“Relatively late in the game the Ukrainians began asking for advice on where this thing was going,” said Nuland. “It became clear to us, clear to the Brits, clear to others, that Putin’s main condition was buried in an annex to this document […] and it included limits on the precise kinds of weapons systems that Ukraine could have […] such that Ukraine would basically be neutered as a military force.”

By contrast, “there were no similar constraints on Russia,” claimed the former diplomat. “Russia wasn’t required to pull back, Russia wasn’t required to have a buffer zone from the Ukrainian border, wasn’t required to have the same constraints on its military facing Ukraine.”

Her comments follow on from a major report in Foreign Affairs earlier this year, in which writers Samuel Charap and Sergey Radchenko investigated the peace deal, its contents and the players involved. The deal, which was allegedly agreed upon in April 2022, was that Ukraine would become “a permanently neutral, nonnuclear state. Ukraine would renounce any intention to join military alliances or allow foreign military bases or troops on its soil.”

If Ukraine came under attack, guarantors would come to its aid and EU membership would be left open. What’s more, the provisional treaty called for “the two sides to seek to peacefully resolve their dispute over Crimea during the next 10 to 15 years.”

The veteran former diplomat, who worked under the Bush, Obama, and Biden administrations, confirmed that a peace deal was on the table in April 2022, but said that “plenty of people and perhaps [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky himself were very suspicious that they were about to fall into a trap.”

The controversy surrounding the nixed deal has been a long-running sore in the conflict. In February this year, Putin accused Boris Johnson of playing a crucial role in halting diplomacy, telling American journalist Tucker Carlson that “[Zelensky] put his signature and then he himself said, ‘We were ready to sign it and the war would have been over long ago.’ However, Prime Minister Johnson came to talk us [Ukraine] out of it, and we’ve missed that chance.”

“If Putin could have gotten that completely neutered demilitarised Ukraine for nothing,” Nuland said, “why wouldn’t he take it?”

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Max Mitchell is UnHerd’s Assistant Editor, Newsroom.

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