PARIS — In its sixth year, Russia’s war against Ukraine has killed an estimated 14,000 Ukrainians, injured at least double that and has displaced 1.5 million.
It has demolished countless homes and left communities in ruins. The United Nations says that 5.2 million people in the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine urgently need humanitarian aid. Only Russian President Vladimir Putin can stop the war.
But it appears that he does not want to. That much became clear once again during the Paris peace talks between Ukraine and Russia, moderated by Germany and France, on Dec. 9.
The gathering of the so-called Normandy Four is the first meeting since October 2016, after which the dialogue became hopelessly stuck. And this time, the talks yielded little. Putin again refused to acknowledge the Kremlin’s sponsorship of the war and insisted that Kyiv should negotiate with Moscow-controlled administrations in the Donbas. His Ukrainian counterpart has refused to do this.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky returned to Kyiv with what many saw as no victory and no loss, “a draw” as he described it. The reaction in Ukraine seems to be that the political newcomer, president since May, did what he could — neither capitulating nor delivering a breakthrough.
The four leaders — including France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Angela Merkel — agreed to meet again in four months. By then, the success of a newly agreed cease-fire, concluded on Dec. 9, as well as a prisoner exchange, will be clear.
3-stage prisoner swap
Zelensky won agreement for an “all-for-all” prisoner exchange in three stages: a swap with Kremlin-occupied Donbas, later with annexed Crimea, and then with Russia itself, Zelensky explained to Ukrainian journalists in Paris.
The first swap is to take place before New Year. It will follow a September detainee exchange, which set free 35 Ukrainian and 35 Russian prisoners.
“It is a big step: 72 people can return home… I really want it,” Zelensky said.
The exact number of prisoners proposed in the upcoming exchange is actually 77, according to Valeria Lutkovska, ex-ombudsman and now Ukraine’s representative in the Minsk peace talks. “These are approved lists of people, 53 from Donetsk, and 24 from Luhansk,” Lutkovska told the UNIAN news agency. The next meeting in Minsk, Belarus is scheduled for Dec. 18.
It is not clear how many prisoners actually remain in the Donbas. The Security Service of Ukraine claims 227, while the non-governmental prisoner exchange negotiators, Patriot Group, say 150. Among them are journalist Stanislav Aseev, a Donbas native who surreptitiously reported from Russian-occupied regions for Ukrainian news outlets. He was detained in June 2017 and accused of espionage.
Another 113 Ukrainians, imprisoned on political charges in Russia and Crimea, are slated to come home in the second and third rounds of the swap, according to Zelensky.
Another truce
Zelensky and Putin also agreed to a new ceasefire by the end of the month, something that has been agreed upon at least 20 times since 2014 but never happened, due to constant violations of the truce. While the four leaders were meeting in Paris, three more Ukrainian soldiers were killed on the war front.
Ukraine and Russia, nonetheless, approved pulling back troops at three more points along the front line by the end of March. In mid-November, the sides completed troop withdrawals from three other flashpoints. No shooting has occurred at those sites since then.
The two presidents also negotiated the opening of new crossing points for civilians along the front line within 30 days. There are four such checkpoints in Donetsk Oblast and a single pedestrian crossing, a bridge, in Luhansk Oblast.
Gas step ahead
The bilateral meeting brought at least one surprise. Comedian-turned-president Zelensky told journalists that he did not expect the face-to-face meeting to include seven other people from each side. Some of those faces created some discomfort for many Ukraine watchers.
The Russian delegation included a top aide of Putin, Vladislav Surkov, who is sanctioned by the European Union and U.S. for his role in the annexation of Crimea and Russia’s hybrid war against Ukraine. Also among Putin’s delegation was Alexey Miller, the CEO at Russia’s state-owned Gazprom.
Gas talks took “a lot of time” in the hour-long bilateral meeting with Putin, Zelensky said after the summit.
Russia’s Nord Stream 2 undersea pipeline, designed to transfer gas from Russia through the Baltic Sea to Germany and bypassing Ukraine, is not going to be completed by the end of December. That is when the 10-year gas transit contract between Ukraine and Russia expires.
Nord Stream 2 is seen as a threat to the energy independence of the European Union. On Dec. 9, U.S. lawmakers preliminarily approved sanctions on companies building Nord Stream 2 in an attempt to punish Moscow for meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. But it looks as though the drive to halt its construction could be too little and too late.
In Paris, Zelensky and Putin agreed to sign another gas transit contract. Zelensky wants a 10-year agreement, while Putin offered only a year. “It will definitely not be a one-year contract,” Zelensky told journalists.
