Ukraine’s delegation in Minsk peace talks aimed at stopping the war in the Donbas has put together a proposal to hold elections in the occupied parts of eastern Ukraine by the end of March after Russia-backed militants withdraw troops from the area, head of the delegation Leonid Kravchuk told news agency Interfax-Ukraine on Nov. 5.
Called Joint Steps Plan, the proposal hasn’t been made public yet and Ukraine’s delegation is expected to officially submit the document to the Trilateral Contact Group — seated by Ukraine, Russia, and Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) — by Nov. 6.
However, Kravchuk has revealed its major provisions.
The first step is to halt hostilities: Only after Ukraine regains control over its border and normalizes life in the uncontrolled Donbas, it will hold local elections there.
“All the militant formations, mercenaries, weapons, everything must be withdrawn from this territory,” Kravchuk said. “The illegal armed groups must be dismissed. This has to be done by the beginning of 2021.”
There are other nuances, too.
Ukraine wants Russia to cancel a number of laws and decrees that, according to Ukraine’s delegation, directly intervene in the life of people living on the occupied territory of the Donbas. One of them is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decree that allows the residents of the occupied Donbas to acquire Russian citizenship through simplified procedure.
Another condition is for Russia-backed militants to allow OSCE staff to access parts of the border that have been closed for them as of today. At the same time, Ukraine wants OSCE to quadruple its presence in the Donbas for 1,500 people.
If these conditions are fulfilled, the Ukrainian parliament will pass a law regulating the election procedure and will hold elections in the Donbas.
Steinmeier Formula — a peace plan proposed by the German president back in 2016 that suggests holding elections in the occupied territories under Ukrainian legislation and the supervision of the OSCE — has to be mentioned in the law, he said.
The Joint Steps Plan sets a deadline for holding elections in the occupied Donbas for March 31.
Free economic zone
After the elections, the free economic zone in the occupied parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts has to be launched and should be operational until 2050, because “it will be impossible to restore the economy there without it,” Kravchuk said.
The free economic zone envisions special conditions of taxation and state control over business activities in order to attract investors to the war-torn parts of Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office stated on Oct. 15.
The free trade zone would cancel the trade blockade on the occupied areas that Ukraine imposed in 2017. Accelerated economic partnership with Ukraine could become a clear argument for residents of the occupied territories to trade more with Ukraine-controlled territories and be a boon for future reintegration, according to Zelensky’s office.
Launching the free economic zone with the occupied Donbas was among five questions Zelensky asked the nation in an opinion poll conducted on Oct. 25, on the day of the local elections in the country. According to preliminary results released by the Servant of the People ruling party, 46.7% of voters supported the idea and 46.5% did not.
Punishing war criminals
Another key point of Joint Steps Plan is to ensure those responsible for war crimes in the Donbas are punished, while those locals who had never got involved in the war must not be prosecuted.
“There are criminals, people, who came there to kill for money — they have to be held accountable, the others (can) live and work normally on their Ukrainian land,” Kravchuk said.
The law regulating the punishment for war crimes in the Donbas has to be passed by the parliament later on, he added.
Prisoner exchange
Kravchuk also stressed that Ukraine wants international organizations, including the International Committee of the Red Cross, to get access to the occupied Donbas by mid-November and visit the captives held in the occupied territory. This step will ensure Ukraine and Russian-backed militants’ ability to hold a final prisoner swap in the “all for all” format by Dec. 15.
The previous prisoner exchange between Ukraine and Russia-backed militants took place on April 16, when 20 Ukrainians were freed from captivity. It had been the third exchange since Zelensky became the president of Ukraine. Altogether, 135 Ukrainians have returned home since the presidential election in spring 2019.
The compromise?
Ukraine’s plan on ending the war in the Donbas came out after the Russia-backed militants released their own proposal on Oct. 14. It involved holding elections in the Donbas after Ukraine changes its Constitution and voids a set of laws or amends them with the approval of Russia-backed militants, according to the document leaked through a controversial news website Strana.ua.
Ukraine, however, has been constantly rejecting such an order of events insisting that, first of all, Kyiv has to regain control over its eastern border with Russia and only then it can hold transparent and fair local elections.
And Ukraine’s position has not shifted in the new plan.
Now, both plans will have to be reviewed by the OSCE and possibly merged into one, Serhiy Harmash, a journalist and a member of Ukraine’s delegation to Minsk peace talks told the Kyiv Post. According to Harmash, Pierre Morel, chairman of the Trilateral Contact Group, has to put the two documents together.
“Neither their plan, nor ours, but a compromised plan prepared by Mr. Morel (will be discussed),” Harmash said. The unified version can possibly come out in a form of comparable table, he suggested.
The political subgroup of the Trilateral Contact Group is meeting on Nov. 10. That is when Morel is expected to present his merged document.
“Taking into account our previous experience, the discussion can last for 300 years because the vast majority of the positions in Russian plan is unacceptable for us,” Harmash said.
Putin and Zelensky to meet?
Kravchuk said that Ukraine also suggests holding another meeting in the Normandy Format by the end of the year — the highest level of negotiations on the war in the Donbas where presidents of Ukraine and Russia mediated by leaders of Germany and France have been trying to agree on the peace since 2014. The Minsk peace talks is part of the same peacemaking process, but the Normandy Format is hierarchically higher and so decisions made there can shape the final agreement between the parties.
In the Normandy Format, Zelensky and Putin can discuss “the security conditions and political conditions for local elections” in the Donbas, Kravshuk said. The previous Normandy Summit took place on Dec. 9, 2019 in Paris.
