine. How could Zelensky make peace with Putin if the West did not do so? A separate Russian-Ukrainian peace, absent a larger peace between Russia and the West, was inconceivable then because it would require Ukraine to entrust its fortunes to the Russians. It is also the case, however, that Zelensky encouraged a stiff Western response and wished the West to go much further. He was still angling for a no-fly-zone on April 10, having asked for that from the war’s outset. He wanted his partners to cosplay Winston Churchill, not Neville Chamberlain. Boris Johnson obliged him.

The Western attitudes precluded a Russo-Ukraine agreement, but the West didn’t put the squeeze on Zelensky to reject the Russian treaty. He had reasons of his own to disown it. He was hankering for Western support and would have gone ballistic had the Americans, reversing their decade-old policy, told him to suck it up and make a deal with the Russians.

The narrative under consideration—the Ukrainians wanted to accept Russia’s offer, but the Americans wouldn’t allow it—ignores the existence of a potent Ukrainian nationalism that refused concessions on points the Russians considered vital. 

In his most recent statement, Davyd Arakhamia, who headed the Ukrainian delegation in Istanbul, denied that a peace agreement was possible with Russia in the war’s first months. Many observers misread his earlier remarks about the Istanbul peace talks. They heard him say that there was a simple deal on the table, conceding Ukrainian neutrality in exchange for an end to the war, whereas, in fact, Arakhamia was explaining why the deal didn’t happen. In his latest interview, Arakhamia also downplayed the significance of Johnson’s visit, which he had previously mentioned as a factor in Ukraine’s decision to reject the treaty: “Neither then nor now do any of our [Western] partners give Ukraine instructions on how to build its defenses or what political decisions to take. This is the sovereign right of the Ukrainian leadership.”

Those assertions seem credible. Critics suspect that U.S. power is being brought to bear behind the scenes to tell its dependents what’s what, but in our weird empire, it often works the other way around. Allies get 100 percent support and lots of green lights. Just tell us what you want, and we’ll support you as long as it takes. 

Ivan Katchanovski believes that Johnson’s visit was decisive in sabotaging an accord. The abandonment of negotiations did not come after Bucha, he argues, but after Johnson’s visit. He cites Zelensky on April 9, the day of Johnson’s visit, when he said, “We don’t want to lose opportunities, if we have them, for a diplomatic solution.” However, the fact that Zelensky would not publicly declare the negotiations at an end does not show that he was ready to accept the Russian position. He was not. He said he favored a diplomatic solution but did not say he was willing to surrender Donbas or Crimea. He did not say he was ready to accept Ukraine’s demilitarization. He did not say that he had abandoned his quest for a substitute NATO via security guarantees from outside powers. He did not accept Russia’s interpretation of when a ceasefire would take effect.

A Tangled Web

There is much we don’t know about the course of the spring 2022 negotiations; historians and polemicists will undoubtedly argue about their crooked path for a long time to come. Naftali Bennett recalled that the parties exchanged seventeen drafts, of which there is little to no public record. Ukrainian negotiators said at the time that the Russians were shifting their positions almost daily. The Russians said the same about the Ukrainians. A tangled web, indeed.

However, the public record does disclose far-reaching differences between the parties that persisted throughout the negotiations. Though Russia’s terms preserved Ukrainian sovereignty in most of its territory, it did amount to an effective Ukrainian capitulation on the points that had brought about the war. The Ukrainians were in no mood to do that. That made any peace agreement a remote prospect in the spring of 2022. 

David C. Hendrickson is professor emeritus of political science at Colorado College. His latest work is Freedom, Independence, Peace: John Quincy Adams and American Foreign Policy (Barnes and Noble, 2022). Website: davidhendrickson.org. X/Twitter: @dhendrickson50.

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