(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
From the 90s, Russia had one main demand: "a neutral Ukraine. � From 2008, the US tried to push through a Ukrainian NATO membership with the support of people in Western Ukraine. Moscow said it would lead to war. Despite this, the US continued with this policy, and initiated a coup d'état in Kyiv in February 2014.
However, the Minsk Agreement of 2014–15 provided Russia a guarantee of a neutral Ukraine. It was signed by all members of the UN Security Council, and it would give Russia a buffer against Western military power. But Kyiv and Washington walked away The Minsk Agreement. The secretary of the National Security Council of Ukraine, Oleksiy Danilov, said that a "fulfilment of the Minsk agreement would mean the destruction of the country." Instead, the Americans and British built up militarily in the country, and in 2019 added Ukraine a desire for NATO membership in the constitution despite the Minsk agreement.
In November 2021, the United States and Ukraine entered into an agreement on partnership that would lead to Ukrainian NATO membership. February 24, 2022 passed Russia entered by military force with intent to coerce Ukraine to the negotiating table. At the same time, President Putin said that Russia respects the sovereignty of all post-Soviet states – including Ukraine's. There were "no plans to occupy Ukrainian territory," he stated. But Russia could not accept a Western "threat from Ukrainian territory". Russia demanded "a neutral Ukraine".
"A neutral Ukraine"
All Western media said Russia would conquer Ukraine, but President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the day after the invasion that Moscow would hold talks on "a neutral Ukraine." Negotiations began immediately. Zelenskys chief negotiator in Istanbul in March–April 2022, David Arakham, said Russia had only one main demand: "A neutral Ukraine." "Everything else was cosmetic," he said. But Ukraine did not want to negotiate while Russian forces threatened Kyiv. Ukraine's Western allies said Kyiv "could not sign an agreement with a gun to its head." Moscow then said it would withdraw its forces from Kyiv as "a benevolent gesture".
Zelenskyj had accepted a neutral Ukraine.
By March 30, the Russians had withdrawn from the Kyiv area. Zelenskyj had accepted a neutral Ukraine. According to an article by Samuel Charap and Sergey Radchenko in Foreign Affairs (June 2024), both sides expected to reach an agreement during April. But they also said that it was not a given that the Western countries had accepted the agreement. Arakhamia's colleague during the talks in Istanbul, Zelenskyi's military adviser Oleksiy Arestovych, said the negotiations "were a success. [...] We opened the champagne bottle".
But then came the events in Butsja 2.–4. April, which shocked the whole world. However, Zelenskyy told the BBC that talks were continuing. Both sides worked on a joint agreement despite what had happened Butsja.
On April 9, the British Prime Minister left Boris Johnson to Kyiv and promised Zelenskyj all support. He could show that the Russians had withdrawn from Kyiv and that they could be defeated. According to Arakhamia, Johnson said: "We should not sign anything. […] Let's just fight.” Foreign Affairs writes that documents were made as late as April 12 and 15, a couple of days after Johnson's trip. Then the talks stopped. Russia then gave up hope of continued negotiations to achieve a neutral Ukraine. In September, Russia took part of the Russian-speaking Ukraine in Russia in order to secure a buffer against Western military power. Russia still demands a neutral "Rest of Ukraine", and the longer the war continues, the more territory Russia will take.
Butsja and Boris Johnson
2.–4. On XNUMX April, three days after the Russian forces had left the area around Kyiv, there were reports of killed civilians lying in the streets of the city Butsja, a few kilometers northwest of Kyiv. The images from there influenced the entire Western world. Dagsrevyen reported on the incident on 3 April. The journalists were guided by a car that drove in a zigzag between the bodies.
They were civilians who had been shot very recently. This is Butsha that the Russians left, the Ukrainian guide told the journalists. It was no longer possible to negotiate with the Russians, it was said. You cannot negotiate with "crocodile Putin", said Boris Johnson. In retrospect, it has turned out that it was almost certainly the events in Butsha together with Boris Johnson's visit to Kyiv that caused Zelenskyj to stop the negotiations with Russia. That the Russians had withdrawn from Kyiv, also gave him hope of victory. Nor did the US want negotiations. After this, several hundred thousand Ukrainian soldiers have been killed, and Ukraine has lost more and more territory. For Ukraine, this is a disaster.
The images from Butsja influenced the entire western world.
