U.S., Russia delegations meet to discuss armed conflict in Ukraine

Delegations representing the governments of the U.S. and Russia engaged in a six-hour meeting in Kaliningrad on Jan. 15 to address the armed conflict in the Donbas region of Ukraine, as reported that day by the Interfax news agency. The two sides, led by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland and Vladislav Surkov, an aide to Russian President Putin, discussed the need for the full implementation of the Minsk accords, said John Kirby, a State Department spokesperson. The developed recommendations for the Trilateral Contact Group to use to force a resolution in the conflict, including holding elections on the occupied territories, the Interfax report said.

Earlier that day, Nuland said that if the Minsk accords aren’t implemented, “we will have at minimum a frozen conflict, but possibly, even worse, a permanent danger to Ukraine and ourselves,” as reported by the pravda.com.ua news site, citing the Baltic News Service. A full cease-fire and a halt to killings was the main priority to resolve the conflict, he said. Other steps were elections in accordance with Ukrainian law and OSCE standards, removing soldiers and military hardware and “returning control of the borders,” Nuland said.

The Russian government doesn’t view the Donbas conflict as a dead end and sees a multitude of chances and breakthroughs, Boris Gryzlov, the Russian representative to the Trilateral Contact Group, told the kommersant.ru website in an interview published on Jan. 17. Instead, “there are forces interested in the situation being in a dead end,” he said. “Some people want to avoid responsible actions in fulfilling the Minsk agreements and that’s why it’s convenient for them to present the situation as a dead end.” The Russian side agrees that there’s no alternative to the Minsk accords and that all sides should make the maximum effort to fulfill them, he said.

To implement the accords, the Ukrainian government still needs to amend its constitution and the law on the Donbas special status, “without which it’s not possible to fully implement the remaining Minsk accords conditions,” Gryzlov said. In response to Ukrainian President Poroshenko’s demand that the Minsk accords require a new road map and corresponding dates to fulfill all its points, Gryzlov said there are only two sides to the conflict – Kyiv and Donbas – and these issues need to be resolved in the Trilateral Contact Group.

Zenon Zawada: Any resolution will require some out-of-the-box thinking, which makes Surkov’s comment that they he was brainstorming with Nuland during their meeting all the more promising. Yet the obstacles are enormous and we don’t see much optimism at the present course. Indeed Nuland sensed this as well when she said a frozen conflict could emerge, or even worse.

The biggest immediate obstacle is organizing elections in occupied Donbas that will have international legitimacy. We don’t see that being accomplished owing to a number of factors, including Nuland’s declaration of the need for “returning control of the borders.” Just that condition is unrealistic for the elections, as revealed by Poroshenko last week, when he said that EU Council officials suggested transferring control to the OSCE instead of Ukraine. Even if Poroshenko would agree to that, Ukrainian populist and nationalist forces won’t.