Negotiating since August, Yermak and Kozak are now in constant contact, report says

Andriy Yermak, Ukraine’s pointman on Donbas, has been
negotiating to resolve the warfare with Dmitry Kozak, recently promoted to be
Russia’s pointman on Donbas, ever since August 2019, the pravda.com.ua news
site in a Feb. 12 profile article. The ability of Yermak, appointed as head of the President’s Office on Monday,
to conduct two large exchanges of war prisoners – as well as return two
Ukrainian navy ships captured by Russian border agents (and their 24 crew
members) – prompted Russian President Putin to promote Kozak as a presidential
administration deputy head and lead the peace talks to replace the rigid
Vladislav Surkov, the article stated. “Yermak’s arrival in the talks with the
Russians marked a change in strategy in the very Kremlin. And instead of the
‘archtect of Novorossiya,’ the uncompromising Surkov, the overseer of Ukraine
became ‘the good Ukrainian’,” the article said, referring to Kozak, who was
born in Ukraine.

As a result of the negotiating process, Yermak and
Kozak are in “constant contact by telephone,” according to a leading Ukrainian
diplomat cited by the article. “Surkov was radical and that’s why it was easier
with him. You knew what to expect from him. Kozak is something else. He’s
reflective, listens. As if a Ukrainian. But in reality, not less dangerous than
Surkov. And that Yermak is uncontrollably and constantly in telephone contact
with him can be a problem. No one, other than the president, knows what they
are talking about. That’s if the president knows,” the anonymous diplomat said.
Though the diplomat hinted that Yermak’s decisions with Kozak are not
coordinated with leading diplomats, Yermak insisted that “everything always
occurs in coordination with the Foreign Affairs Ministry.”

Yermak’s negotiating style consists of brief, informal
talks with the key figures able to resolve a conflict, the article said.
Besides talking this approach with Dmitry Kozak, Yermak met with Rudy Giuliani,
U.S. President Trump’s personal lawyer, for an informal meeting in Madrid in
August to iron out relations with the White House, the report said. Their
renewed relations prompted Yermak to convince President Zelensky to drop his
campaign to replace Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko, which had been initiated by
the previous President’s Office head, Andriy Bohdan. “Yermak began to shut
around himself informal communications with Americans, which he didn’t get
approved neither with the Foreign Ministry, nor the Ukrainian embassy in the
U.S. His disdain for classical diplomacy and diplomats virtually became the
business card of the president’s aide. He doesn’t like long and boring official
negotiations, preferring brief meetings in cozy steakhouses,” the report said

Zenon Zawada: It’s
Yermak’s out-of-the-box approach to Russia, and politics in general, that was precisely
what was needed to reach a breakthrough in the war in Donbas (and why
Ukrainians voted to make Zelensky their president). We expect Yermak to build
upon his successes so far with Kozak in reaching the latest in a series of
small breakthroughs on Donbas in the coming weeks, culminating in a Normandy
Format meeting in April, which we see as more likely than not (largely because
Zelensky and Yermak have a strong will to bring it about).

We expect not one breakthough deal to be announced to
resolve the warfare, but a series of mini-breakthroughs to ease the public into
accepting a peace deal. What some will consider to be a breakthrough
achievement will be considered by others as capitulation. And it will also be
Yermak’s challenge to deal with that reaction.

While there is much speculation that Yermak has
pro-Russian leanings, his biography indicates extensive experience in Europe
(producing a hit film in Slovakia) and a respect for Western institutions
(having built his career in intellectual property law.) We see Yermak as
sharing the same geopolitical model favored by Zelensky: advancing EU-NATO
integration with caution, reintegrating Donbas, and re-establishing pragmatic
relations with Russia (both in economics and culture), but without submitting
to any supranational structures (like the Moscow-led Customs Union). If
Yermak’s efforts are successful this year, this geopolitical model could become
the consensus for peace that Ukrainians have long been looking for. Of course,
we see this model as undermining Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic prospects,
particularly the reintegration of Donbas.