Mediators between Russia and Ukraine, like Germany’s Gerhard Schroder and Israel’s Naftali Bennett, believed the two sides were close to a deal. Still, there is little to no contemporary evidence that Putin or Zelensky thought the negotiations would bear fruit. Both leaders, in all probability, increasingly saw negotiations more as a public relations exercise than a realistic possibility. They wanted to highlight their desire for a reasonable peace as they were rallying their respective nations to war. As one of the Ukrainian negotiators remarked, “We had to buy time for our partners in the West to come to their senses.” Russia’s approach in the negotiations, in their view, was simply “to formalize the capitulation of Ukraine.” 

The Istanbul Accords should not be mythologized. To do so badly underestimates the profound obstacles to a peaceful settlement once the war had broken out. The parties remained far apart on crucial points. The real missed opportunities occurred in the years before the war, when the West and Ukrainian nationalists abandoned the tried-and-true method of neutrality, acted in blatant contradiction to constitutional norms in supporting the overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically-elected government in 2014, ignored the rights and interests of Ukraine’s Russophone population, refused formal restrictions on the expansion of NATO, and applauded when Ukraine made itself into an “anti-Russia.” By the spring of 2022, it was unfortunately too late to turn back the dismal tide. 

David C. Hendrickson is president of the John Quincy Adams Society and a fellow of the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy. His latest book is Freedom, Independence, Peace: John Quincy Adams and American Foreign Policy (Barnes and Noble, 2022).

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