the West’s ultimatum was written in the Kremlin, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation lost influence

In particular, as stated in the investigation, even high-ranking employees of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not participate in the development of the so-called requirements of Russia’s security guarantees, put forward in December 2021. Although this de facto ultimatum was published on behalf of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it was actually drawn up in the Kremlin. The reluctance of the NATO countries to fulfill the requirements to refuse the possible future expansion of the North Atlantic Alliance became one of the reasons for Putin to start the invasion of Ukraine.

A few months before the publication of Russian demands, Western diplomats noted changes in the behavior of their Russian colleagues. In particular, the behavior of the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia Sergey Ryabkov at the negotiations in Moscow in October 2021 “shocked” the US Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland – writes the BBC with reference to sources who know about this story from Nuland herself. She described Ryabkov and Alexander Fomin, the Deputy Minister of Defense present in the room, as “robots with papers”; as if they were “having a conversation for the sake of people who were not in the room”, reading it, as it is claimed, according to the Kremlin’s paper request. At the same time, American diplomats knew Ryabkov as a “practical and calm negotiator.”

Diplomat Borys Bondarev, who resigned in protest against Russian aggression and worked in Geneva, told how the Russian demands for “security guarantees” were perceived in December 2021: “Not only the addressees in the West, but also the employees of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia were surprised. About the origin of the document Bondarev’s boss didn’t know anything either. “They call, they find out for a long time. In the end, it turns out that it came from the Kremlin, that no one in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs even asked questions! Everyone said: “Yes, of course! We will comply.” We are small people, we are nothing it does not depend on how they speak in our country””. The aforementioned Fomin and Ryabkov held talks with US representatives in Geneva on January 10, 2022, during which, according to Bondarev, they behaved extremely aggressively, declaring: “We need Ukraine! We will not go anywhere without Ukraine!”

At the same time, according to BBC sources, the readiness shown by the West in response to the Russian ultimatum for negotiations on strategic stability “pleasantly surprised” Russian diplomats, who were ready for agreements with the West – but “Putin has already decided to fight, and the NATO turned out to be just a smokescreen.”

“By that time, the diplomats were no longer able to influence Putin,” the BBC notes. Most of the material is devoted to the history of how the Russian foreign policy agency gradually lost its influence and independence during the years of Putin’s rule. According to the former high-ranking official of the White House Ben Rhodes, Putin gradually became convinced of the “insidious intentions of the West” and “moved to the “really dark side, from which he did not intend to return”, and Russian diplomacy became only an appendix to the power policy of the Kremlin.

At the same time, diplomats confirm that in the first years of Putin’s presidency, the question of joining NATO was really discussed in Russia. At the same time, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs took an even more conservative position than the Kremlin in some issues. However, since 2007, Putin’s attitude toward Western countries began to be dominated by negative tendencies, even when meeting with Western leaders, he presented them with “his view of the world” and his claims, rather than trying to agree on cooperation. According to Rhodes, at one of the meetings, Putin told former US President Barack Obama that he was convinced that the US was trying to overthrow him, and Washington would not be able to convince him of this.

“Tram style” of diplomacy

After Putin returned to the post of president in 2012, the language of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs also began to change, which can be clearly seen in the public speeches of the press secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Maria Zakharova. Gradually, an aggressive style of communication became the norm for many ordinary diplomats, says Boris Bondarev. At the same time, the rough style of the MFA employees is designed primarily for the audience in Russia itself – the so-called electorate of the authorities.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs was finally removed from decision-making after the events of 2014 in Ukraine, when Putin began “in manual mode” to determine policy towards Kyiv. The result of this was that Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov found out about the invasion of Ukraine just a few hours before it began.

The fact that, despite the “degradation” of the foreign policy department, diplomats almost do not leave the state service, the interlocutors of the BBC explained the force of habit and a lack of courage: “These people are smart enough, but they lack the courage to do something. They simply work for a long time in these positions. They are survivalists. Putin’s apparatchiks,” Ben Rhodes characterizes Russian diplomats.