That was not his only false statement. In insisting that Putin can’t be trusted, Zelensky omitted his own record in undermining diplomacy with Moscow.

The December 2019 Paris agreement recommitted Ukraine and Russia to the Minsk peace process, the UN Security Council-endorsed framework for ending the war that broke out in 2014 between the post-coup Ukrainian government and Russian-backed eastern Ukrainian rebels.

After initially taking some positive steps toward implementation, Zelensky ultimately refused to comply, a stance that he previewed in Putin’s company.

...

The Russian invasion forced Zelensky to abandon his hostility to negotiations, resulting in the Istanbul talks of March-April 2022. While Zelensky now claims that Russia cannot be negotiated with, his own representatives in Istanbul hold a much different view.

“We managed to find a very real compromise,” Oleksandr Chalyi, a senior member of the Ukrainian negotiating team, recalled in December 2023. “We were very close in the middle of April, in the end of April, to finalize our war with some peaceful settlement.” Putin, he added, “tried to do everything possible to conclude [an] agreement with Ukraine.”

Syphilia Morgenstierne

2025-03-02 19:39:13

Aaron Maté - A summary

https://www.aaronmate.net/p/zelenskys-hostility-to-peace-triggers

Zelensky’s hostility to peace triggers White House meltdown

Long rewarded by Washington and NATO for undermining diplomacy with Russia, Zelensky grew confrontational -- and told outright falsehoods -- when Donald Trump and JD Vance told him to make peace.

^{Aaron Maté (Aaron Mate)}