Merkel visits Moscow, offers no results from talks with Putin

German Chanceller Angela Merkel visited Moscow on May 10 to engage in negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, with no results announced afterwards. Instead, she made general comments, including that Ukraine’s territorial integrity must be renewed and Western leaders continue to work towards that goal.  The Russian government’s annexation of Crimea was criminal, hurt relations between Russia and Germany and threatens the European order as a whole, Merkel said, as reported by pravda.com.ua.

The Russian-backed separatists in Donbas aren’t allowing Ukrainian humanitarian aid, haven’t removed all heavy artillery and aren’t rushing to exchange prisoners, she said ahead of the meeting. “We waited for the cease-fire to be established in the indicated time after Minsk,” Merkel said, referring to the cease-fire accords. “But the fighting is continuing, particularly near Debaltseve, which the separatists occupied afterwards.  There still isn’t a full cease-fire.”

The governments of Germany and Russia have very deep differences in their views on the conflict in Ukraine, Merkel said before her arrival in Moscow, reported the Ukrinform news agency. Putin acknowledged “well-known problems” between the two governments that he’s aiming to resolve, reported pravda.com.ua.  Putin said he agreed with Merkel that the fulfillment of the Minsk cease-fire accords must be achieved with the help of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Yet at the same time he repeated that an illegal government overthrow occurred in Ukraine in February 2014. “If we will approach the same events so differently, then we will never agree on anything,” he said.

Western leaders shouldn’t reach any long-term agreements with Putin, former Russian oligarch and political prisoner Mikhail Khodorkovskiy told a German newspaper in an interview published on May 10. “If someone in the West claims that long-term agreements can be reached with the current regime in the Kremlin, he’s either a fool or a liar,” he said. Hopes for a compromise are illusory given that the Russian government is behaving unpredictably, he said, and the conflict won’t be resolved in the near future. Putin needs to create a frozen conflict to preserve his grip on power, Khodorkovsky said, adding that he doesn’t expect the separatists will expand their territory.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will fly to Sochi on May 12 to speak with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on conflicts in Ukraine, Syria, Iran and Yemen, reported the RIA Novosti news agency on May 11, citing anonymous sources in Russian diplomatic circles. Kerry will address the U.S. joining the Normandy format negotiations on Ukraine, Interfax reported, while Russia will ask for the U.S. to reject any supply of arms to Ukraine. The U.S. has yet to confirm the reports of Kerry’s visit, the Associated Press reported.

Zenon Zawada: Khodorkovsky’s observations of the conflict are on the mark. However, we don’t rule out an escalation of the conflict should conditions deteriorate in Crimea and Donbas. We are confident that Russian officials are still aiming for the creation of a land corridor to Crimea and that’s a subject of negotiations. A frozen conflict is strictly a short-term solution to a giant problem created by Putin. Eventually, he will have to make a decision to withdraw from the occupied territories, which is highly unlikely; or expand the conflict, given that the Western-imposed sanctions will become an increasing burden as time passes.