Donbas talks to consider first steps to transfer border control

The participants of the next meeting of the Trilateral Contact Group in Minsk to resolve the war in Donbas, scheduled for July 13, will discuss creating a subgroup to handle transferring control of the occupied border to the Ukrainian government. The initiative will be taken by the Ukrainian side, said Daria Olifer, the spokeswoman for former President Leonid Kuchma, who is representing Ukraine in the talks. The political subgroup currently in place is having difficulty, she said on her Facebook page.

Zenon Zawada: Even if the Russian government agreed in Minsk to transfer control of the occupied border to Ukraine (the odds of which we put at less than even), we believe it will never surrender control on a de facto basis. There are enough mercenaries and terrorists on the ground in Donbas to make life miserable for an OSCE mission.

More significantly, we believe the April Dutch referendum and the Brexit have given the Russian government (and its proxies) a large upperhand in all its international negotiations over Donbas. We don’t see the Russian side making any major concessions in these talks when the possibility is growing that it can remove the sanctions in the legislatures of the EU.

Meanwhile, the Donbas peace talks are occurring at a snail’s pace. It was hoped in the spring that local elections would have been organized by now, but instead they are nowhere in sight. We believe this works to the advantage of all the players involved, including the Ukrainian government, which is avoiding taking any responsibility upon itself.

The West isn’t much disturbed either, since it will gain its needed pretext to drop the sanctions eventually if the peace talks fail.