The Istanbul peace talks
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The Istanbul peace talks are John Kiriakou's example of the road not taken in the Russia,Ukraine war, raised in 2022 while explaining why he saw "nothing good on the horizon."

The framing

Kiriakou's account of the war is one of deliberate prolongation. The United States, in his description, "is perfectly happy to pour money and weapons into a situation have it run as a proxy war they know the they know that the that the ukrainians can't defeat the russians but what they want to do is is bog the russians down."

The phrase he endorses is the bitter one: "that tired old saying that the united states is willing to fight to the last ukrainian i think is actually true and that's what makes it so sad."

His forecast was concrete: "the russians are going to end up with the dunbas they're going to end up with crimea they're going to probably destroy uh mariupl and odessa it's gonna be terrible there's gonna be loss of life and then that's how it's gonna end." His conclusion from that was to negotiate immediately, "even if you have to put your tail between your legs and give away something that you otherwise wouldn't want to give away."

The talks

Against that background Kiriakou notes what had already been tried and abandoned. "if you recall lee there there were peace talks early on in istanbul the united states of course didn't participate it didn't even encourage the uh ukrainians to attend but they did they lasted three days."

The ending is stated without elaboration: "everybody went home and nobody's raised the uh the idea again."

The silence afterwards

What Kiriakou treats as most telling is not the failure of the talks but the disappearance of the vocabulary. Noting the announcement that day of a third tranche of $800 million in weapons, on top of nearly $10 billion already sent, he asked whether that was simply what the country would do from now on instead of spending on "roads or schools or bridges or airports."

And he observed that no counterweight was being voiced: "you notice you don't hear any uh discussion discussions are urging of peace talks from the bite administration or from our government no in fact i mentioned that today on my own show you don't even hear the words peace talks."

Why Putin

Kiriakou's explanation for the absence of any push to settle is personal to the Russian president. "they don't like putin they never liked putin he's independent he's not moldable like yeltsin was uh he's not a friendly like gorbachev was and so uh they thought for a long time well we're just gonna have to live with this guy even if we don't like him but now they see an opportunity where they don't have to live with him and they'll let the ukrainians do their dirty work."

See also

- Ukraine as a proxy war
- Kiriakou's Ukraine settlement prediction
- Vladimir Putin
- Russia-Ukraine war origins
