Ex-Israeli PM confirmed ‘peace had no chance’ in Ukraine – reporter

Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s admission that his efforts to broker a peace deal in Ukraine were ultimately vetoed by the West proves that Kiev’s backers had no interest in a peaceful resolution, author and war correspondent Thomas Roeper told RT on Sunday.

In a five-hour interview with Israel’s Channel 12 on Saturday, Bennett explained that a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine had been all but agreed in March of last year, until the US and its allies decided to “keep striking [Russian President Vladimir] Putin” and “blocked” the agreement.

Bennett’s admission “confirms what was until now ‘Russian propaganda,’” Roeper told RT. When the West decided that it “didn’t want to end this war,” it became clear that peace “had no chance,” he added.

Moscow blamed Kiev for the abrupt severing of last spring’s talks, while Kiev insisted that it never refused to negotiate. Although Ukraine would go on to blame the breakdown in communications on the alleged discovery of bodies in the Kiev suburb of Bucha in April, the Ukrainskaya Pravda newspaper later stated that the Ukrainian side pulled out at the direct request of Britain’s prime minister at the time, Boris Johnson.

The deputy leader of Türkiye’s ruling party, Numan Kurtulmus, has also said that a deal was close at hand last spring, but the US and its allies “didn’t want” this to happen.

“I haven’t seen any serious efforts to find a diplomatic solution since 2014,” Roeper remarked, referring to the year when the first of the now-defunct Minsk Agreements were signed. Under these 2014 and 2015 accords, which were backed by Paris and Berlin, Ukraine agreed to grant the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics special status within the Ukrainian state. However, the former leaders of France, Germany, and Ukraine have all recently admitted that these agreements were intended to buy Ukraine time to rearm in order to quash pro-Russian separatism in these regions by force.

Speaking to RT on Sunday from Tel Aviv, Russian-Israeli journalist Nick Kolyohin said that Bennett’s interview shows who is ultimately responsible for Kiev’s decisions.

“Until the West understands that it is in its favor to reach a peace agreement with Russia, it won’t happen,” he said. “The real boss is far away and is located in Washington DC. This is where the decision will be made, and not by Ukraine and even not by Europe.”