{"id":270167,"date":"2023-06-21T07:15:12","date_gmt":"2023-06-21T07:15:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=270167"},"modified":"2023-06-22T05:51:12","modified_gmt":"2023-06-22T05:51:12","slug":"former-israeli-pm-bennett-says-us-blocked-his-attempts-at-a-russia-ukraine-peace-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=270167","title":{"rendered":"Former Israeli PM Bennett Says US \u2018Blocked\u2019 His Attempts at a Russia-Ukraine Peace Deal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dave DeCamp \u2013 AntiWar.com Feb 5, 2023<\/strong><\/h1>\n

\"\"<\/a>Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said in an interview posted to his YouTube channel on Saturday<\/a> that the US and its Western allies \u201cblocked\u201d his efforts of mediating between Russia and Ukraine to bring an end to the war in its early days.<\/p>\n

On March 5, 2022, Bennett traveled to Russia to meet with President Vladimir Putin. In the interview, he detailed his mediation at the time between Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, which he said he coordinated with the US, France, Germany, and the UK.<\/p>\n

Bennett said that both sides agreed to major concessions during his mediation effort. For the Russian side, he said they dropped \u201cdenazification\u201d as a requirement for a ceasefire. Bennett defined \u201cdenazification\u201d as the removal of Zelensky. During his meeting in Moscow with Putin, Bennett said the Russian leader guaranteed that he wouldn\u2019t try to kill Zelensky.<\/p>\n

The other concession Russia made, according to Bennett, is that it wouldn\u2019t seek the disarmament of Ukraine. For the Ukrainian side, Zelensky \u201crenounced\u201d that he would seek NATO membership, which Bennett said was the \u201creason\u201d for Russia\u2019s invasion.<\/p>\n

Reports at the time reflect Bennet\u2019s comments and said Russia and Ukraine were softening their positions. Citing Israeli officials, Axios<\/em> reported on March 8<\/a> that Putin\u2019s \u201cproposal is difficult for Zelensky to accept but not as extreme as they anticipated. They said the proposal doesn\u2019t include regime change in Kyiv and allows Ukraine to keep its sovereignty.\u201d<\/p>\n

Discussing how Western leaders felt about his mediation efforts, Bennett said then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson took an \u201caggressive line\u201d while French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz were more \u201cpragmatic.\u201d Bennett said President Biden adopted \u201cboth\u201d positions.<\/p>\n

But ultimately, the Western leaders opposed Bennet\u2019s efforts. \u201cI\u2019ll say this in the broad sense. I think there was a legitimate decision by the West to keep striking Putin and not [negotiate],\u201d Bennett said.<\/p>\n

When asked if the Western powers \u201cblocked\u201d the mediation efforts, Bennet said, \u201cBasically, yes. They blocked it, and I thought they were wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

Explaining his decision to mediate, Bennett said that it was in Israel\u2019s national interest not to pick a side in the war, citing Israel\u2019s frequent airstrikes in Syria. Bennett said Russia has S-300 air defenses in Syria and that if \u201cthey press the button, Israeli pilots will fall.\u201d<\/p>\n

Negotiations between Russia and Ukraine didn\u2019t stop with Bennett\u2019s efforts. Later in March, Russian and Ukrainian officials met in Istanbul, Turkey, and followed up with virtual consultations. According to the account of former US officials speaking to Foreign Affairs<\/em><\/a>, the two sides agreed on the framework for a tentative deal. Russian officials, including Putin<\/a>, have said publicly that a deal was close following the Istanbul talks.<\/p>\n

But the negotiations ultimately failed after more Western pressure. Boris Johnson visited Kyiv in April 2022, urging Zelensky not to negotiate with Russia. According to a report from Ukrainska Pravda<\/em>,<\/a> he said even if Ukraine was ready to sign a deal with Russia, Kyiv\u2019s Western backers were not.<\/p>\n

Later in April, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said<\/a> there were some NATO countries that wanted to prolong the war in Ukraine. \u201cAfter the talks in Istanbul, we did not think that the war would take this long \u2026 But, following the NATO foreign ministers\u2019 meeting, it was the impression that\u2026 there are those within the NATO member states that want the war to continue, let the war continue and Russia gets weaker. They don\u2019t care much about the situation in Ukraine,\u201d Cavusoglu said.<\/p>\n

A few days after Cavusoglu\u2019s comments, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin admitted that one of the US\u2019s goals in supporting Ukraine is to see Russia \u201cweakened.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Former Israeli Prime Minister Bennett revealed in an interview in February that Western leaders opposed his efforts to mediate a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[91,116],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-270167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-russia","category-ukraine"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=270167"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":270200,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270167\/revisions\/270200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=270167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=270167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=270167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}