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Ukraine envoy, pro-Russian separatists sign ceasefire agreement

Ukraine envoy, pro-Russian separatists sign ceasefire agreement

8 September 2014

Former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, representing the Ukrainian government, and two self-declared leaders of separatist groups in eastern Ukraine, signed a ceasefire protocol on Sept. 5 that was supposed to take immediate effect. The agreements’ 14 points include a bilateral ceasefire, conditions for monitoring the border, the exchange and release of all hostages, the removal of illegal armed fighters, self-governance in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions and transfer of authority. The agreement was signed at the meeting of the trilateral contact group to implement the Ukrainian president’s peace plan in Minsk, which was also attended by Russian Ambassador Ukraine Mikhail Zurabov and Heidi Tagliavini, the ambassador of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

 

The two sides exchanged their lists of hostages, Kuchma said. A working group will be launched on Sept. 8 to oversee the fulfillment of the Minsk agreements. Igor Plotnytskiy, the prime minister of the Luhansk People’s Republic, said the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics remain committed to separating their regions from the Ukrainian state. “We will continue to course of separation,” he said. “The ceasefire is a forced measure.”

 

After the ceasefire’s signing, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko ordered the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to cease fire in the Donbas region at 18:00 on Sept. 5. He also ordered the foreign affairs minister, together with the OSCE, to ensure international monitoring of the ceasefire regime, which has an exclusive bilateral nature. The NATO summit in Wales demonstrated Western leaders want a political-diplomatic handling of the Donbas conflict, he said in a statement released that day.

 

Shootings on behalf of pro-Russian forces were reported throughout the weekend in the Donetsk region, news reports said. Mortar fire occurred the evening of Sept. 7 in the outskirts of Mariupol, hitting a roadblock, reported the Azov battalion. The night of Sept. 6, Ukrainian army positons and roadblocks were shot in the Donetsk region, reported Dmytro Tymchuk, the director of the Information Resistance news site. A Ukrainian soldier was wounded by gunfire the night of Sept. 6 in Mariupol, the city council reported.

 

Several infrastructure sites in and around the city were also damaged that night by intense artillery fire, including Grad multiple rocket launchers, the Ukrayinska Pravda news site reported, citing local journalists. “Russian armies are shooting at Ukrainian positions, while the Ukrainians are not shooting in return,” reported the Azov battalion press-service on Sept. 6.”The battalion stressed that there’s no danger for Mariupol. Most likely, the fighters are trying to frighten the Ukrainians.”

 

More than 100 rounds of multiple rocket fire was also reported from the DNR-controlled Novoazovsk, Ukrayinska Pravda reported, citing reports. Large columns of armored vehicles carrying artillery, tanks, anti-aircraft rocket systems and mobile rocket launchers entered the Luhansk region on Sept. 6. The International Red Cross reported on Twitter the same day it couldn’t deliver humanitarian aid because of artillery fire. For the first time in months, the city of Luhansk had a night without gunfire, the city council website reported on Sept. 6. That night, pro-Russian fighters launched 10 attacks on Ukrainian positions during the ceasefire in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, reported Andriy Lysenko, the spokesman for the Information-Analytical Center of the National Security and Defense Council. An Aydar battalion company was ambushed the evening of Sept. 5, about an hour after the ceasefire took effect, by Russian special forces in the Luhansk region, in which at least nine soldiers were killed.

 

The Ukrainian government won’t have any choice but to impose martial law should the ceasefire fail, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk told the 1+1 television network on Sept. 7. The main advantages of martial law is the entire country will be placed on a military track, “starting from civilian defense and ending with the military command gaining full authority on Ukraine’s territory.” The main negative is that Ukraine’s Western partners won’t support the decision to wage war instead of finding a diplomatic solution, he said. Yatsenyuk recognized that the Russian government is waging war, which the Ukrainian government hasn’t legally recognized.

 

Zenon Zawada: The value of the ceasefire agreement will be judged on three main points: ceasing warfare, the exchange of hostages and the gradual withdrawal of Russian soldiers and hardware. So far, it’s very tenuous. The current government realizes that the ceasefire carousel is wearing thin with the Ukrainian public, particularly when numerous leading political parties are calling for martial law. We see its likelihood at about 75 percent, given that we expect Russian aggression to extend beyond the Donbas region in the next six months.

 

Meanwhile, the agreement’s political components are hazy and can’t be fulfilled at this point, considering that it’s not even clear what would be the boundaries of the territory known as the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republic. Without further action (such as martial law or its reverse, complete surrender by Ukraine), the situation is shaping up to be a frozen conflict, in which Russian-sponsored agents will control about a third of the Donbas region, and the Ukrainian government will control the rest.

 

Such a situation would also weigh heavily on the Ukrainian economy, since industry will be stalled and armed fighting is likely to continue under such conditions. A full-scale war with Russia is increasingly becoming the only option for the Ukrainian state to survive this conflict. In our view, Russia has the advantage of time and would succeed in utterly disabling the Ukrainian economy in a war of attrition.

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