30 July 2014
Belarusian President AlexanderLukashenko agreed on July 29 to allow Minsk to be the site of trilateral talks between Ukrainians, Russians and the separatists on July 31, his press service reported. The request for Minsk to be the site was made by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, whose press service stated that he hopes negotiations will achieve two aims: secure the release of all hostages and to ensure that international experts are allowed to safely visit the crash site of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17. The talks would involve former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, Russian Ambassador to Ukraine Mikhail Zurabov, separatists representatives and officials with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), news reports said.
The U.S. government has evidence that the Russian government is continuing to support the Donbas separatists with arms and fighters, as well as financing, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on July 29 after meeting with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin in Washington. “We now have clear evidence of artillery and rocket fire from Russia onto Ukrainian territory,” he said. The separatists are continuing to fire on Ukrainian forces from the territory of the MH17 crash site, he said. Meanwhile, the Russian government hasn’t demonstrated that it wants to cease the violence with a ceasefire and negotiations, Kerry said. “The Ukrainians are ready for a mutual ceasefire, not in the future but now,” he said. “They proposed a peace plan that foresees a serious and meaningful dialogue with the Russian-supported separatists with international participation.”
Zenon Zawada: If they occur, these talks would serve as a positive first step in returning to the negotiating table. However, given the experience of previous negotiations with separatist representatives, we do not expect the talks will bring tangible results. Firstly, there are too many separatist groups and they do not have a common position on how to solve the crisis. Secondly, based on the information disseminated by Ukrainian intelligence, Russian state officials and separatists are in touch with each other all the time, so they don’t need so many representatives, all the more at an official meeting, to discuss Poroshenko’s proposals.