Volker to meet with Poroshenko ahead of third meeting with Surkov

Kurt Volker, the U.S. special representative to Ukraine, will visit Kyiv this week and meet with Ukrainian President Poroshenko before his third meeting with his Russian counterpart, Vladislav Surkov. The visit to Kyiv will likely occur on Oct. 27, the dt.ua news site reported.
 
Russian President Putin told a Russian think tank on Oct. 19 that he would not compromise on restoring Ukrainian control of the shared border in occupied Donbas until the conditions of the law on special status are implemented on the territory. He indicated that restoring Ukrainian control – before elections are held and local authorities are elected with amnesty – would result in a potential massacre by Ukrainian forces.
 
Ukrainian Parliamentary Speaker Andriy Parubiy said on Oct. 22 that he expects parliament will approve the law on special status for the occupied territories of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions the week of Nov. 7-10 or Nov. 14-17.
 
Zenon Zawada: Volker is visiting Poroshenko to get guarantees ahead of his meeting with Surkov, among them likely to be the approval of the Donbas special status bill, as well as further legislation associated with it, such as conducting elections. With the conflict in Donbas, Putin is biding his time with his own presidential elections slated for 2018. We expect the Volker-Surkov talks to drag slowly, with agreements being reached incrementally. If elections are ever held in Donbas, an outcome we view as less-than-likely, then the earliest we see them is 2019, which would be simultaneous with Ukrainian presidential and parliamentary elections.
 
We were surprised at how smoothly parliament approved the legislation reintegrating Donbas in early October, with only scattered violence. The approval of the Donbas special status law is likely to involve fiercer violent opposition from nationalists, which is particularly risky with a tent city still functioning outside parliament that is manned by hundreds of Donbas war veterans. We see a potentially explosive situation approaching that the Poroshenko administration will have to prevent from escalating out of control.