The Chocolate King might melt, and fast, and possibly in Putin's mouth: "Poroshenko’s approval rating has fallen below 50 percent for the first time, according to the survey, which Kiev-based R&B Group conducted before Ukraine signed a cease-fire with Russia and a $17.5 billion bailout deal with the International Monetary Fund... The dissatisfaction may only increase once the Ukrainian public has a chance to digest the details of the truce Poroshenko reached with Russian President Vladimir Putin and the leaders of France and Germany... “He’s staking his political career on that deal, which he accepted knowing full well that he’ll be criticized for it at home”... There are already signs that the truce, which comes into force at midnight on Saturday, may be untenable... As part of its deal with the IMF, Ukraine pledged to push through measures that will likely be unpopular in the short run, such as further increases in energy prices, restructuring banks, overhauling state companies and cracking down on graft... While Poroshenko has fired some senior officials accused of corruption, none have been prosecuted... What happens next is impossible to predict because political developments in Ukraine “can’t be foreseen by anyone." - Poroshenko Reprieves Seen Fleeting as Ukrainians Sour on Leader - Bloomberg | Putin Comes Out On Top In New Minsk Agreement - Forbes | Ukraine ultranationalist leader rejects Minsk peace deal, reserves right 'to continue war' — RT News
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Former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, whose country fought a five-day war with Russia in 2008, revealed to an audience of Ukrainians what Vladimir Putin thought of their nation.
“I had 36 meetings with Putin,” Saakashvili said in a visit to the Ukrainian city of Lviv in August, five months after the annexation of Crimea. “At almost each one he repeated that Ukraine is not a real state but Russian territory. He will go as far as he is allowed.”
As a cease-fire emerges in Ukraine that gives Putin a lot of what he wants, the comments are a reminder of how the country remains trapped between the weight of Russian history and the force of European economics. In this squeeze, Putin’s narrative backed by Cold War memories is coupled with leaders unwilling to blow up ties with a major trading partner and energy supplier.
“Some EU member states just don’t care that much about Ukraine,” Paul Ivan, a former Romanian diplomat now with the European Policy Centre in Brussels, said this week. “There are countries with historical ties and good relations with Russia, and for some others they think they’re far away from Ukraine and they’re willing to compromise that country’s territorial integrity for their own economic interests.”
Putin says he is protecting Russian speakers in Ukraine, which Russia annexed in the mid-17th century and reluctantly relinquished as the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. He has overwhelming support at home, even as the economy starts to shrink on the back of plunging oil prices and an almost 50 percent tumble in the value of the ruble since August.
For the European Union, penalties like trade sanctions and visa restrictions are unlikely to be tough enough to bring Russia to heel, especially on a continent flirting with its own recession and coping with the legacy of a debt crisis.
“Putin has much more at stake,” said Dmitri Trenin, director of the Moscow Carnegie Center. “Putin’s will and Russia’s willingness to suffer for a cause is his asset.”
Photographer: Andrey Borodulina/AFP/Getty Images
The theater of conflict is the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine and the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk. Pro-Russia separatists want to establish an autonomous state because they say the Ukrainian government in Kiev tries to suppress their language and sever ties to Russia. Almost 5,500 people have died in the fighting since April, according to the United Nations.
The EU, saying Russia supports the insurgency, agreed to its first sanctions in March 2014. Since then, the 28-member bloc maintained sufficient unity to blacklist further individuals and companies linked to the conflict and impose some limits to Russian companies’ market access.
A cease-fire agreement in Minsk this week starting on Feb. 15 came after 18 hours of talks involving Putin, French President Francois Hollande, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Putin’s adversaries were under “no illusions” after the accord, which offered just a “glimmer of hope,” Merkel said.
It’s clear that European governments know the limit of their sanctions policy, said Steven Blockmans,an analyst at the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels.
They know that the impact sanctions are having on Russia, combined with a fall in oil prices and a declining ruble leads to “an impoverishment of the Russian people which over time is in no-one’s interest, Putin’s or Europe’s,” he said.
That means the Russian energy industry, the main driver of the economy, remains relatively unscathed while its banks still are connected to the international system. When Iran was isolated, there were sanctions on energy exports and it was cut off from the SWIFT banking network.
“Some European countries, for months now, have been suffering economic pain so political leaders have a message to sell to their own constituencies,” Blockmans said. “At the same time there’s an escalating conflict in Ukraine which makes it difficult for them to get off their high moral horses.”
Exports from the EU to Russia dropped by about 12 percent, or 14 billion euros ($16 billion), last year, based on Eurostat data for the first 11 months.
Nationally, exports range from 1 percent or less of outgoing goods for countries like Portugal, Ireland and the U.K. to as high as 21 percent in Lithuania, one of the three Baltic states that used to be part of the Soviet Union, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. They also rely on Russia for all their gas imports; for Ireland it’s zero.
Germany, the region’s largest economy, gets 37 percent of its gas from Russia, according to Eurogas. It sent 2.8 percent of its exports the other way in the first 11 months of 2014. Companies that are among the largest foreign investors in Russia include Volkswagen AG and Siemens AG, which generated 1.8 billion euros in Russia last year, or 2.5 percent of its total.
As well as energy companies such as Royal Dutch Shell Plc, BP Plc and France’s Total SA with stakes in Russian producers and projects, Russia is also the third-largest market for French carmaker Renault SA. It jointly controls OAO AvtoVAZ, the producer of Ladas. Deliveries last year fell 7.4 percent to 194,500 vehicles, which were about 7 percent of global sales.
