In a recent interview with Going Underground host Afshin Rattansi, Jeffrey Sachs, the president of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and former Special Adviser to the UN Secretary-General on post-Soviet economies, argued that the West could have easily prevented the ongoing Ukraine conflict by abandoning its escalatory policies, including NATO expansion. According to Sachs, US diplomacy has failed “utterly” in addressing this crisis, which had been brewing for many years.
The G7 countries, particularly the United States, grew into a lot of arrogance, believing they could do whatever they wanted. This approach, Sachs argued, has drawn the world into three major geopolitical crises, including the Ukraine and Gaza conflicts and fueled Sino-US tensions over Taiwan. The US, in this context, is an “irresponsible actor” in all three events. In the case of Ukraine, this irresponsibility could have been easily avoided by NATO declaring clearly that it will not expand into Ukraine.
Western politicians and media have claimed that the Russian military operation in Ukraine was “unprovoked,” which Sachs refuted. He pointed out numerous “provocations” leading up to the conflict, such as multiple waves of NATO expansion, the Western-backed coup in Kiev, and the failure to pressure Ukraine into implementing the Minsk agreements. These now-defunct accords aimed to end bloodshed in the two Donbass republics by giving them a special status within the Ukrainian state.
Sachs also suggested that the West could have ended the conflict early on, as Moscow and Kiev had largely worked out a preliminary peace deal during talks in Türkiye, revolving around Ukraine’s neutrality. However, then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson “swooped in” and advised Kiev against the agreement, a claim denied by Johnson.
Sachs described this advice as a terrible piece of miscalculation resulting in hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian deaths. He claimed that the US wants Kiev to “fight to the last Ukrainian” instead of helping negotiate Ukraine’s neutrality. The economist argued that it is not rocket science; leave some space between major powers, allowing them room for negotiations and peaceful resolutions.
On Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Moscow would begin peace talks with Ukraine once its troops withdraw from the Donbass, Kherson, and Zaporozhye Regions. The final agreement must include Ukraine’s neutrality, “denazification,” and “demilitarization” as well as the lifting of Western sanctions against Russia.