- The reason Minsk agreement isn’t being implemented is due to the weakness of Poroshenko in Kiev and the relative strength of right-wingers ready to tear into Poroshenko for any concessions made for the sake of peace
- Basically, having helped delegitimize and sideline reasonable actors Poroshenko now finds himself without significant allies that would take his side agains the nationalist uber-hawks
Rostislav Ishchenko is a
prominent, popular and prolific Russian analyst.
This article originally
appeared at Pravda News. Translated by Alena Scarecrow at The Vineyard of the Saker
On July 21st in Minsk there was held another
regular meeting of the contact group devoted to settling the Ukrainian
conflict. It resulted in reaching an agreement on the withdrawal of tanks and weapons
of up to 100 mm caliber from the delimitation line.
The corresponding document was drawn out – however, not
signed. As for the political issues, the parties once again failed to come to
the mutual understanding.
Rostislav Ischenko, the President of the System Analysis
and Forecasting Centre, is sharing his estimation of the
current situation.
“The negotiations on withdrawing weapons were actually
being run back during finalizing the Minsk-2 Agreement.
Finally putting them in
black and white is undoubtedly good, but as long as they are not signed we
cannot regard it as any real breakthrough. Practice shows that signed and put
in action are not necessarily synonyms, so it is early times yet to express
excessive optimism.
From my point of view, this contact group meeting is
nonetheless highly significant. Moreover, it can be considered to be a major
milestone in a certain respect. For quite a while Russia used to be a solitary
fighter struggling for truth under joint attacks of France, Germany, OSCE and the Ukraine.
Now after an OSCE representative’s statement that the
agreement on the withdrawal of up to 100mm caliber weapons has fallen through –
with the transparent implication that it is Kiev to blame – the situation has
taken an abrupt turn. It is Kiev now opposing the others’ unified position –
the document would have been signed had it not been for the Ukraine’s
disagreement on it.
Unless the parties’ unified position changes, the Ukraine risks to get into complete isolation sooner or later – probably, even in the course of the ongoing negotiations. The country under the current circumstances will barely benefit from finding herself devoid of allies, partners and support. Now the Ukrainian authorities certainly have things to ponder.
In the political regard there are two major issues, in my view – Kiev’s foreign and domestic policy positions. In the light of the former, the Ukraine could just have made immediate concessions, acting in full accordance with her American teachers’ lessons, – to agree to something but never actually put it into life, – had it not been for the latter.
The bottom line is that Kiev’s domestic policy is deprived of flexibility or constructivism. Rada found it extremely hard to accept even most meaningless amendments to the Constitution Poroshenko had put forward.
Petr Alekseevich (Poroshenko) overtly declared that Donbass was never going to be given a special status. The corresponding law would never come into force as it presumed that first Donbass should surrender and only after that any such questions could be raised. Despite of all the forceful arguments, Rada refused to vote.
Now all sorts of Nazi battalions, Right Sector being the most vigorous of all, put enormous pressure on Poroshenko hysterically demanding that he denounces “Minsk”.
He is actually caught in the crossfire, having to choose whether to give in to the external pressure and comply with “Minsk” or to go along with the internal forces and disregard it.
He has no means that would enable him to either withstand or effectively maneuver.
So actually Kiev has faced a stalemate. Poroshenko would probably not mind implementing all the Minsk provisions but he cannot, due to his domestic opponents and his own inability to suppress them.
It seems to me that the present situation has all the makings of ending in new internal conflicts in the Ukraine rather than any radical change in her position in the negotiations. The international pressure is likely to increase, but Kiev’s constructivism – hardly”
Source: Russia
Insider 25-07-2015
