Western powers blocked a potential Russia-Ukraine peace deal, which might have prevented enormous bloodshed, former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett said in a stunning revelation.
Talking to Israel's Channel 12, Bennett said the peace deal was proposed in April 2022, just after a month of conflict between Russia and Ukraine. However, the western powers blocked the deal.
Nearly Successful
Bennett revealed that negotiations for a truce were close to bearing fruit but the western powers ruined the chances of ceasefire and peace deal. He made his efforts as a middleman, but the western powers believed it was a 'legitimate decision' to keep striking Russian President Vladimir Putin. The west pushed for a 'more aggressive approach' against Putin, derailing the peace process, he said.
Bennett discussed the situation at length in an hours-long interview with Channel 12. He said the western aggression was led by former British prime minister Boris Johnson. He said there was no common ground between the US, UK, Germany and France. While Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholes adopted a pragmatic line that would have helped end the war, Johnson took a more aggressive line that ruined the chance of peace.
He said his peace mission was "coordinated down to the last detail with the US, France, and Germany". As many as 18 drafts of the peace deal between Moscow and Kiev were prepared as part of the peace mission, the former prime minister said.
Bennett said he made Putin to promise that he will not target and kill Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Putin also agreed to stand down on his demand for the demilitarization of Ukraine. As part of the draft, Zelensky promised to abandon the program to join NATO, which had originally worsened the tensions between the countries and eventually led to the war.
