Minsk talks do not involve organizing elections, Ukraine official says

The Trilateral Contact Group talks in Minsk do not involve drafting a bill on local elections in occupied Donbas, First Deputy Parliamentary Speaker Iryna Herashchenko said on July 28, as reported by the Ukrinform news agency. “Very difficult discussions are being held in the political subgroup. Not about any laws. No laws are being written in Minsk,” she said. No elections are possible without disarmament on the occupied territory, removal of Russian forces, free and open access ensured by the Ukrainian government and OSCE, said Herashchenko, who is the president’s ombudsman on Donbas.

Zenon Zawada: Early this year, all the public statements on Donbas, particularly from Western leaders, were centered on holding local elections in Donbas, which were supposed to be the great milestone in resolving the conflict. Yet these statements have vanished this summer, after it became apparent that the elections would not be held at the end of June, as had been hoped by the European leadership. In fact, they are nowhere near to being organized and the talks have shifted towards releasing and exchanging prisoners, following Nadiya Savchenko’s release.

We understood that the Ukrainian president has wanted to avoid organizing the elections, despite his public statements to the contrary that were aimed at appeasing Western leaders. But the failure to organize them has left Western leaders speechless on elections and refraining from endorsing them again. A breakthrough seemed to have been reached in late June when the Russians reportedly agreed to an armed OSCE mission, but these commitments – however tenuous – evaporated with the intensified fighting this month.

At this point, it’s not clear if these Western leaders are taking a pause before advocating for elections again (under armed OSCE oversight), if they are taking a pause because they are dumbfounded on how to deal with this conflict or if they’re still reeling from the Brexit and have shifted gears to greater concerns. What is clear is that anti-establishment forces in Europe are slowly accumulating momentum in getting legislatures to drop sanctions against Russia. A Trump victory in November would accelerate that momentum.