That Russia and Ukraine were negotiating an end to the war, early on, and that their representatives met in Istanbul and hammered out a deal is not in dispute, you can find information about those talks all over the 'net, e.g. here by the BBC:

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-europe-60890199

And here by Reuters:

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/turkey-says-russia-ukra...

From what I can find online, the negotiations advanced to the point where there was a comprehensive deal on the table that detailed security guarantees for Ukraine and a neutrality commitment on their side, but the deal was abandoned. Mearsheimer has claimed that it was because the US and the UK told the Ukrainians to drop the deal because they could win the war with the continued support of the West (and we saw how well that turned out). I obviously don't know enough to tell for sure whether that claim makes sense. There may well have been more than one reason that the deal fell apart.

Details here:

https://archive.ph/ajonZ

And a longer discussion here, were a speaker claims that Putin's plan was a US-style change of government, like the Americans did in Baghdad, (and we all saw how well that one turned out):

https://www.nprillinois.org/2024-05-06/the-story-behind-2022...

I don't know who those people are though in the panel, so I have no idea about their credibility etc.

Now, whatever the reason for the negotiations, I think it's indisputable at this point that Russia did come to the negotiating table and proposed terms to end the conflict. A sensible thing to do given that their "special operation" was, at the time, going to the dogs.

This is laughable. Russia cannot give any credible security guarantee to a country that it has just invaded! The war has shown precisely that Russia still believes that it has the right to control Ukraine and that any negotiated peace is nothing more than a temporary pause in hostilities in anticipation of a more opportune moment for Russia. Putin is a cypher and no-one really knows exactly why he wants to invade and conquer Ukraine, but as it is enormously plain at this point that he does want to do so, this entails that there is no really workable negotiated settlement.

Security guarantees would be provided by Western countries, not only Russia.

Russia's key conditions for the supposed "deal" that you refer to were that (i) the size of the Ukrainian army would be heavily constrained and that (ii) Russia would have a veto on any response to future aggression against Ukraine. Ukraine rejected the deal because it would have been worthless.

To distract western military support.

To distract offensive\defensive ukrainian plans.

To construct a peaceful narrative at home or the war mongering west.

To strengthen or pet allies, who mediate.

To gain intelligence about the willingness of territorial sacrifice.

Would Putin ever publicly admit his grand soviet plan? If no, then how would he behave instead? Consider georgia, chechenia, belarus, etc.

Now, I don't like guessing. When Russia entered negotiations the war was clearly not going its way, so the obvious explanation is that Putin wanted to disentangle from it with the least damage to his image as possible.

The question is why the negotiations failed, if they were really as advanced as suggested in the articles I linked above. Since the name of Boris Johnson has been brought up (in the context of being one of the Western representatives that told Zelenskiy to drop the deal) I tend to believe that a peace deal failed because at least one side in the negotiations was incompetent fools who should have never made it in power. That the other side is probably the same makes no difference.

The problem is that Western media picks too easily up even the most stupid Russian narratives.

Because as he keeps saying over and over -- the only "peace" he will accept is one in which his claims to sovereignty on the territories he is currently sitting are recognized by Western powers. This was his core demand during the Istanbul talks, and it's his current demand now (though he's upped it a bit recently to include regime change in Kyiv).

For a serial territorial aggressor like the modern Russian state, "peace" is simply another mechanism for arriving that same the desired end state.

It's also useful as a propaganda tool, to mollify the opposition to what he's doing ("See, Putin just wants peace -- he even says so!"), get people to start talking about how costly the war is, how the West is the real aggresor and so forth. That's where Mearsheimer et al come in.

That seems to be the essence of your argument here.

(None of those wars are directly analogous to what Russia is doing to Ukraine right now of course; but never mind that for now).

And yes, the wars were not directly analogous but the stark reality of the matter is that the US and RUssia are two of the world bullies that are capable of invading anyone they like, and nobody can do anything about it. Again: why should I like one more than the other? Why should anyone, who is not their citizen?

One shouldn't, and both should be condemned of course.

And not apologized for, like you are doing here.

To be even more clear: those nations include Russia, the US, China, and basically every other national entity with an army that you might want to propose.

For the record, I also dislike, strongly, people on the internet who cannot hold a conversation without insulting their interlocutor, or accusing them of some perceived mind crime.

If that's not what they were, then I misread them. In regard to the peace negotiations -- it does seem (from some of the sibling threads) like you're very quick to grant the Russian side a pass, and to assign an unduly high a likelihood to the possibility that the Ukrainian/Western side simply botched their end of it (because Boris, etc). An assessment that just doesn't hold up in view of how the Russians conducted themselves during those negotiations, as the person responding to you pointed out:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40663892

Check also: Germany, South Korea and Japan have more American militiamen stationed there than the active duty personnel of the majority of the countries in the world.

You seem to be implying equivalence between a thousand soldier operation and a full scale war comprising of half a million soldiers on both sides.

Afghanistan? You seem to forget that Russia also invaded them.

You also seem to forget Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Georgia, and Ukraine.

So, no, the wars started by "the West" are not significantly more than the wars started by Russia or the USSR.

In any case that still leaves Russia aggression on par with US aggression. My point in this thread is that I don't see the reason to prefer the US and "the West" to Russia. Or China. I would certainly not want to be a citizen of any of those three.

Fine. Don't take my word for it. Go look.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War:

"The Korean War was fought between North Korea and South Korea; it began on 25 June 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea and ceased after an armistice on 27 July 1953. North Korea was supported by the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union while South Korea was supported by the United Nations Command (UNC) led by the US."

How many wars post-WWII can you name that were started by US allies? Other than Israel, and excluding domestic terrorism issues (Italy, Germany, UK), I'm drawing a blank here.

Korea was started by a USSR ally (North Korea invading South Korea), the UN Command (led by the US) was a defensive response.

Vietnam is...well, the whole post-WW2 situation in the region is complicated, but it's reasonable to view it as started by Western allies of the US, particularly France.

Iraq 1990- was started by Iraq. Iraq 2003 was started by the US.

Afghanistan 1980 was started by the USSR Afghanistan 2001 was started by the al-Qaeda, a force intimately connected to and defended by the Taliban and based in Taliban-held territory, attacking the US.

Your list of examples doesn't really make a strong case for your thesis.

Maersheimer and Chomsky are useful idiots of the Kremlin