TE20160319 by MrDi

Author:MrDi
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: News, The Economist
Publisher: The Economist
Published: 2016-03-17T16:02:57.691031+00:00

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Fighting in Ukraine

Bite the bullet

The Minsk peace deal is going nowhere

Mar 19th 2016 | KIEV | From the print edition

Mr Poroshenko, not empty-handed

A COLUMN of men in camouflage snaked through the streets of Ternopil, a sleepy town in western Ukraine, with a casket held aloft earlier this week. Yuri Dinya, a solider who died from wounds sustained in eastern Ukraine, was the latest casualty of a war that sputters along largely out of sight. Although the violence has ebbed, following a peace deal signed in Minsk last year, not one part of the peace plan has been implemented. A meeting on March 3rd between the foreign ministers of Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France ended in exasperation.

Yet the skirmishes and negotiations continue not because both sides seek to control Ukraine’s Donbas region, but because neither wants to assume responsibility for it. Russia has made clear that it does not plan to annex it, and would rather use it to destabilise Ukraine from within. Ukraine’s leaders, while formally committed to taking back the territory, also recognise the problems they would inherit. The Minsk agreement is a “big fat status quo that doesn’t satisfy anyone, but that we can’t get out of,” says Balazs Jarabik of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think-tank.

Part of the problem is that Petro Poroshenko, the president of Ukraine, agreed to a Kremlin-friendly deal that he never expected to hold up (an earlier compact crumbled within weeks). A ceasefire was to be followed by the withdrawal of heavy weapons and local elections. Amnesty for fighters, a hostage exchange, aid distribution and the restoration of Ukrainian financial responsibility for the territories were to ease the way toward reconciliation. Constitutional changes to decentralise power and a law granting the contested territories “special status” would formalise their return to Ukraine, and ultimately allow it to retake control of its borders.

The debate over which step to take first has stopped any from being taken. The Kremlin blames Ukraine for balking at the political elements of the deal. Ukraine, in turn, insists that security should come first. Some in Kiev argue that constitutional changes are impossible until Ukraine’s borders are restored. The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe still records hundreds or thousands of ceasefire violations weekly, mostly from the separatist side.

Ukraine’s European allies have been pushing for progress on a law over local elections. But frustration is building, especially as Ukraine’s leadership is mired in internal squabbles and corruption scandals. Earlier this month, Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, declared that Ukraine will not become a member of the European Union or NATO in the next two decades. Mr Juncker’s remarks were meant to reassure Dutch voters ahead of a referendum on Ukraine’s association agreement with the EU next month. While the vote is not binding, it will hint at the European mood.

Americans, too, seem wary of Ukraine’s continuing vulnerability. This week Victoria

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