The first and second agreements signed in the Belarussian capital Minsk have failed to restore peace in the east of Ukraine. The problem is not that there was anything structurally wrong with either deal, nor indeed was there anything significantly wrong with the earlier deal negotiated with a wider circle of moderating parties in Geneva, prior to Minsk I and Minsk II. All three proposed peace deals were appropriate for their time and the circumstances.
All three proposed deals have failed because of Russian intransigence.
Over the years of this conflict I have recorded and detailed progress towards the implementation of the Minsk deals in a series of articles. Whether or not each party has taken steps towards meeting their obligations is not a matter of differing opinion. Whatever “alternative facts” Russia attempts to present, there is a hot war in eastern Ukraine, and it needs to stop, and Russia holds the key to this happening. This is the cold hard truth.
However, while in the past I have argued that it was not an appropriate time to bury Minsk, Minsk II was signed over three years ago, and the facts on the ground have overtaken the reality that Minsk II was designed to deal with. A new outline of steps towards peace is needed to reflect the new reality on the ground. Fortunately, as a result of the way that Russia has behaved, and now that there is a better global understanding of what kind of adversary Russia is, getting international consensus on this new road map should be easier. Moreover, the road map itself can contain fewer errors of understanding caused by the dishonesty of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin in his negotiations in the Belarussian capital.
First, the pitfalls
The narrative needs to be framed correctly in order to avoid the traps that that Russia are certain to deploy. Russia will claim that as sanctions are related to Minsk implementation, if Minsk is to be abandoned so too related sanctions must be abandoned. This might be the world’s worst argument, but they will try. The reality, sanctions on Russia relate to Russia’s instigation of a war in Ukraine and Russian occupation of parts of Ukraine. Sanctions will be relaxed when those two issues are addressed. Plus, Minsk isn’t being abandoned, just updated.
Old problems, new approaches
The foundation of any peace deal is absolutely the same, time after time. Point one; ceasefire. It is necessary to note that it is at this stage that attempts to return peace to eastern Ukraine have failed, this very basic and first requirement not just of Minsk, but of every peace deal ever written in history. It is also necessary to note that ceasefire violations from the two sides are not equivalent: the Ukrainian armed forces are defending their land and the Russian led forces are attacking. That is not equivalent, neither legally nor morally.
It is also necessary to note, in our new approach to dealing with Russian aggression, that the evidence of this conflict being indigenous is zero. That may be a hard thing for some in the international community to understand. There’s a war in a certain location, there must be a local cause for this, right? No – not when your neighbor is Putin. On the contrary, there is overwhelming evidence that the cause of this conflict comes from Russia, not Ukraine.
The formerly occupied city of Slovyansk is at peace – nobody there is calling to be incorporated into Russia, or a Russian proxy state, although that same city was the ground zero from which the conflict was launched almost exactly four years ago to this day. The same can be said of Kharkiv, which was, in the Kremlin’s heinous plans, also to have become a “people’s republic.” It remains a peaceful part of sovereign Ukraine. The same can be said of Odesa.
To continue to provide evidence of the foreign nature of the war on Ukrainian soil, I offer the following challenges, all together:
- Show me any recorded significant appetite for a separation from the state of Ukraine in either Donetsk or Luhansk prior to the spring of 2014.
- Show me any statements from any number of the local population of the city of Debaltseve where they call to be united with a “people’s republic” prior to Debaltseve being captured on Feb. 18, 2015. (Note, seven days after Minsk II was signed. Five days after the Minsk II ceasefire had been scheduled to come into force.)
- Show me calls from the residents of Avdiyivka for Russian proxy forces to come and rescue them from the yoke of living as a part of the Ukrainian state. This city has borne the brunt of some of the heaviest fighting in the last two years, find me a single resident of that city who asked for any of this to come into their lives for any reason.
- I repeat the same challenge related to the population centers of Pisky (in the region of Donetsk airport) or Shyrokne (a once peaceful seaside holiday town, close to Mariupol) or in fact anywhere along the conflict line.
The people in these areas don’t want to join the Kremlin-fabricated structures, they have never asked for anything other than a return to peace, what is evident when looking at the war in eastern Ukraine is that it is not, and never has been, based on the will of the people.
Putin has not moved into Ukraine to come to the rescue of ethnic Russians or in defense of language choices – this is all a big lie. He has acted to destabilize Ukraine because the fact of the success of an anti-corruption people’s revolution terrifies him. That is the simple truth.
What would Minsk III look like?
The same as Minsk II, but with a strict order of implementation.
- The ceasefire requirement is immediate and absolute. Should the attacking side fail to fully abide by this, there will be even more sanctions applied by an international community fed up of dealing with the bellicose Kremlin.
- A heavy weapons pull back.
- The granting of full and complete access to the area to the OSCE SMM, and a guarantee of safe passage to its members for monitoring purposes. The dismantling of the Russian-installed occupation authorities – they are not indigenous, they certainly do not represent the locals, and they have no legitimacy.
- An international armed mission of neutral parties should be assembled immediately, under the auspices of a UN Peacekeeping Mission. If Russia uses its veto at the UN Security Council over to block the mission there should be immediate and serious penalties, like cutting the country off from SWIFT.
- Ukrainian political parties of all stripes (and this absolutely includes local, Donbas-based parties) should be allowed to compete for the trust of the voters in the region, in an unhindered way, ahead of elections there.
- The term for the temporary local government in the occupied areas has expired – this provision of Minsk II is dead. Thus, an international temporary governing structure is needed prior to restoration of Ukrainian sovereignty.
- The Special Status law is largely symbolic and innocuous, all sides should recognize that it never conferred autonomy on Donbas or reduced Ukraine’s sovereignty in any way.
- Some kind of reconciliation council should be created, this is the place to address questions like an amnesty. No amnesty has ever extended to war crimes, but people involved in civilian administration or being forced to teach children a perverted version of history is not a crime.
- As long as the border is porous, those who have committed crimes that would fall outside of any amnesty provision are likely to escape: Good riddance.
- The OSCE and proposed armed UN Peacekeeping Mission will ensure that the border is no longer transgressed by mercenaries from Russia.
These are not things to be “negotiated” with Putin, this is not a buffet for him or Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to choose from and reject in part items that they don’t like, this is a list of ultimatums. Accept them, stop this war, dismantle the illegally constructed systems of Russian management (political, economic, military) in the Donbas. Get out of Ukraine.