But first let's look at the chronology. The Russians had taken Butsha on 9–11 March, but according to journalists the Russians had been tricked into an ambush and had been fired upon from outside. The Russian forces were inside the city which was attacked from Ukrainian positions around it. The burned out tanks in Butsha were Russian tanks, all of which were destroyed by Ukrainian fire, but this fire also killed many civilians in the city. Hundreds of Russian soldiers and Ukrainians lost their lives. Newsweek quotes a representative from the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), who says that we should not forget that there had been serious fighting over Butsja for several weeks. Photographs show dozens of Russian military vehicles that have been burnt out. After the Russian decision to withdraw its forces from the Kyiv area, they began to leave Butsha, but on 25–26 In March there were still fights. By March 30, all Russian forces had withdrawn from the city. "31. March will mark the history of when our city was freed from the Russians," explained the city's mayor Anatoliy Fedoruk in a video speech, and continued: "Today is a day of joy and a great victory for our military forces."
The cleansing in Butsja
But in the speech of joy which Anatoly Fedoruk held on March 31, nothing was said about corpses lying in the streets, or about a massacre of civilians. The next day, on April 1, the national news agency Ukrinform confirmed Fedoruk's speech from the day before, and again there was no mention of bodies in the streets. Kateryna Ukrajintseva, also from the Butsha city council, said the same day that Ukrainian security forces would enter the city for two to three days to clean it up. She asked the citizens to stay at home, not go out into the city and interfere with the work. Nor did she say anything about corpses lying in the streets. She had already left Butsja on 11 March and referred to military sources.
Early on 2 April, there were military and police forces in Butsja. The police special forces SAFARI made an eight-minute video from Butsja which shows how they "began to clear the area of saboteurs and of those who collaborated with the Russians". The special force traveled to Butsja early in the morning. It aimed its guns in all directions to take street by street, as if they were now among enemies. But the film did not show any bodies in the streets (only one body on the road to town). The Ukrainian forces went from house to house, but the Russian forces had, as I said, left the city three days earlier. Ukrainian special forces had stepped in to neutralize those who had collaborated with the Russians. The New York Times had photographed the far-right Azov battalion Butsha (April 2). This battalion had otherwise been used for the murder of collaborators. The EU-backed Horzhenin Institute informed on 2 April that "special forces" had entered and "cleared the city of saboteurs and of those who collaborated with the Russians". They had taken out collaborators. Already the video footage from 2 April seems to reveal this. But then we have to ask a question: What happened to these people, all these Ukrainians who had collaborated with the Russians?
The Mayor of Mykolaiv, Vitaly Kim, told the Ukraine 24 TV channel that those who collaborated with the Russians would be executed immediately: "Traitors will be executed." A special force had been created for these executions, and he could point to examples. On April 2, The New York Times reported from Butsja. Six civilian bodies were seen in the street (CNN reported 20 bodies the next day). One of them had been shot in the head. He had "a Russian military ration," wrote The New York Times. He had collaborated with or simply been given such a ration by the Russians. The fingers of an executed man with his hands tied behind his back were apparently dried up (see photo above). But the inside of the hand looks normal, and you can see the blood vessels. The blood in a dead body begins to sink to its lowest point already after a few hours (livor mortis). The upper part of the body becomes yellowish white. The body becomes stiff (rigor mortis) for up to two to four days after the murder. When AFP and CNN filmed how representatives in Butsja removed the bodies, he was still stiff. He could hardly have been killed weeks earlier.
Why would the Russians have left these bodies lying for weeks on a street in central Butsha?
Several of those who had been shot in the head were wearing white bracelet. The Russians used red or white armbands, while Ukrainian forces wore blue. Reuters says the Russians had advised civilians to wear white armbands. Some of those killed had obviously followed the Russian recommendation. A group under Serhii Korotkykh (who collaborated with the Azov Battalion) published a video sequence on Telegram taken at 13.47:2 p.m. on April XNUMX. A man asks: "There are men missing blue bracelets, can I shoot them?" and he gets a positive answer. This is of course not proof of anything, but most assumed that it was Russians who had shot these civilians. Some may have been killed in the fighting on 25–26. March and was placed there afterwards. Some appear to have been deployed shortly before being shown to the media. It also seems likely that all those who had collaborated with the Russians were executed, and then something must have been done with these bodies. If they had been put out on the street, it would have been deliberate plays.
Grotesque play
In an article from April 4, The New York Times referred to satellite images of the bodies from the company Maxar Technology, which works for the US Department of Defense. They said the bodies have been lying in the streets since both March 11 and March 19. They should have lain there for 2-3 weeks in rain and up to 16 degrees heat, apparently without it having left its mark. In such a case, the corpses should have been inflated, say those who have seen corpses that have been lying for weeks. Already after a couple of days, the corpse becomes discolored, and after a couple of weeks the skin turns brown or black. There is no date on the satellite images. We only know that they were taken before April 4.