Serving as a corridor for European-bound Russian fuel — up to 100 billion cubic meters yearly — existing transit provides Kyiv with $3 billion in fees annually.
Russia repeatedly rejected the signing of a new gas transit deal until Kyiv waives its claim in the Stockholm arbitration court. That body already ruled that Gazprom must pay $3 billion to its Ukrainian counterpart Naftogaz as compensation for the 2009 “take-or-pay” deal under which Ukraine had to buy overpriced Russian gas even if it did not need these supplies. Ukraine did not agree to such a concession.
Germany is putting pressure on Russia to sign a gas transit deal with Ukraine. Merkel said that Nord Stream 2 will not become operational unless Ukraine secures a gas transit commitment from the Kremlin.
“Even after Turk Stream [another Russian pipeline] and Nord Stream 2 are in operation, Russia will need to use Ukraine’s gas transit pipelines if it is to maintain market share as Europe’s gas import requirement grows,” said Edward C. Chow, energy expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“Both sides seem to be aware of the danger another gas cutoff poses for Ukraine’s reputation as a reliable transit country and Russia’s reputation as a reliable gas supplier, regardless of who’s fault it might be.”
Another cutoff would be the third in 15 years.
Border dead-end?
Three years ago, at the previous Normandy summit, and again during the Dec. 9 peace talks, one of the biggest stumbling blocks for Kyiv and Moscow was the issue of when — if ever — Ukraine will regain control over its eastern border.
Both Zelensky and Putin said that they have “totally opposing views” on it, and Zelensky called this “one of the most complicated issues to solve.”
Russia wants elections in the Donbas to be held before Ukraine regains control of the border. Ukraine says that no fair and transparent elections are possible when Russian-backed militants control its territory, and they must first withdraw.
The order of events Putin backs is prescribed by the Minsk Protocol, approved in 2014 and amended in 2015, including by then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.
At her post-summit press conference, Merkel supported Zelensky’s approach.
“There is a question on whether this document (Minsk agreements) can or cannot be amended. There are some suggestions from President Zelensky regarding its change… We hope that this document (Minsk agreements) will be flexible again and that it will be revived,” Merkel said.
At his Paris briefing, Zelensky said that he has ideas for restoring Ukraine’s internationally recognized border.
“We have a few ideas and started talking it through. I suggested creating a special group in Minsk that would focus on regaining control over the border, step-by-step. I said that this process must conclude before elections,” he said.
Putin might have another view. At his press conference in Moscow on Dec. 10, Putin said that, if Ukraine regains control over the border, “Srebrenica will happen” — meaning a genocide will be carried out by so-called Ukrainian radicals who are a favorited focus of Kremlin narratives.
Srebrenica is a town in Bosnia and Herzegovina where Russian-backed Bosnian Serbs massacred 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in 1995. Their commander was convicted to life-sentence by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Russia called this decision “biased.”
Any hope?
While Zelensky was negotiating on peace in Paris, at home he was facing the anger of critics, political rivals and their supporters. Many took to the streets on Dec. 8 to condemn his plan as “capitulation.” Ukrainian diaspora also went on a rally in Paris the same day. They demanded Zelensky not surrender Ukraine to Putin.
On Dec. 9, a group of Ukrainian war veterans flew to Paris and organized a demonstration near the Champs Elysees Palace.
“We aim to achieve very simple goals: no federalization of Ukraine or any other division of the country, even if Russia offers gas, money or some political benefits,” a leader of Ukraine’s Veterans Movement, Evgen Turchak, told the Kyiv Post.
The veterans also demanded Zelensky to return Crimea. He later explained that he and Putin “did not get to talking about Crimea” because some other question took 30–40 minutes of the one-hour meeting and then they had other issues to discuss. However, Zelensky said he wanted to talk about the Russian annexation of the peninsula.
Zelensky’s rivals say he failed to achieve much. His supporters say he held his ground. Some experts think there was no breakthrough because Putin is not interested in peace.
“His primary objective is not peace in Donbas. It is to keep Ukraine in trouble and himself in power because of that,” said Roland Freudenstein, policy director of the Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies in Brussels.
“True, the sanctions hurt, and Russia’s war against Ukraine is unpopular at home, but he still believes he can get the sanctions lifted without giving anything, only through reinforcing discord in the West,” he added.
What remains after the Paris meeting, Freudenstein said, will remain an “unsolved status quo.”
