Russia Threatens Ukraine Like a Mob Boss

The first negotiations since 2022 came with fake history lessons and threats

Photo by Feodor Chistyakov on Unsplash

The first direct talks between Russia and Ukraine since 2022 took place on May 16 in Istanbul, lasting 1 hour and 40 minutes. The two sides agreed to swap 1,000 prisoners from each side in the near future. Nothing else was agreed to. The two delegations were not on the same diplomatic level: Ukrainians sent a high-level delegation led by their Defense Minister, Rustem Umerov, while the Russians sent a junior delegation led by nationalist Putin aide Vladimir Medinsky. Russian state media gloated about the event, illustrating its lack of seriousness towards negotiations. 

Russian negotiators threatened the Ukrainian delegation like a mafia boss. According to propagandist Olga Skabeyeva's show, a Russian negotiator told the Ukrainians: "If you don't agree to [giving up] four regions now, next time it will be six." The Economist journalist Oliver Carroll confirmed the statement was said. In reality, Russia doesn't fully control the four Ukrainian regions it partly occupies; it doesn't have the military capability to take two more.

Medinsky himself appeared on the propagandist Skabeyeva's show, and gave a faux history lesson to an interviewer for over eight minutes. He dismissed the European and Ukrainian idea of agreeing to a ceasefire before talks, claiming, "as Napoleon said, as a rule, war and negotiations are always conducted at the same time." There is no evidence that Napoleon ever said this.

Medinsky told an ersatz history of Western countries fighting against Russian expansion--and these wars invariably ending in disaster for the West.