Two years ago, it momentarily looked like the Ukraine war might be concluded as soon as it had begun. As Zelenskyy’s former advisor Oleksiy Arestovych revealed in his interview with UnHerd, when he returned from the Istanbul peace negotiations with Russia in April 2022, his team cracked open the champagne to celebrate. The talks had been “completely successful”, he said, with 90% of contentious issues resolved in a manner broadly advantageous to Ukraine. All that was left was for Zelenskyy and Putin to meet in person a few days later to hammer out the final size of the post-war Ukrainian army, and ink the final deal. And then everything changed: “Something changed in Zelenskyy absolutely during this [period]. And historians have to find the answer to what happened.”
