Russia supports OSCE armed police in Donbas, Poroshenko says

The Russian government has agreed to support a plan for armed police representing the OSCE to patrol the Donbas conflict zone, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko told television journalists on April 24. He said this plan for peace is also supported by French, German and U.S. officials.

The task of the police force is to ensure safety, prepare and conduct local elections and to provide for the transition of power to those elected, Poroshenko said. Political order can only occur when security is established, he said. “Otherwise, by no means can we legitimize the Russian occupation through pseudo-elections such as the Crimean pseudo-referendum or the pseudo-elections of Nov. 2, 2014” in Donbas, he said.

The sides in the Donbas conflict should implement the steps of the Minsk accords as soon as possible, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and U.S. President Barack Obama told an April 24 joint press conference, as reported by Deutsche Welle. “We still don’t have a stable ceasefire regime and we need to move forward more actively in the political process,” Merkel said.

Zenon Zawada: If the Russians confirm their support for the police force, it will be a major step towards organizing and conducting local elections. However, the likelihood of them occurring are still 50/50 odds, in our view. The main risks are: (1) ongoing armed violence, even targeting the OSCE police, (2) violent protests by nationalist groups in Ukraine or revolts by paramilitary groups and (3) an inability of the leaders to fulfill other Minsk accords conditions.

Regarding the first risk, the escalation in violence so far this year has occurred beyond the Kremlin’s will, caused by uncontrolled armed formations. The Kremlin would have to get them under control if the OSCE were to be introduced. In regards to the third risk, President Poroshenko vowed as recently as late March to restore control of the Ukrainian border before any elections are held. We view the likelihood of this happening as significantly lower than 50 percent and we don’t see how elections can occur without this control being restored.

We don’t think Poroshenko wants these elections to be held, but he feels compelled to organize them out of pressure from Western leaders. We see him continuing to slowly trudge along, doing the minimum to satisfy all sides in the conflict in this awkward balancing act. Eventually however, one of the parties will end up very unhappy, which will be either the Kremlin, the West or the Ukrainian public.