Russia withdraws officers from Donbas ceasefire coordination centre

The Russian Foreign Ministry announced on Dec. 18 that
it is withdrawing its officers from the Joint Centre for Control and
Coordination of the Ceasefire and Stabilization in Ukraine’s war-torn Donbas
region, citing the tense psychological situation. In violation of the agreement
to create the centre between the Russian and Ukrainian presidents, the
Ukrainian government “consciously created for our soldiers – who were its
members – a tense moral, psychological situation and created obstacles to
fulfilling their obligations in service,” the statement said, citing restricted
access to the conflict line and reviews of common monitoring stations
positioned on Ukrainian-controlled territory. The Russian officers were
forbidden to speak with local residents and were disrespected by their
Ukrainian counterparts, the statement said.

In response to Russia’s decision, Ukraine’s Foreign
Ministry issued a statement condemning the measure as “the latest provocation
that significantly undermines the Minsk Accords and an attempt to remove any responsibility,
as a side in the conflict, for the consequences of the armed aggression against
our state.” The decision significantly heightens safety risks for the OSCE
special monitoring mission, which includes the goal of forcing Ukraine and its
global partners to agree to an unacceptable plan of placing UN peacekeepers in
Donbas, the statement said. The measure also serves Russia’s goal of forcing
Ukraine and global diplomats to conduct negotiations with the separatist
leaders themselves, rather than with Russian diplomats. Ukraine will remove its
soldiers from the joint centre stations on the occupied territories because
their safety can no longer be guaranteed after Russia’s withdrawal, said a
spokesman for Ukraine’s Joint Chiefs of Staff.

With its recent actions, including the withdrawal of
its officers from the ceasefire coordination centre, Russia seems to be
preparing the conditions and possibility for a deeper, large-scale military
invasion of Ukraine, former Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk told a press
conference on Dec. 18.

Zenon Zawada: Whatever
the formal reasons for the withdrawal are, Russian President Putin will be
using the situation in Donbas to boost his popularity with the public ahead of
the March 2018 elections, which he wants to win easily in the first round.
Therefore, we could expect further escalation in fighting in order to generate
news flow and stir fear among the Russian public of a foreign threat that only
Putin is capable of combatting. However, we don’t expect any dramatic moves in
Ukraine until after the March 2018 elections.

At that point, we expect Putin will be using the
fighting in Donbas to boost support for Ukraine’s Russian-oriented political
parties, which are polling fairly well so far. And we don’t expect any drastic
moves then – beyond escalated attacks that are limited to the conflict zone –
that would undermine their success in the 2019 elections. Even Ukrainian
President Poroshenko would prefer a Russian-oriented parliamentary opposition
than a Western-oriented opposition committed to reforms.