Newly Uncovered Document Reveals Russia’s Early Capitulation Draft to Ukraine

Radio Liberty obtained a draft capitulation agreement that Moscow proposed to Ukraine in the early days of the full-scale invasion in 2022.

Titled the "Agreement on the Settlement of the Situation in Ukraine and Ukraine’s Neutrality," this draft was dated March 7, 2022, just 11 days after the invasion began and a week after the initial negotiations between Ukraine and Russia.

The proposal called for Ukraine's neutrality, however, Eric Ciaramella, a senior fellow in the Russia and Eurasia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, noted that Putin seemed to be pushing for "something more radical — not neutrality, but the neutralization of Ukraine as an independent state."

The Kremlin presented the proposal to the Ukrainian delegation during the third round of talks in Belovezhskaya Pushcha, Belarus.

Demands made by Russia included:

• Reducing Ukraine’s army to 50,000 troops, including 1,500 officers — a force five times smaller than Ukraine’s pre-2022 military.

• A prohibition on Ukraine developing, producing, purchasing, or deploying missile systems with a range of over 250 km on its territory.

• The lifting of all sanctions, both Ukrainian and international, and the withdrawal of all international lawsuits filed since 2014.

• Recognition of the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk "republics" as independent entities within their administrative regions.

• Granting the Russian language official status and restoring property rights to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate).

• Repealing bans on symbols associated with victory over Nazism, effectively re-legitimizing Soviet and communist symbols in Ukraine.

• Exclusion from NATO protections and security guarantees.

• Obligating Kyiv to finance the reconstruction of the Donetsk and Luhansk region.

The negotiations sometimes included deliberately unfeasible conditions. For instance, Russia once tried to insert a demand for Ukraine to restore the water supply to Crimea, which had been cut off in 2014.

The agreement would have left Ukraine highly vulnerable, with Russian forces remaining in place and Kyiv unable to defend itself or seek security support from the West, according to Radio Liberty.