What do we know about the true history of the signing of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty? Almost nothing. Some scraps from Soviet books and films, which served primarily as illustrations for Stalin’s “Short Course on the History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks).” Fragmentary paragraphs from textbooks that almost no one remembers. Meanwhile, the long epic of negotiations on a separate peace between revolutionary Russia, on the one hand, and Germany and its allies, on the other, reads like a detective novel. What makes this story particularly poignant is a fact that no one knows except a few specialists: Russia’s diplomatic defeat in Brest-Litovsk was caused not only by the inconsistency and adventurousness of the Petrograd negotiators. The “wild card” played a key role in the game: a new partner suddenly appeared in the group of contracting parties - The Ukrainian Central Rada, which, despite all the precariousness of its position, managed to sign a separate peace treaty with Germany behind the back of the delegation from Petrograd.