Today, the prospects of a peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia appear more distant than ever. If anything, both sides appear more entrenched, with neither Kyiv nor Moscow willing to make concessions to end the war. But Ukraine and Russia weren’t always so opposed to a settlement. This weekend, we’re resurfacing Samuel Charap and Sergey Radchenko’s April 2024 piece on the hidden history of negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv soon after Russia’s invasion—and why a deal never materialized.

Relying on materials including a draft agreement and interviews with participants, Charap and Radchenko pieced together the previously unreported story. In the weeks after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his assault on Ukraine, in February 2022, Ukrainian and Russian negotiators “began working on the text of a treaty, making substantial progress toward an agreement.” That such negotiations were taking place at all, Charap and Radchenko write, was extraordinary: “in the midst of Moscow’s unprecedented aggression, the Russians and the Ukrainians almost finalized an agreement that would have ended the war and provided Ukraine with multilateral security guarantees, paving the way to its permanent neutrality and, down the road, its membership in the EU.”

Charap and Radchenko detail Kyiv’s and Moscow’s evolving stances at the negotiating table, the optimism that accompanied potential breakthroughs, the discussion of stunning provisions, including the peaceful resolution of the dispute over Crimea—and the ultimate hardening of positions that led to a breakdown in talks. Ultimately, a final agreement proved elusive—not least because the parties “aimed too high, too soon.” But Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “surprised everyone with their mutual willingness to consider far-reaching concessions” to end the conflict, they write. “They might well surprise everyone again in the future.”