Symbolisms and riddles are hidden in the “Hunter’s House”, a historic building ready to host today the second round of talks between Russia and Ukraine, in the Belovezhskaya Pushcha National Park in western Belarus. The Russian side was the first to arrive at the negotiating point yesterday, while in the early morning hours the mission from Kyiv was expected, with Belarus reserving the role of the host on both sides.
However, apart from the two delegations, the “protagonist” in the Russia-Ukraine negotiation process is the area of bilateral talks, as a choice of the Russian side, as the current processes aimed at finding a solution to the recent crisis in Ukraine are inextricably linked with the last moments of the Soviet Union.
In particular, the leaders of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine secretly sat at the same negotiating table on December 8, 1991, as they signed the “Belavezha Agreements”, which provided for the dissolution of the then Soviet Union and its replacement by the Commonwealth States (CIS) forming a looser union.
The three leaders announced that a new alliance would be open to all the democracies of the former USSR, but also to other states with similar goals, breaking the Soviet ideological barriers. Two days later, on December 10, the agreement establishing the Commonwealth was ratified by the Parliaments of Ukraine and Belarus, followed by a vote in the Russian Parliament on December 12, formally leading to the denunciation of the 1922 USSR Treaty and a new era for the three neighboring countries.
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In less than 15 days, on December 25, 1991, the USSR dissolved itself, prompting the resignation of Mikhail Gorbachev on the same day. His political future, after all, had evaporated months ago, when in early August of the same year, Boris Yeltsin shook hands with the leaders of Ukraine and Belarus, Leonid Kravtsuk and Stanislav Suskevich, respectively.
It should be noted that the negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in Gomel, Belarus on February 28 lasted about five hours, while according to the head of the Russian delegation, Vladimir Medinsky, the participants in the dialogue were able to find some points they agree on, based on which positions, some of which may be made public in the coming days.
