Russia accuses Normandy Format of retreating from Mar. 11 protocol

Russia has accused its Normandy Format partners –
France, Germany and Ukraine – of “political games” and retreating from the
agreements of the Mar. 11 protocol signed in Minsk, including the launch of an
advisory council. A Mar. 26 follow-up teleconference “ended in failure,”
according to an Apr. 2 statement issued by the Russian Foreign Ministry. Though
the direct talks of the Trilateral Contact Group in early March were able to
produce important agreements, capable of moving the peace talks from their dead
end, “strange things began to happen after the planned breakthrough,
unfortunately,” the statement said.

Ukraine backed out from the signed agreement under
pressure from its Western partners, the Russian Foreign Ministry statement
said. “During telephone negotiations between the aides of Normandy leaders,
Berlin and Paris avoided support for the agreements between Kyiv and Donbas
under various pretexts. Following this, Kyiv backed out of these agreements
during the contact group meeting on Mar. 26. It seems as though the Ukrainian
negotiators agreed to this not without prompting from abroad,” the statement
said.

The Russian Foreign Ministry also rejected Western
criticism of the Donbas leadership for not allowing the OSCE special monitoring
mission free access to the territory. “The right of the republics, with the aim
of fighting the coronavirus, to introduce restrictive measures, analogous with
Ukraine and other European countries, is consciously rejected. These are very
questionable democratic values,” the statement said. It concluded, “We call
upon our Normandy Format partners to stop their political games and engage
finally in serious negotiations to resolve the conflict in Donbas in accordance
with the Minsk complex of measures and decisions of the quartet’s Paris summit
in December 2019.”

Recall, Ukraine’s lead negotiators at the Trilateral Contact
Group in Minsk signed a protocol on Mar. 11
to implement a series of steps to further resolve the war in Donbas. Among
these measures involved creating an advisory council in which Ukrainian diplomats
would negotiate directly with representations of the Donetsk and Luhansk
self-declared republics. The proposal drew fierce opposition from Ukraine’s
pro-Western forces, prompting the Zelensky administration to turn to France and
Germany on advice on whether to move forward with the advisory council.

Zenon Zawada: We expected
that Germany, at minimum, would be opposed to forming the advisory council,
which would have crossed the red line of allowing direct talks between Ukraine
and Russia’s proxies in Donbas. But France was opposed as well. Now it seems
certain that President Zelensky, and his lead negotiator Andriy Yermak, have
firmly decided not to fulfill the Mar. 11 protocol, particularly in creating
the advisory group.

This is a wise move, considering how much the Zelensky
administration is dependent on the West, particularly with IMF financing. Just
yesterday, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sent USD 1.2 mln in aid to deal
with the coronavirus. At the same time, this development puts the Minsk peace
talks at the same dead end that they had been under former President
Poroshenko. And we don’t see Zelensky maintaining the public’s support for
another four years of Russian aggression in Donbas.

Speculation is rising in Ukraine, among experts and
observers, that the West – led by the U.S. – will use the current global
crisis, particularly the plunge in oil prices, to apply more pressure on the
Putin administration with the goal of its replacement. Only time will tell
whether attempts are made, and if they’re effective. But the longer Putin
remains in place, the higher grows the likelihood of political instability in
Ukraine.