Self-proclaimed republics created by Russian-backed forces should be disbanded because they don’t comply with Ukrainian laws, U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine Kurt Volker said on March 2.
“The so-called Luhansk People’s Republic and Donetsk People’s Republic are entities created by Russia to create a political fact on the ground, to help mask Russia’s role and cement an ongoing conflict,” Volker said during a panel discussion at the Hudson Institute think tank based in Washington, D.C. “They need to be disbanded. There is no place for them in Ukraine’s constitutional order.”
“What the Minsk agreements are about is the restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, and these entities have to go away,” he said. “They essentially function as local warlords engaged mostly in black market profiting. It’s a money-making enterprise.”
He also said that a transitional period would be needed to transfer the control over eastern Ukraine from Russia to the United Nations peacekeeping forces, and then to Ukraine.
“What we hope is that peacekeeping forces would be a means of implementing that (Minsk) agreement,” Volker said.
“We see it as a transition from Russian control today to UN control during the entire period where local elections are organized and held, where amnesty is given to people who committed crimes as a part of this conflict, where special status is cemented, and then transitioning to Ukrainian control,” he said.
It would take several months after Russia will have a political decision to “get out” of Ukrainian territory and it might take another six months to hold elections and validate them.
Volker also said that the elections in the uncontrolled parts of eastern Ukraine can be held by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.
Almost two years after Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called for UN peacekeepers in eastern Ukraine, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin supported the call for UN peacekeeping forces but said that the forces should only be operating on the ceasefire line.
But Ukraine demands peacekeeping forces on the entire territory of the uncontrolled parts of eastern Ukraine.
Volker agrees with Ukraine’s official position as having peacekeepers only on the ceasefire line “would effectively deepen the division between the country.” He also said that lately Russian representatives have been more open to Ukraine’s demands.
The UN has to consider a force of some 20,000 soldiers from non-NATO countries and 4,000 police officers to help resolve the crisis in Ukraine, according to a report presented to U.S. officials in February by former NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen who is now an adviser to Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko.
