The Minsk Agreements for peace in eastern Ukraine, signed seven years ago today, are the main hope of France and Germany to avoid a war between Russia and the neighboring country, although in practice they have long been at a point dead.
“To this day (the Minsk Agreements) they are the only way to achieve a lasting peace” in Donbas, where pro-Russian separatists supported by Moscow and the Ukrainian Army have been fighting since 2014, French President Emmanuel Macron said this week. after his meetings with the presidents of Russia, Vladimir Putin, and of Ukraine, Volodímir Zelensky.
The French president assured that he had received from the two leaders their commitment to these agreements, agreed on February 12, 2105 in the Belarusian capital in a marathon summit between Putin; Zelensky’s predecessor, Petro Poroshenko; the then German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the then French president François Hollande.
The aim of the agreements was to end a war that, almost eight years after it began, has claimed the lives of 14,000 people, according to the UN.
The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, who will hold meetings with Zelensky and Putin on Monday and Tuesday in Kiev and Moscow, also hopes to obtain the support of the two leaders for the Minsk Agreements, which the Franco-German axis has tried to revive in recent years. weeks in the so-called Normandy Format (Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine).
3 keys that explain why Ukraine is so important for Russia
Efforts, but no progress
Despite the efforts of France and Germany to thus achieve a de-escalation around Ukraine for the deployment of more than 100,000 Russian soldiers on the border with the neighboring countrywith separate meetings of the advisors of the leaders of the Normandy Format on January 26 and last day 10 in Paris and Berlin, have not yet made progress.
The immediate ceasefire imposed by the agreements in Donbas has made it possible to reduce the armed clashes, but the observation mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) still reports violations every day.
In Paris, French diplomacy managed, at least, tothat the parties adopted for the first time in two years a joint declaration. In it, they committed to the ceasefire and to ironing out their differences in the interpretation of the implementation of the agreements.
But two weeks later in Berlin no consensus was possible, according to Kiev mainly because Russia kept insisting that Ukraine should talk directly with the pro-Russian separatistsa red line for Zelensky.
“If Ukraine agrees to this, then Russia’s status would change from that of a party to the conflict to that of a mediator,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitro Kuleba explained yesterday, Friday.
Why is Ukraine so important to Russia?
The Ukrainian government considers Russia to be part of the conflict, an aggressor state that supports the pro-Russian rebels politically, logistically and economically.
The problem for Kiev is that the Minsk Agreements, despite having been signed by Moscow, do not mention Russia, which in turn states that there is a civil war in Donbas and that it has nothing to do with the conflictin addition to recalling that in the agreement a dialogue was established with Donetsk and Lugansk.
At its “zero point”
Russia’s chief negotiator, Dmitri Kozak, said yesterday, Friday, that the resolution of the conflict in Donbas is at “point zero” seven years after the signing of the Minsk Agreementsespecially since Kiev refuses to comply with the special status it must grant to Donetsk and Luhansk.
For Ukraine the crux of the matter is the chronological order that must be followed between the entry into force of the special status and the holding of local electionsas well as for the restoration of full control of the Russian-Ukrainian border in the conflict zone by the Ukrainian state.
The Steinmeier Formula, named after the former German Foreign Minister and current President of Germany, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, and which was adopted in 2019, tried to put order into the steps to be taken, without success to date.
By adopting the text, Zelensky agreed to the holding of local elections in Donbas, but insisted that they can only be held after the withdrawal of Russian forces and after Ukraine regains control of the state border. Russia, by contrast, claims that the transfer of control would begin the day after the elections and would end after a constitutional reform on Ukraine’s decentralization.
This being the case, getting the Minsk Agreements out of the impasse in which they find themselves will not be easy for Germany and France, but both countries consider that, for the time being, there is no other alternative. (I)
Source: Eluniverso
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