The Pentagon cannot confirm that Russian forces have killed civilians (in Butsha).
A representative of the United States Department of Defense told Reuters later that day that Pentagon can neither confirm the claim nor confirm that Russian forces have killed civilians. We must also ask ourselves: If Russian forces had been responsible for these killings, why had they not tried to cover them up? The Russians had buried other bodies. Why would they have left these bodies lying for weeks on a street in central Butsja? But if much of this was an act, it could explain why Maxar's satellite images show that every other corpse is on the right side of the street, and every other on the left, so that you could slalom with a car between them.
The Russian-Ukrainian peace agreement and Arestovych
We can now only speculate as to what is the background for all this. What we can say, however, is that the events in Butsja 2.–4. April and Boris Johnson's trip to Kyiv a couple of days later most likely stopped the Russian-Ukrainian peace agreement. That is what Zelenskyj's negotiators, Arakhamia and Arestovytsj, said. It was obvious that President Zelenskyi and a couple of his close associates had essentially accepted a peace agreement that included "a neutral Ukraine". It could have saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers if the murders in Butsha had not been committed, and if Boris Johnson had not intervened. On April 5, former police officer, adviser to the interior minister, socialist presidential candidate and Ukrainian parliamentarian Illia Kyva said that the British MI6 had planned the operation in Butsha: "They came early in the morning, cordoned off the area, put the bodies out and kept the journalists informed." The intelligence service MI6 should have simply prepared the ground for Boris Johnson's trip. We then have to ask if Western leaders with Prime Minister Boris Johnson, MI6 and their people in Ukraine, in Western Ukraine, were open to using such cruel methods including corpse plays to stop a peace agreement.
It is a way of thinking that is foreign to most of us, but even Arestovych, who was from Ukraine's military intelligence, had already previously spoken very positively about using such a play. He was impressed with ISIS (ISIL), which has “some of the wisest and most successful commanders around. Everything is thought through in detail, including the degree of cruelty: cruelty as a play – it's inhuman," he says, "but it's at a very high level, a wise strategy", and Arestovych continues: "terrorism, medieval cruelty, burning of people, to shoot and cut off their heads. It is certainly a network for the future.”
This is a mindset found in the Ukrainian security services, especially on the radical right with people from Azov Battalion, and hundreds of ISIS fighters who used these methods in Syria came from Central Asia and the Caucasus and then went on to Ukraine.
The events in Butsja now appear in this context as a preparation for Boris Johnson's trip. They could convince everyone of the "cruelty of the Russians", and thus Boris Johnson succeeded in preventing a peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia, while we allow ourselves to be seduced by a play that was well directed.
All 'traitors' would be executed
But the execution of civilians in Butsja turns out to be even more tragic in retrospect. Many in the Russian-speaking eastern and southern Ukraine had family ties to Russia and had turned against the Ukrainian language laws. They were historically pro-Russian, but the immediate result of Butsha was that they could not cooperate with the Russian troops, since all traitors would be executed if the Russians withdrew. If there would be a negotiation, and if the Russians would give up these areas to ensure a neutral Ukraine, the pro-Russian Ukrainians would most likely be executed as in Butsha.
Russia had to give the population of the occupied territories a security guarantee, and the only option was to include these territories in the Russian Federation.
Russia had to give the population of the occupied territories a security guarantee, and the only option was to include these territories in the Russian Federation. They had to show that the occupied territories would be defended on an equal footing with St. Petersburg and Moscow. As a direct result of the killings in Butsha, Russia held a referendum in the four oblasts of Lugansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhya, and naturally a large majority supported joining Russia (those who wanted to belong to Ukraine probably already had left the area).
The events in Butsja had two very tragic consequences: For that Firstly,, together with Boris Johnson's trip to Kyiv, they put a definitive end to the March-April 2022 peace talks and to the possibility of a sovereign Ukrainian state. For that Secondly, did the executions of collaborators in Butsha it is necessary for Russia to include the occupied territories in the Russian state in order to guarantee the security of the pro-Russian population in the territories (oblasts) occupied by Russia. If it was MI6 and the British who were central to this operation, one has to wonder if they had thought through the consequences of their actions.
Tunander is professor emeritus at PRIO.
References
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