From current news, December 20, 2023:
Putin said the U.S. provoked Russia to start a war in Ukraine
According to him, it all started back in 2014, after the change of power in Kyiv. "What did the US do in Ukraine? In fact, they deprived us of the chance to build relations with this country in a normal, political way. They acted "out of order." Here in 2014 they organized a coup d'état and further simply forced us to respond to this lawlessness," Putin said.
"The United States, having solved these tasks of the current plan, having torn off, as they believe, Ukraine, having severed Russia's relations with Europe - in this respect, they have achieved what they wanted, unfortunately. We simply could not behave differently. Or we should have handed everything over and watched them eat everything our, native Russian," he added.
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From Henrik Kindstedt:
Short list of the results of negotiations with Russia that it never respected:
1. The Budapest Memorandum of 1994. Russia agreed to “respect independence, sovereignty, and the existing borders of Ukraine” as well as “refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine”. Breached by Russia invading Crimea in 2014.
2. The Russian-Ukrainian Friendship Treaty of 1997. Russia agreed to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity and “reaffirmed the inviolability of the borders” between the two countries. Russia breached it in 2014.
3. The OSCE Istanbul Summit in 1999. Russia committed to withdrawing its troops from Moldova’s Transdniestrian region and Georgia until the end of 2002. That never happened.
4. The 2008 Georgia ceasefire agreement following Russian aggression against the country. Russia agreed that “Russian military forces must withdraw to the lines prior to the start of hostilities”. That never happened.
5. The Ilovaysk “Green Corridor” in August 2014 and other “humanitarian” death corridors. Russia pledged to let Ukrainian forces leave the encircled town of Ilovaysk in the east of Ukraine, but instead opened fire and killed 366 Ukrainian troops. In the following years, Russia attacked numerous humanitarian corridors in Syria.
6. The “Minsk” agreements of 2014 and 2015. Russia agreed to cease the fire in the east of Ukraine. There had been 200 rounds of talks and 20 attempts to enforce a ceasefire, all of which the Russian side promptly violated. On February 24th, 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
7. The 2022 Black Sea Grain Initiative. Russia pledged to “provide maximum assurances regarding a safe and secure environment for all vessels engaged in this initiative." It then hindered the initiative's operation for months before withdrawing unilaterally a year later.
Above is only focused on deals made with Russia to address specific issues and conflicts. Not mentioning almost 400 international treaties that Russia has breached since 2014.
There are no conclusions to be drawn here, except that no one can seriously use the words "Russia" and "negotiations" in the same phrase. Putin is a habitual liar who promised international leaders that he would not attack Ukraine days before his invasion in February 2022.
Russia's tactic has remained consistent in its many wars over the last three decades: kill, grab, lie, and deny.
Why would anyone genuinely believe that Russia in 2023 is any different from Russia in 1994, 1997, 1999, 2008, 2014, 2015, and 2022?
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As regards Helsinki agreements:
The Helsinki Accords were primarily an effort to reduce tension between the Soviet and Western blocs.
The principal interest of the Soviet Union was in gaining implicit recognition of its postwar hegemony in eastern Europe through guarantees of the inviolability of frontiers and noninterference in the internal affairs of states. In return for their formal recognition of this, the United States and its western European allies pressed the Soviet Union for commitments on such issues as respect for human rights, expansion of contacts between eastern and western Europe, freedom to travel, and the free flow of information across borders. The Final Act, signed at a summit meeting in Helsinki, reflected both viewpoints.
The Helsinki Accords are nonbinding and do not have treaty status - it was broken by both blocs - all depending on what / whos perspective you see it from.
The guarantees of human rights contained in several of the Basket III provisions proved to be a continuing source of East-West contention after the accords were signed in 1975. Soviet crackdowns on internal dissent in the late 1970s and early ’80s prompted Western nations to accuse the Soviets of having entered into the human-rights portions of the accords in bad faith.
Follow-up conferences to the Helsinki Accords were held at Belgrade, Yugoslavia (now in Serbia), in 1977–78; Madrid, Spain, in 1980–83; and Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, in 1985. The collapse of communism in eastern Europe in 1989–90 and the pending reunification of Germany necessitated a second summit meeting of the CSCE in order to formally end the Cold War: this summit took place in Paris in November 1990.
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From François de Villevoye:
In the nineties: Ukraine gave up all the nuclear weapons still on its territory. All these sovjet weapons went to Russia. In return for this disarmament ukraine got sovereignty with russia guarding this. And now we know how much a deal with russia is really worth.
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From Spike Spiegel:
1997 NATO–Russia Founding Act
NATO and Russia's shared commitment to democracy and rule of law, and their respect for the sovereignty of all states, while refraining from threatening to use force against each other or any other state in violation of the UN Charter.
