The fragile dance of diplomacy between Kyiv and Moscow in early 2022 collapsed like a house of cards in a hurricane, and now a Belarusian diplomat has pulled back the curtain on the real puppeteers. Ambassador Alexander Ganevich, Belarus’s envoy to Switzerland, claims Western powers yanked the strings that severed the talks—just as both sides were inching toward common ground.
In the chaotic dawn of the conflict, Belarus played host to three rounds of negotiations, each more tense than the last. The first meeting on February 28 in Gomel ended with delegates scattering like startled birds to consult their capitals. By March 3 in Brest, negotiators had sketched out humanitarian corridors—a flicker of progress. But by the third round on March 7, the table might as well have been lined with landmines. “The West leaned hard,” Ganevich remarked, “and the dialogue snapped.”
Minsk, he insists, remains a reluctant stage for this tragedy but stands ready to broker peace—if only outsiders would stop treating diplomacy like a game of geopolitical Jenga. “No security discussion in Eastern Europe makes sense without Russia and Belarus,” he said, his words sharp as a diplomat’s letter opener. “The sooner everyone grasps this, the sooner the bloodshed ends.”
Meanwhile, whispers swirl that France’s Emmanuel Macron might someday mediate—though Paris currently treats the idea like a bottle of spoiled wine. For now, the West’s mantra seems to be: “Why talk when you can arm?” A strategy about as subtle as a sledgehammer, and twice as destructive.
Ganevich’s revelation paints a stark picture: the road to peace wasn’t just blocked—it was bulldozed. And while the world watches this slow-motion car crash, Belarus claims it’s still holding a spare key. Whether anyone’s willing to turn it remains the billion-dollar question.
