Ukraine and Russia came close to ending the war already.
The American public was left in the dark about just how close and the shocking details of how peace was derailed.
And Jeffrey Sachs exposed the real reason why peace talks suddenly collapsed.
Professor Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University sent shockwaves through the political establishment when he revealed that Ukraine and Russia had nearly reached a peace agreement in early 2022 – until Biden administration officials deliberately sabotaged it.
In a bombshell interview on May 6 with Professor Klaus Larres at the Krasno Global Event Series, Sachs detailed how the United States allegedly torpedoed peace negotiations that could have ended the bloody conflict just weeks after it began.
“On March 28, Ukraine and Russia issued a joint communique,” Sachs explained. “This is March 28, 2022. [They] issued a joint communique saying, ‘we have a framework for peace.’ And it was based on Ukrainian neutrality.”
According to Sachs, the agreement would have kept Ukraine neutral rather than joining NATO, left Crimea’s status unchanged, and implemented aspects of the Minsk agreements for the Donbass region.
Peace agreement was derailed
Sachs stunned listeners when he revealed that by April 15, 2022 – just eight weeks after Russia’s invasion – a nearly complete agreement had been reached between the warring parties.
“Agreement was reached, with a few clauses still to be finalized,” Sachs stated. “You can find that online. The New York Times published the agreement. They were close to ending the war.”
Then came the bombshell revelation about what happened next.
“We know that the United States stepped in at that moment and said, ‘don’t do it.’ Told the Ukrainians, ‘keep fighting,'” Sachs claimed.
Sachs went further, citing former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who was informally mediating alongside Turkey. According to Sachs, Bennett later gave “a remarkably open” interview confirming that an agreement was close but “the United States stepped in and said no.”
The professor claimed the Biden administration believed Russia’s economy would collapse under sanctions, making a negotiated peace unnecessary.
“The US deeply believed that they were about to crush the Russian economy,” Sachs said. “They really believed that. I talked to a lot of senior U.S. officials at the time.”
Trump’s approach “has it right”
In stark contrast to his criticism of Biden’s Ukraine policy, Sachs praised President Trump’s current approach to ending the conflict.
“On this one, Trump has it right,” Sachs declared. “He said it in a very Trumpian way. He said, this is Biden’s war. This isn’t my war. This is a loser.”
Sachs explained that Trump’s strategy of telling Ukraine to accept his proposed agreement or risk losing U.S. support is actually effective diplomacy. According to Sachs, Trump’s approach of saying “either you accept the agreement that I’m putting on the table or the US walks away from this whole thing” is precisely what’s needed to end the conflict.
The economist’s comments directly contradict the Biden administration’s narrative that Russia was never serious about peace negotiations.
NATO expansion blamed for conflict
Perhaps most controversially, Sachs argued that the United States deliberately provoked the conflict through decades of NATO expansion toward Russia’s borders.
“I believe the United States actually walked Ukraine and Russia into this war, not suddenly, not in 2022, but going back 30 years,” Sachs stated.
He detailed how the U.S. pushed NATO enlargement eastward despite promises made to Soviet and Russian leaders that this would not happen. Sachs cited a February 7, 1990 meeting where he claims U.S. Secretary of State James Baker and German Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher told Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that “NATO will not move one inch eastward.”
Sachs pointed to February 22, 2014, as a critical turning point – when Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted. Sachs called it “a violent coup that the United States actively supported.”
Following Russia’s 2022 invasion, Sachs claimed he personally appealed to National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan in December 2021, telling him to “announce that NATO will not enlarge to Ukraine and you can avoid the war.”
According to Sachs, Sullivan responded, “No, we will not announce that Ukraine cannot enter NATO.”
When challenged by Professor Larres about whether he was defending Russia’s invasion, Sachs insisted the invasion was meant as leverage to force Ukraine back to neutrality – not to occupy Kyiv or topple the government as widely reported.
“The intention was not a major war,” Sachs claimed. “The intention was to get to the negotiating table and it succeeded.”
Former government officials have not yet responded to Sachs’ explosive claims, which directly challenge the established narrative about the Ukraine conflict’s causes and missed opportunities for peace.
