Russia demands November elections in Donbas at Minsk talks

The Russian government endorsed the elections in
Donbas in violation of the Minsk Accords at the Sept. 19 meeting of the
Trilateral Contract Group, Ukrainian representative Iryna Gerashchenko reported
on her Facebook page the same day. The Ukrainian position is that the accords
only allow for local elections to be held in Donbas, not for prime minister or
parliament. Recall, the legislatures of the self-declared Donetsk and Luhansk
People’s Republics voted to hold elections on Nov. 11 after Russia reportedly
spent the summer putting them off while President Putin negotiated with Western
leaders. 

“We should install order and hold elections there,”
Russian representative Boris Gryzlov said at the meeting, Gerashchenko
reported, referring to the statement as a Freudian slip considering Russia has
claimed that it has no presence in Donbas. The OSCE representative said the Donbas
elections would undermine not only the Minsk Accords, but peace talks
altogether, she said.

Russian President Putin discussed resolving the armed
conflict in Donbas with German Chancellor Angela Merkel during a Sept. 19 phone
call, the Kremlin press service reported. Putin addressed “the need for
Kyiv to secure the special status of Donbas,” referring to the goal of the
Minsk Accords. He also expressed his concern over the murder of Aleksandr
Zakharchenko, the head of the self-declared Donetsk republic. Both sides
expressed their mutual intent to resolve the conflict, including in the
Normandy Four format.

Zenon Zawada: With the
Donbas elections, either Putin is raising the ante in his talks with German
Chancellor Merkel on a UN peacekeeping mission, or these negotiations are
merely Putin’s latest stalling tactic. In which case, Putin has until
mid-October to cancel the elections in favor of a peacekeeping mission to
fulfil the Minsk Accords. If he decides to hold the elections, any hopes for a
UN peacekeeping mission, or peace agreement, will be postponed until 2020,
after next year’s elections in Ukraine.

What Putin will decide in the coming weeks is
unclear to most anyone. On the one hand, Russia is suffering from sanctions,
particularly its oligarchs, who are being forced to dispose of their property.
In fulfilling the Minsk Accords, Russia can succeed in returning Ukraine to its
sphere of influence. On the other hand, the populist-nationalist trend in
Europe is working in Russia’s favor in the mid term. If his regime survives the
next five years, Putin can count on more Western legislatures aligning with
him.