Last chance to fulfill Minsk Accords in November, Prystaiko says

A Normandy Format summit in November would be the last
chance to implement the Minsk Accords, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Vadym
Prystaiko said in an interview with the Reuters news agency published on Oct.
14. Holding such a summit in Paris requires a seven-day ceasefire period and
the withdrawal of light armaments, he said before a meeting of the European
Parliament Foreign Affairs Committee. “We are striving for the middle of the
next month,” he said. “We have openly told everyone that we are attempting,
possibly, the last honest attempt to go down the Minsk path.”

After the committee meeting, Prystaiko told reporters
that the other option to fulfilling the Minsk Accords is introducing an
international peacekeeping mission in Donbas. “So far only a discussion of
these issues has occurred, but no one has even come close to a decision,” he
said, as reported by the Ukrinform news agency. “Even the mission – which was
supposed to have arrived in Ukraine to assess how possible this is at all – was
not sent by the UN,” he said.

Ukrainian President Zelensky is unable to withdraw
Ukrainian soldiers and hardware from the separation line owing to the
involvement of Ukrainian nationalist paramilitaries, Russian President Putin
said on Oct. 11, as reported by the TASS news agency. “Nationalist military
formations arrived there and publicly stated, ‘If the army leaves these
positions, we will take them. The army isn’t leaving’,” Putin said, adding that
the Ukrainian government must show political will to begin the withdrawals at
the towns of Zolote and Petrivske.

Zenon Zawada: The idea
for a peacekeeping mission has been kicked about since the war
in Donbas began. The reason that a mission was never
dispatched to Ukraine is that there is no chance that the UN or the OSCE will
want to get its peacekeepers involved in Donbas without a serious peace plan in
place.

The November deadline set by Prystaiko for fulfilling
the Minsk Accords is intended to pressure Russian President Putin to get serious
about his claims to want to end the warfare. Putin’s goal is to sow enough
internal fighting in Ukraine to spread the warfare, or induce a collapse of
statehood. Fulfilling the Minsk Accords would accomplish that, but undermining
the Zelensky’s support among the public would be even more effective and
easier, without involving the international community.

So we expect Putin will ignore this November deadline
as he moves towards the goal of discrediting the Zelensky administration and
creating a wider chasm between those supporting capitulation, and those
against. We only see Putin fulfilling the Minsk Accords with enough pressure
from Western powers.