Latest Donbas forces withdrawal performed despite attacks

The latest stage in
the Donbas forces withdrawal was performed on Nov. 10 in the areas of
Bohdanivka and Petrivske in the Luhansk region, the Joint Operation Forces
press center reported that day. Eleven soldiers of the Ukrainian army were
withdrawn, along with 14 items of military hardware, a day after such efforts
began. The withdrawal occurred despite Russian-backed fighters shooting two
anti-tank rockets at a truck with Ukrainian soldiers, injuring four of them.
The attack occurred beyond the withdrawal zone, “but quite close in an area
without OSCE observers,” the pravda.com.ua news site said.

Defense Minister
Andriy Zahorodniuk confirmed the attack in an interview on the 1+1 television
network that evening, stressing the withdrawal would continue because a
seven-day ceasefire had been upheld leading up to its start. “From our end,
everything is developing manageably. Of course, the terrorists are trying to
undermine the process. But we are doing everything according to plan. We had
seven days of silence. And are doing the withdrawal as planned. It is occurring
under a controlled scenario,” he said. Zahorodniuk added the forces are ready
to return to their positions if necessary.

The parliamentary
faction of the Voice party – a neoliberal, pro-NATO political force – called
for Ukraine abandoning the Minsk Accords and freezing the conflict in Donbas
until Ukraine’s positions are strengthened on all fronts in a Nov. 8 Facebook
post. “We are fighting on two fronts: with Russia on the foreign front, and with
corruption, a weak economy and ineffective state institutions on the domestic
front,” the statement said. “So far, returning Crimea and Donbas on conditions
acceptable to Ukraine is impossible. So it’s necessary to build the country,
develop the economy and return our lands when we have enough strength, and the
international community will promote this.”

Russian tanks and
television make it impossible to return the residents of Donbas and Crimea back
into Ukraine’s fold, the Nov. 8 statement said. “The peace proposed by Russia
can only bring the Russian world to all of Ukraine’s territory. We need to
draft a program of effective and real support for those who are ready to move
back and have already done so. And prepare for deoccupation and reintegration
at the moment when it becomes possible. Ukraine should also be building its
economic muscles. The aggressor won’t be returning to us people with housing
and work, blossoming gardens and demined fields.”

Zenon Zawada: The Zelensky administration is continuing
to pursue the withdrawals under enemy fire, confirming our view that it will go
to great lengths to fulfill the Minsk Accords. This is disturbing to
pro-Western Ukrainians, who feel helpless. And that’s why the Voice party took
the dramatic step of promoting a radically different solution to the war in
Donbas. It is aiming to open a new debate in offering the public a new path out
of the crisis, other than the one that Zelensky has chosen to pursue, which
they believe will lead to capitulation to Russia at the expense of Ukraine’s
Euro-Atlantic integration. We share this view.

For as long as
President Zelensky and The People’s Servant party are in charge, however, they
will continue to go down the path they have set upon of fulfilling the Minsk
Accords at great cost. Abandoning the Minsk Accords is too risky, requiring a
great deal of energy with the enormous negative fallout, particularly at the
international level. We share the view of former Defense Minister Grytsenko,
who stated in response to Voice’s proposal that in abandoning Minsk, Ukraine
stands to lose all the international support it has gained in the last five
years and would have to restart from Square One. That’s too difficult a task
for the current neophytes in power, particularly someone as inexperienced as
Zelensky.