European, Ukrainian leaders meet in Kyiv to discuss peace plan

French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel met on Feb. 5 with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in Kyiv to discuss a new peace plan for ending the war in Donbas. They maintained their calls for an immediate ceasefire in eastern Ukraine, enforcing the border, releasing all hostages, and the removal of Russian soldiers arms and military hardware, reported the Presidential Administration’s press-service following five hours of talks between the three leaders. They discussed ways of fulfilling the September Minsk ceasefire accords and developed common proposals for further steps.

 

Western leaders will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin today in Moscow to discuss a peace plan. French President Hollande said it will be based on Ukraine’s territorial integrity. Putin submitted his proposal to the Western leaders on Feb. 4, in which he suggested discussing a solution to the Donbas conflict with Merkel and Hollande without participation from the Ukrainian side, reported on Feb. 5 Ukrainian MP Mustafa Nayyem, citing high-ranked sources at the Munich Security Conference.

 

The assessment of some senior Western officials is that Putin is trying to supplant the Minsk accords with a new arrangement that would expand the Kremlin’s influence over Ukraine and give the separatists a larger, more economically viable, enclave, the New York Times reported on Feb. 5. What the Russians have proposed is not a peace plan, said an anonymous Western diplomat. “It is a road map to creating a new Prydnistrovia or Abkhazia in Ukraine. It is a cynical effort to get out of all the commitments made in Minsk.”

 

The Russian government intends to propose introducing UN peacekeepers into the Donbas regions during today’s meeting with Western leaders, said on Feb. 5 Aleksandr Lukashevych, an official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry. Earlier this week, Poroshenko told a Spanish newspaper that he sees no basis for introducing UN peacekeepers, instead stressing the need for arms and supplies for soldiers.

 

In an interview with German newspaper Die Welt published on Feb. 5, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said he is asking NATO to offer modern armaments. Recent terrorist attacks on civilians are supposed to prompt NATO to offer more support, namely “a lot of military, technical and special aid to raise the capabilities of the Ukrainian army for its resistance to Russian aggression,” he said.

 

Wolfgang Ischinger, the head of the Munich Security Conference on Security Issues, called upon the West to provide Ukraine with military aid in a column published in the Financial Times on Feb. 5. The main goal in the conflict should be to achieve a peace process uder the guise of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the achievement of political compromise. But as long as the situation on the ground is in Russia’s favor, a diplomatic solution is less likely, he wrote.

 

The new round of EU sanctions will be expanded to include high-ranking Russian officials, reported on Feb. 5 a leading German newspaper, citing anonymous sources in Brussels. The decision was reached in preparation for the Feb. 9 meeting of the EU Foreign Ministers Council, the newspaper said. The sanctions list many also include Russian MPs and deputy ministers, the report said. In all, 19 individuals will be included (among them five Russians and 14 Ukrainian separatists) and nine organizations.

 

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called upon the Russian government to cease its military support for Donbas separatists and negotiate a long-term political solution at a Feb. 5 press conference in Kyiv. “Russia is continuing its aggression in the East,” he said, citing Russian tanks, soldiers and hardware that have been dispatched into Ukraine. He referred to the need to uphold the Sept. 5 Minsk ceasefire accords, including removing heavy artillery and armies from the ceasefire zone and enforcing the border to stop the flow of arms and soldiers.

 

The U.S. State Department added in December four Russian defense enterprises in its sanctions list, reported on Feb. 5 the Russian newspaper Izvestia. The list includes aerospace and arms manufacturers with whom American state enterprises are forbidden to do business.

 

Zenon Zawada: Of all the information to surface yesterday, we view as most relevant the statement in the Financial Times by Ischinger that the Russian government won’t move towards a serious ceasefire for as long as it has a military advantage on the ground. Any concessions would go against even the most basic principles of political and military game theory. Therefore, the Western insistence to adhere to the September accords is also a dead end, given that the Russians have helped the separatists gain more territory, which they have no intention of surrendering.

 

Few details have emerged of the new peace plans drafted by both the Western and Russian sides, but we can’t contemplate any breakthroughs. The introduction of UN peacekeepers, as proposed by the Russians, will merely serve to crystallize the Russian presence on Ukrainian territory and undermine attempts to conduct Euro-integration, such as strengthening rule of law and Ukrainian courts.

 

In our view, the Western strategy must continue to be based on maintaining and tightening economic sanctions on the Russian economy and travel restrictions on officials, while enhancing the Ukrainian military with those types of arms and hardware that will stop Russian attempts to gain more territory and deter terrorist attacks on civilian populations. Contrary to more optimistic views, we don’t see an end to the military conflict this year. The Ukrainian economy and military need to build up its strength in the next few years to prepare to eliminate the separatists altogether.