Yermak stresses successes of Paris 2019 summit, mentions future goals in Donbas

President’s Office Head Andriy Yermak stressed the
achievements and progress made from the Normandy Four summit in Paris in a
statement on its one-year anniversary published on Dec. 10. Among the
accomplishments are the return of 96 Ukrainian prisoners and the longest
ceasefire since warfare erupted in April 2014, he said in a text published by
the pravda.com.ua news site. “We have the first ceasefire regime of such an
extended length. Truly, we can’t call the peace in Donbas 100 percent. But
there aren’t those intense military actions that we saw during earlier years of
the war. We were able to save real lives of our people, both in the Armed
Forces, and as well those of peaceful residents of both sides of the frontline.
Only in the first 100 days of the ceasefire regime, the number of shootings
fell by 5.5 times and their character significantly changed. The majority of
them were non-targeted, provocative fire. Such calm along almost the entire
frontline hadn’t existed for all the earlier years of this war,” Yermak wrote.

Other achievements are reformatting the Ukrainian
delegation to the Trilateral Contact Group to resolve the armed conflict in
Donbas, which Yermak said is now more effective, as well as rebuilding the
border checkpoints along the separation line as contemporary service hubs that
offer administrative services, social support and even first aid. Two new
border checkpoints were opened on the separation line in recent months in the
Luhansk region.

As for future plans, Yermak mentioned the demining of
20 identified territories, ensuring the work of border crossings along the
separation line, withdrawing forces from three additional territories through
the end of March and accelerating the exchange of prisoners of war. Red Cross
officials need to gain access to the entire occupied territory in Donbas, as
well as members of the OSCE special monitoring mission, he wrote.

“Don’t believe all kinds of statements in the spirit
of  ‘everything is lost,’ or that someone is leaving the negotiating
process, or that the talks have reached a dead end. No, the talks are
continuing. Yes, these are not simple talks. Different things occur. But we are
persistently moving forward. When I receive reports in the morning on how there
are no losses in the Ukrainian army on the latest day, then I understand that
we are on the right path,” Yermak wrote.

Zenon Zawada: We agree
with Yermak that everything is not lost, by far. But at the same time, we think
it’s safe to say that the talks are at a dead end when it comes to the most
important issue, which is finding a political solution that will stop the
warfare, which continues. And while killings are down, they are certainly not
over. Zelensky and Yermak deserve recognition for their earnest efforts to end
the armed fighting. But they also deserve criticism for misunderstanding the
determination of the Russian government to use the warfare in its greater
geopolitical strategy of disrupting Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic integration.

We expect little progress in 2021 in resolving the
armed conflict in Donbas beyond further prisoner exchanges and the opening of
more border checkpoints. For as long as Russia is led by those hostile to the
West and its values, they will continue to wage their hybrid war against
Ukraine statehood to disrupt its integration into Euro-Atlantic structures.