Ukraine top diplomat calls for single Minsk road map

No single road map exists for fulfilling the Minsk Accords and a new one needs to be drafted, said on Sept. 13 Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin, in response to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s calls for a “parallel road map” to implement the peace agreement to resolve the conflict in Donbas. “We don’t have a single agreed upon ‘road map’ where fundamental and important things would be fixated,” he told a press briefing in Kyiv. Such a road map needs to outline “consistency of what needs to be done and the guarantee that the Russian side will do it,” Klimkin said, calling for the need for a single, clear, understood road map based on the position of the Normandy Format.

Zenon Zawada: Numerous road maps have been drafted and referred to by the different parties in implementing the Minsk accords, a big factor in the inability to reach any progress. It truly is time to draw upon the plans already drafted in forming a single new road map. Whether that can be done is doubtful, in our view, because the Russian government refuses to basic conditions necessary for elections in the occupied Donbas, such as restoring Ukrainian control of their common border.

These latest comments merely confirm that the peace talks to resolve the Donbas war remain at Square One, more than two years after the first shots were fired. Until a new road map emerges, we expect the current cycle to repeat itself of cease-fires being declared and then interrupted by eruptions of shootings and killings.