Ukraine enhances Minsk talks delegation, drawing pro-Western leaders criticism

Ukrainian President Zelensky issued a decree on May 5
confirming the members of Ukraine’s delegation to the Trilateral Contact Group
in Minsk to resolve the war in Donbas. The delegation will be led by former
President Kuchma, while his first deputy will be Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy
Reznikov, a partner in the Asters law firm. The delegation’s deputy head will
be Parliamentary Foreign Policy Committee chair Oleksandr Merezhko, the
socio-economic subgroup head will be deputy economy minister Yulia Svyrydenko,
the political subgroup head will be Parliamentary Legal Policy Committee head
Andriy Kostin, the security subgroup head will be deputy defense minister
Oleksandr Polishchuk and the humanitarian subgroup head will be Parliamentary
Social Policy and Veterans Committee head Halyna Tretiakova. The decree defines
each of their responsibilities allows for more MPs, state officials, advisers
and experts to be added. It also designates President’s Office head Andriy
Yermak as the moderator of the delegation’s activities.

The Zelensky administration’s reshuffling of its
delegation to the Minsk peace talks drew criticism on May 7 from Voice
Parliamentary Faction head Serhiy Rakhmanin, who pointed out the budget will
have to finance more officials in a delegation, whose decisions don’t have any
legal consequences. Moreover, he raised concerns about the Russian government
including the corresponding officials in its delegation. “If people with
analogous positions join the Trilateral Contract Group, then we will gain a
bright gallery of personas on Ukraine’s list of sanctions,” Rakhmanin said from
the parliamentary tribune. They include Russian Federal Assembly Foreign
Affairs Committee head Leonid Slutskiy, “who uses the world Nazism always when
he refers to Ukraine and threatened Ukraine will war if the issue of bases on
Ukraine’s territory will be discussed.” Russian deputy defense minister Dmitry
Bulgakov directed the theft of Ukrainian ships in Crimea, while Russian Federal
Assembly Eurasian Integration Committee head Leonid Kalashnikov alleged that
“Ukraine will destroy all of Donbas’ population” and called for closing the
Kerch Strait to Ukraine. “So that there are no illusions on duly returning
wisdom to the president, I propose renaming the Trilateral Contact Group as
Collective Hemorrhoid Association,” Rakhmanin said.

The changes in the membership of Ukraine’s delegation
to the Minsk peace talks “is a step on behalf of Russia, which is trying to
enlarge its representation in the occupational administrations in Minsk and
afterwards sell this as the start of direct dialogue,” former foreign minister
Pavlo Klimkin wrote in a May 6 Facebook post. “Even if we decline, this will
speak to direct dialogue all the same. This is critically necessary for them to
cancel sanctions. They are currently undertaking desperate activity, hiring
lobbyists and journalists at wholesale and retail, not sparing any money.” He
added, “It appears that if advisory councils weren’t able to be formed, then
they’re trying to raise the status of what’s happening in Minsk from informal
consultations to negotiations.”

The Ukrainian delegation to the Trilateral Contact
Group in Minsk to resolve the war in Donbas will include displaced persons who
are Ukrainian citizens from occupied Donbas, President’s Office head Andriy
Yermak told a press briefing on May 8. “This is very important because very
many people who live in the territory of occupied Donetsk and Luhansk and
gained Russian passports,” he said, adding that the representatives of the
Russian-backed government have had a monopoly in representing Donbas at the
Minsk talks that existed for six years. Referring to Donbas representatives he
added, “The ‘betrayal’ is currently being chased away, but everyone closed
their eyes and sat with them at one table at that for six years.” Oleksiy Reznikov,
the deputy head of the Ukrainian delegation in Minsk, will draft a list of
displaced persons and invite them depending on the theme of the talks, Yermak
said.

Russian-backed forces in Donbas shot at Ukrainian
positions 21 times on May 7, injuring six soldiers of the Joint Forces
Operation, its press service said. They used artillery prohibited by the Minsk
Accords, including 122-mm caliber systems, 120-mm and 82-mm mortars, grenade
launchers and high-caliber machine guns and rifles.

Zenon Zawada: Yermak has
been increasingly smeared by pro-Western forces as a Kremlin agent in the
Ukrainian government. That is an exaggeration, but it is based on a kernel of
truth. We share Klimkin’s view that enhancing the delegation is aimed at making
the unofficial Trilateral Contact Group talks at least gain the appearance of
being official, if not resulting in them being designated to further down the
road. We agree that Yermak has pursued this route after the attempt to form
advisory councils involving Donbas representatives was rejected by French and German diplomats.
And this latest move adds evidence to our view that the Zelensky administration
will go to great, painful lengths to resolve
the warfare in Donbas, even if it means sacrificing Ukraine’s long-term
geopolitical interests. The Zelensky administration is concentrated on scoring
incremental, short-term populist victories to satisfy its electoral base
(within the limits of international agreements), without consideration for
Ukrainian sovereignty in the long term.

It’s amusing to see Yermak insist on the inclusion of
displaced persons from Donbas in the Ukrainian delegation to Minsk. We interpret
this also as a concession to Russia, which is seeking to add as much legitimacy
as possible to the otherwise unofficial consultations. This way, it can be
argued in the international arena that not only were the Russian proxies in
Donbas involved in the Trilateral Contact Group talks, but also those displaced
by the war and opposed to the Russian-backed forces. The legitimization of
these talks is needed for Russia to convince Western governments to remove
sanctions related to Donbas, which is being sought now more than ever with a
global economic recession underway. Whether this is successful depends on just
how desperate the Europeans are to renew trade with Russia. We expect the
destruction wrought by the coronavirus infection to merely add fuel to the
populist political movements in Europe, which are friendly to the Kremlin.