11 September 2014
The EU’s decision to impose a new round of sanctions against Russia last week won’t take effect until the conclusion of the ceasefire, reported the Yevropeyska Pravda news site on Sept. 10, citing an anonymous representative of the European Commission. Should the Ukrainian government declare an end to the ceasefire, EU member-states will have to offer “special concordance,” the representative said. “The fate of these sanctions to a large extent depends on President Poroshenko,” the representative said. “If he believes signing a peace agreement and ceasing military action in eastern Ukraine is possible, then the EU will also go down the path of reducing the harshness of sanctions and won’t publish them yet.”
Violations of the ceasefire by pro-Russian forces aren’t a basis for implementing the sanctions, the representative said. “The path to truce is very complicated, which is why we won’t react to violations by certain commanders, and it’s not certain if they’re commanders,” the representative said. “In any case, it’s important for us that the Ukrainian government recognizes this truce.”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel told the Bundestag on Sept. 10 that she supports implementing the latest round of sanctions against Russia approved by the EU on Sept. 8. “We support publishing the sanctions and I hope that a decision will soon be made,” she said. “The sanctions don’t take effect until they’re published.” The situation in Ukraine has improved, she said, yet the fulfillment of the peace plan’s conditions remains unclear, she said.
Pro-Russian forces continued to violate the ceasefire the night of Sept. 10-11, while Ukrainian forces have been fortifying their defenses and renewing their fighting capacity, reported on Sept. 11 Dmytro Tymchuk, the head of the Information Resistance news site. “The Russian-terrorist armies continue to egregiously violate the conditions of the ceasefire regime, shooting at the positions of Ukrainian armies,” he reported. Mortars, Grad multiple rocket launchers, and artillery were used to attack Ukrainian roadblocks, bases and units at the Donetsk airport during the night, he reported.
Western states have provoked the events in Ukraine and are using them to reanimate NATO, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Sept. 10, as reported by the RIA Novosti news agency. He also said the Russian government is preparing new security measures. “We have said this many times but we’d really want for there not to be any needless hysteria afterwards when these decisions will be finally approved and begin to be implemented,” Putin said. “There is the impression sometimes that someone wants to launch a new ‘arms race.’ We won’t be dragged into this race, truly. We simply absolutely exclude it.”
The Russian government is faced with a large temptation to gain a land corridor to the Crimea peninsula, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski told Polish television on Sept. 10. “We know that the Russians are having enormous organizational difficulties in Crimea with supplies of water, fuel, practically everything,” he said. “As it turned out, there was a certain logic in Crimea being administratively organized under Ukraine.” That’s why there’s a temptation to create a land corridor, “which includes extended the war, because the deeper the Russians go, the more the ethnic and political situation will be to their advantage,” he said. “That’s the disadvantage. But we know that the Ukrainians will fight.”
Zenon Zawada: Clearly, there are those in favor and opposed to imposing the sanctions during the ceasefire among the EU leadership. We think it’s inevitable that they will be imposed, though the timeframe is unclear.
We agree with Sikorski that the Russians are eying creating the land corridor to Crimea, through the Zaporizhia and Kherson regions. However, we don’t agree with his view of an ethnic and political advantage. These two regions are linguistically Russian, but ethnically Ukrainian. And much of southeastern Ukraine has undergone a radical change in political thinking since the Crimean invasion. In any case, certainly the Ukrainians will fight.