Ex-President Leonid Kuchma said on Sept. 11 that he believed the only realistic solution for ending Russia’s war against Ukraine would be to deploy foreign peacekeepers.
“The main solution in the future is a peacekeeping mission under the aegis of the United Nations, the UN Security Council or the European Union,” he told reporters at the Yalta European Strategy forum in Kyiv. “There are no grounds to hope for any other scenario.”
Kuchma, who represents Ukraine in its peace talks with Russia and Kremlin-backed separatists in Minsk, also said that he expected a protocol on the withdrawal of weapons in Donbas to be signed soon. “If you withdraw weapons, it’s much harder to begin military action,” he said.
One obstacle to the peace process, however, is a lack of monitors of the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe.
At least 1,000 observers are needed, compared to 500 now, Kuchma said. He added that OSCE monitors also needed more equipment, including drones.
Another impediment to the talks is that, whenever Ukraine proposes creating a working group for controlling the Russian-Ukrainian border, Russia says it’s too early for that, Kuchma said.
Kuchma went on to say that the Kremlin was using prisoner exchange talks as a tool for putting pressure on Ukraine.
He also said that it was uncertain whether the Feb. 12 Minsk agreement would actually be implemented by the end of this year.
“The president (Petro Poroshenko) said there is a desire to implement these protocols by the end of this year,” he said. “But anything might happen.”
Kuchma said that he was not sure that the lull in the war zone would last until the end of this year.
He also commented on speculation that the Kremlin could agree on fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant jointly with the West in exchange for Western concessions on Ukraine.
Analysts have speculated that Russian President Vladimir Putin will make a statement on the issue at the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 28 but Kuchma said such deals were unlikely to be announced publicly and were a matter of backdoor negotiations.
“(Russia) is mostly interested in supporting (Syrian President Bashar) Assad’s regime,” he said.
More and more evidence has emerged recently that Russia was covertly sending troops to Syria to back Assad.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oleg Sukhov can be reached at [email protected].
