Volker meets with Ukrainian leaders ahead of Surkov meeting

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko met with U.S. Special Representative to Ukraine Kurt Volker on Oct. 27 at the Presidential Administration in Kyiv to discuss efforts to resolve the armed conflict in the Donbas region. They discussed the standard topics based on the limited details released by the Presidential Administration press service, without any indication of new developments. When meeting with leading MPs the next day, Volker discussed the approaching vote on the second reading of the legislation on reintegrating Donbas (creating autonomy within Ukraine’s borders), as well as the possibility of transferring lethal defensive weapons, according to Facebook posts by various MPs. He told MPs that he could not imagine a scenario with Russian citizens participating in a UN peacekeeping mission.

Zenon Zawada: It’s widely acknowledged that Volker visited Kyiv to work out an agenda ahead of his third meeting with his Russian counterpart, Vladislav Surkov. The approval of the Donbas reintegration bill’s second reading is the biggest issue in the short term, with a vote expected the week of Nov. 7 or Nov. 14. The situation has the potential for violence with a tent city outside the parliament occupied by Donbas war veterans, who are fiercely opposed to the legislation alongside nationalists. We even think the president could use the vote as a pretext to crack down on the tent city, which is a major embarrassment for him.
We view most other issues being raised by Volker as mid-term projects, with many of them having a low potential for success. Volker indicated that the UN could pass a resolution approving a peacekeeping mission to Donbas, yet reaching an agreement on its conditions and their implementation is unrealistic, in our view. Lethal defensive weapons are also unrealistic and could cause a backlash in Europe, where residents are growing increasingly exhausted from the conflict with Russia.