The Budapest Memorandum and Russia

One pattern that emerges with authoritarians is how they constantly seek to control the narrative. One of those narratives is that Ukraine could have negotiated out of the war after the full-scale invasion in 2022.

At the time, I suspected Russia was trying to get all it wanted, for the moment, without a fight. It’s what Russia does. It included the end of Western guarantees and, in time, the end of Ukraine. So, when this interview emerged, it confirmed this. By the way, I expected this in a decade or two, not now. So something is going on. And I will go into it in a second as well. First this:

Interview with former Secretary of State in the Office of President Andrzej Duda Jakub Kumoch, who accompanied the Ukrainian delegation during the Russian-Ukrainian negotiations in the spring of 2022 (which was attended by Roman Abramovich). According to him, the theses emerging in the media that at that time Ukraine and the Russian Federation were close to signing peace, and that Kyiv allegedly refused this, are 100% Russian propaganda, which is spread by Moscow in order to shift responsibility for the continuation of the war to the Ukrainian side.

“From a conversation with them, it immediately became clear to us that the Russian delegation did not have any authority, they repeated propaganda slogans and threw around accusations. That there are American units in Ukraine, that it is itself to blame because it distributes weapons to civilians. Absurdity within absurdity. Conversations without specifics. What…