The Negative Consequences of Track 1.5 Diplomacy to End the War in Ukraine

Talking is Fine. Misrepresenting the U.S. Government is not. Not talking to Ukrainians is even worse.

This week, The Moscow Times – an independent, reputable English- and Russian-speaking online newsletter – published an article, titled “Former U.S. Official Shares Details of Secret ‘Track 1.5’ Diplomacy With Moscow.” This article is strange on so many levels. It claims that former U.S. officials discretely engage with the Kremlin officials, including Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (I wrote about him here), through back-channel discussions “in effort to lay the groundwork for negotiations to end the war in Ukraine.” These “back-channel discussions” are what is typically known as track 1.5 diplomacy, involving government officials on one side – in this case, the Russian side – and non-government actors on the other side – in this case, former U.S. officials and Americans – on the other side. I am all for track 2.0 engagements, that is between non-government officials on both sides. I am less enthusiastic about 1.5 engagements, as I think direct government-to-government diplomacy is better. But sometimes, in the past, track 1.5 has been productive. But not in this case. Just the opposite.

First, the former U.S. official asserts that “If Russia thought it might lose Crimea...it would almost certainly resort to [using] tactical nuclear weapons.” How does he know? Is he just saying this purposely, on behalf of the Kremlin, to scare and deter Biden and other Western leaders from supplying Ukraine with more and better weapons? This comment felt like an opinion expressed directly to help Putin, not to end the war. Should former U.S. officials be expressing such pro-Russian opinions when trying to engage in negotiations to help end Putin’s war? I don’t think so.

Second, "He [former U.S. official] noted that Washington had also offered to help conduct fair referendums in the Russian-occupied territories of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, in which residents would vote on whether they wished to be part of Ukraine or Russia." What?! Washington strongly condemned the Russian annexation of four Ukrainian regions on numerous occasions, including during the vote at United Nations in October 2022. So, who exactly is the "Washington" in this sentence? And even if it were true, how could this former U.S. official know this to be the case?

Photo Idea from U.S. Department of State on Twitter.

The claim that Washington offered to help conduct referendums in annexed territory seems completely fabricated. In fact, I reached out to senior officials in the Biden administration and they flatly rejected many of the article’s claims regarding Biden administration positions as total nonsense. Adrienne Watson, White House National Security Council Spokesperson, tweeted this on July 27^th in response to the article: 

“The United States has not requested official or former officials to open a back channel, and is not seeking such a channel.  Nor are we passing any messages through others.   When we say nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine, we mean it.” 

Maybe what instead happened is that the former U.S. officials proposed that Washington should “help conduct fair referendums in the Russian-occupied territories of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.” But again, that is a Putin position!  Simply adopting Putin’s point of view is not a sincere effort to end the war.

A third mystery is why is this formal U.S. official sharing the details of "secret" talks now, after allegedly months of talks. By definition, you do not share the details of secret talks with reporters if you want those talks to produce results. This is very odd. But maybe the goal of this interview was not to help to end the war, but to strain U.S.-Ukraine relations. If so, judging by my emails from Kyiv over the past few days – people there are outraged by this “peace effort” – this goal has been achieved. Not sure, though, that this achievement helps to end the war. Just the opposite.

Fourth and finally, I wonder if this former U.S. official and his team are having parallel conversations with Ukrainian government officials. My hope is yes. My guess is no. And if not, then how can these former U.S. officials claim to be trying to end the war when President Zelenskyy and his government will obviously have to participate in any peace negotiation?

Again, I want to underscore that I am not against track 1.5 diplomacy per se, although I prefer both track 1.0 diplomacy and track 2.0 diplomacy. Such engagements can sometimes allow us to better understand the preferences of our adversaries. Disagreements based on misperceptions or bad information must always be reduced. But a minimal guiding principle of any such effort must be to do no harm. This effort has done harm. I hope it either ends or changes the approach, including first a foremost, adding a stop in Kyiv.