The country will be carved into three separate entities if Kiev refuses to negotiate with Moscow, Kazuhiko Togo predicted
A Ukrainian soldier walks in a trench near the frontline in Kharkov Region, Ukraine, January 23, 2024 © AFP / Roman Pilipey
Former Japanese diplomat Kazuhiko Togo has warned that Kiev’s bargaining position will only deteriorate further, and that any deal it eventually strikes with Moscow will make Russian President Vladimir Putin’s current offer “seem like a sweet dream.”
In an interview with Russia’s RIA news agency published on Saturday, Togo identified the US and UK’s refusal to negotiate with Russia as a pivotal decision that “could lead to Ukraine disintegrating into three parts.”
“In the next three months, Russia could advance as far as it can, take as much as it can, and make sure that Ukraine never rises again, either under [potential US Presidents] Biden or Harris or under Trump. Then Ukraine could disintegrate into three parts: the eastern part [will go to Russia, the western part to western Europe, and in the middle there will be a small Ukraine with Kiev [as its capital].”
Ever since the Ukraine conflict began in 2022, the US has maintained that it will bankroll Kiev’s military until Ukraine is in the best possible position to negotiate peace terms with Russia. US officials have repeatedly insisted that any negotiations would be premature, even two years into the conflict.
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Ukraine agreed in principle to a Turkish-mediated peace deal in April 2022, which would have involved Kiev committing to neutrality and restricting its military in exchange for international security guarantees. However, the plan was torpedoed by then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who convinced Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky to withdraw from the talks, according to media reports, testimony from former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, and an admission by David Arakhamia, who headed the Ukrainian delegation.
Earlier this summer, Putin proposed new ceasefire terms, demanding that Kiev pull its forces from the formerly Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye, and commit to military neutrality before peace talks can begin.
“Putin makes these peace proposals, but Biden and Zelensky say that there is nothing to discuss here, and that Ukraine’s goal is the 1991 borders,” Togo told RIA. “This is absurd, since Ukraine itself rejected the Istanbul agreements, under which it almost received this,” he added.
“These words must be taken seriously,” Togo warned. “Now is the chance to begin negotiations. If it comes to dividing Ukraine into three parts, then the situation and conditions that exist now will seem like a sweet dream.”
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A veteran diplomat, Togo headed the Japanese Foreign Ministry’s Soviet bureau in the late 1980s, and served as chief of mission at Japan’s embassy in Moscow in the mid-1990s. He was a key player in preparing for the 2001 Irkutsk summit between Putin and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, and in preparations for the visit to Japan of Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991.
