The negotiation process started at the initiative of Israel in March 2022, a few days after the launch of the Russian offensive in Ukraine, was broken off by Western countries, according to the former Israeli Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett, at mediator between Moscow and kyiv. He revealed on Saturday February 4, 2023 that the United States, France and Germany, which coordinated this mission, “blocked” the process. Yet, he asserts, “I felt like they both wanted [Zelensky et Poutine] a ceasefire”.
In a long interview granted to the Israeli channel Channel 12, published on its YouTube channel on February 4, Naftali Bennett revealed many details behind the scenes of this mediation and explained the position, until then neutral, of his State, emphasizing the “pressure from both sides” to the conflict.
Sur demande de Volodymyr Zelensky, “who was convinced that there was a narrow window in which an agreement could be reached to end the war”, the former Israeli Prime Minister traveled to Moscow in March 2022 to negotiate a peace agreement. “We went in absolute secrecy through the Kazakh region because we could not fly over the Black Sea”, before landing in the Russian capital to meet Vladimir Putin, he explains.
“Are you planning to assassinate Zelensky?”, he remembers having asked the Russian head of state, who, to this question, promised him that he would not eliminate his Ukrainian counterpart. A response that Naftali Bennett immediately transmitted to Zelensky, hitherto entrenched in a bunker secret to, precisely, prevent any assassination attempt. After hearing the news, the Ukrainian leader “returned to his offices a few hours later and posted a video in which he claimed he was not afraid”, says Bennett. On the Ukrainian side, he managed to obtain a concession from Zelensky: reconsider his intention to join NATO.
In the same interview, the Israeli politician shared an anecdote about another meeting with Vladimir Putin, in Sochi two months before the start of the war: “He was smart and sharp (…)” and Jewish support, he recalls. But the conversation turned spicy when the topic Zelensky was brought up: “He was the nicest person in the world until then. All of a sudden he gave me a cold look and said, ‘They’re Nazis, they’re warmongers, I don’t. [Zelensky] will not meet'”, would have launched the former KGB agent. To justify his “special military operation” on Ukrainian territory, Vladimir Putin had put forward the need to “demilitarize” and “denazify” Ukrainian territory.
The two “wanted a ceasefire”
Bennett then traveled directly from Moscow to Berlin to meet Chancellor Olaf Schutz there and inform France, the United Kingdom and the United States of the fallout from his visit to the Kremlin. “Everything I did was coordinated with the United States, Germany and France”, he explained. He had previously contacted Joe Biden, his secretary of state Antony Blinken, his national security adviser Jake Sullivan as well as the German chancellor to offer them to be a “corridor of communication” between Putin and Zelensky.
The former Israeli prime minister said that the exchanges with the two officials continued after his return: “It was a marathon of telephone conversations”, he recalled, stressing that these efforts have strengthened the ongoing negotiations in Belarus and affirming that Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky “wanted a ceasefire”.
Although the outcome will be quite different from his goal of negotiating a peace agreement, in his interview he does not criticize the decision of Western countries to “break off negotiations”: “I think there was a legitimate decision by Westerners to keep hitting Putin”. In his opinion, “they blocked the negotiation process and they were wrong”. An opinion that the Israeli leader nevertheless relativized because “it was too early to judge with hindsight the benefits or disadvantages of this approach”.
Regarding the position of the Jewish state in the face of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, he explained that his country “was immediately caught between a rock and a hard place”. “The United States expected Israel to do everything it could to help Ukraine,” but “competing interests” did not allow Israel to openly support kyiv. “One of those interests was our activity in Syria…Russia, which is a superpower, has S-300 missiles stationed there. If one of our pilots is shot down, who will save them? Joe Biden? Zelensky?”he argued.
The “Iron Dome” delivered to Ukraine?
The other interest: “the presence of many Jews in Russia as well as in Ukraine.” “I felt responsible for them”, he argues. The discourse on the factto be on the right side of history by supporting Ukraine is all well and good, but complicated for Israel given its own existential needs”.
Israel has implemented humanitarian aid but “feared US pressure to supply arms to Ukraine”. “Under pressure from both sides, I took a third path” by offering mediation, continues Naftali Bennett: “Nobody else had the confidence of both sides, except to some extent Turkish President Erdogan.”
On the desire of Benjamin Netanyahu, the new Prime Minister, to change Israeli policy vis-à-vis the conflict, he describes it as “legit”. Received on Saturday February 4 by President Emmanuel Macron, Netanyahu announced that he “reflected” to deliver to Ukraine a “Iron Dome”, namely an anti-missile defense system. This immediately triggered a reaction from the Kremlin, which warned Israel against delivering arms to Ukraine through its Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova: “Any attempt to deliver weapons” will lead to a “escalation of this crisis”, she warned.