UN peacekeeping may not solve Donbas conflict, diplomats warn

UN peacekeeping missions always resulted in frozen
conflicts and never resolved them, which could have the same result in Donbas,
the Wall Street Journal reported on Feb. 19, citing several former U.S.
diplomats attending the Munich Security Conference including Michal McFaul and
John Bolton. Russia isn’t interested in the situation in Ukraine calming down,
the diplomats said, so the peacekeeping forces could end up unintentionally
securing Russian control over Donbas rather than resolving the conflict. This
can occur with Russia delaying or disrupting the planned transfer of control of
the Russian-Ukrainian border in the occupied territory, they said. The risks of
this happening can be reduced if sanctions are gradually relaxed during the
process, one diplomat said.

Zenon Zawada: Russia’s
strategy throughout the war in Ukraine has been to get the West to hang itself
on its own rope. It uses the West’s commitment to democratic institutions to
continue to spread its narratives and talking points in the Ukrainian mass
media. Russia used the referendum in the Netherlands to attempt to undermine
the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement (it failed), and Russia is lobbying EU
legislatures to remove the sanctions. So using a UN peacekeeping mission to
freeze the conflict in Donbas, rather than resolve it, would be fully in line
with these Russian tactics.

The big factor that would make the Russians think
twice about freezing the conflict is the ongoing sanctions being applied by the
U.S. and the EU. If Russia can’t get European sanctions relaxed in the next
three years, then it will increasingly consider the option of expanded warfare,
which is being increasingly discussed among Ukrainian political players. But if
sanctions in Europe are relaxed – and we believe the trend is heading in that
direction – then freezing the conflict is the best option from the Russian
viewpoint. That can be achieved by undermining the UN peacekeeping mission or
simply allowing the current conflict to freeze out of exhaustion.