Renault’s “opportunity for profitability has been practically washed out” by the crisis, Chief Executive Officer Carlos Ghosn said on Thursday. Still, “we consider that Russia must remain a pillar for our group,” he said.
Getting results through diplomatic channels is the main task, a senior EU diplomat said.
During discussions on the best way to tackle Putin, several countries said that while sanctions have an effect on the Russian economy, they also acknowledge they are not changing the Kremlin’s policy, the diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the negotiations are ongoing.
The Russian central bank has said the economy may shrink 3.2 percent from a year earlier in the first half of 2015 because of the combination of sanctions imposed by the U.S. and EU and the slumping price of oil.
At the same time, 85 percent of Russians approve of Putin’s actions as president, the independent Levada Center found in a poll of 1,600 respondents published last month. The figure is only slightly down on a peak of 88 percent in October.
The intertwining of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus goes back to the ninth century and the formation of a loose federation whose capital was Kiev. Russia and Ukraine were joined together by a treaty in 1654 and the country became a provider of cheap labor and agricultural goods to the Russian Empire and then the Soviets.
There was little development of the Ukrainian nation because most of the elite over the centuries were assimilated with Russia, according to Nataliya Kibita, who teaches Soviet history at Edinburgh University.
The first real opportunity to build a nation state in Ukraine came with the demise of the Soviet Union, something that Putin has referred to as a catastrophe.
“Ukraine did very little after 1991 to break with the Soviet legacy so society evolved more quickly than the state,” said Kibita. Sanctions “do not change the situation in Ukraine or force Putin to change his opinion on Ukraine,” she said.
The conflict has pummeled an already fragile economy, and one more important to Russia based on hard statistics. Ukraine accounts for 4.7 percent of Russian trade and 0.4 percent of EU trade, according to figures compiled by Bloomberg.
Ukraine devalued its currency by 31 percent on Feb. 5 as it tried to win more support from the International Monetary Fund. The Washington-based organization on Thursday announced a $40 billion bailout to help avoid a default.
President Poroshenko has to tackle corruption and Soviet-style management of the economy, said Kibita, who grew up in a Russian-speaking family in western Ukraine.
“If you want to get the conflict to go away you need to connect the Ukraine government with the people,” she said. “The problem is inside Ukraine and Putin knows this.”
The most recent precedent for the current conflict was in Georgia in 2008. The country is about a tenth of the size of Ukraine by population and land mass and the war lasted just five days, yet the events point to where Ukraine might be headed.
While the French brokered a cease-fire, the EU balked at sanctions against Russia because of reliance on energy imports at a time of faltering economic growth. The Russian military remains in the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, while Georgia now has a government promising to mend ties with Russia after Saakashvili stepped down in 2013.
“The EU doesn’t want the war, they are afraid of it,” said Emzar Jgerenaia, a professor at Ilia University in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital. “The Georgian example wasn’t a large enough lesson for the world.” —With Henry Meyer, Michael Winfrey, Mathieu Rosemain, Benedikt Kammel, and Daryna Krasnolutska.
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Germany has urged Russia to stick to the new eastern Ukraine cease-fire deal agreed in Minsk and warned of fresh sanctions if the deal is not respected.
The announcement on Friday came a day after the leaders of Germany, Russia, Ukraine and France agreed truce, after 17 hours of negotiations in the Belarusian capital of Minsk.
German government spokesman Steffen Seibert said at a press conference in Berlin: "The EU and its member states are keeping all options open for a possible response."
"We will continue our engagement for the success of the Minsk process, but we are also aware of the fact that there can be difficulties during the process, which may also necessitate our responses."
The cease-fire between Ukraine and pro-Russian separatists is set to go into effect at midnight on Saturday.
'Difficulties and pitfalls'
But fresh violence in the region has led to uncertainties over the hard-won deal.
At least eight Ukrainian soldiers have been killed and another 34 wounded during clashes less than 48 hours before the cease-fire, according to Ukraine’s Counterterrorism Center.
German government spokesman Seibert said earlier on Friday that the Minsk agreements was only the beginning of a long path full of difficulties and possible pitfalls.
Seibert said: "We are under no illusions here."
"This is a glimmer of hope. Words now need to be backed up by deeds."
Fresh sanctions
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday, following an informal meeting of European leaders in Brussels, that the European countries may decide on fresh sanctions if the cease-fire deal was not respected by Russia.
The cease-fire agreement includes the withdrawal of heavy weaponry from combat areas, the withdrawal of all foreign-armed formations and release of all hostages and unlawfully detained persons, as well as political reforms and decentralization in the eastern Ukrainian regions.
The Ukrainian government and pro-Russian separatists had previously signed a cease-fire agreement in Minsk on Sept. 5, 2014, but both sides repeatedly violated it.
European leaders accuse Russia of supporting the conflict with arms and ammunition, while Russia says the U.S. and EU have deliberately destabilized Ukraine to expand the west's military presence in Eastern Europe through NATO.
More than 5,300 people have been killed and 12,200 others injured in eastern Ukraine since mid-April last year in the ongoing conflict, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights.
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Vladimir Putin was the winner of the Minsk II peace accords. Territory gained by the rebels in violation of Minsk I appears to be conceded; there is no deadline for the pulling out of Russian regular troops and mercenary forces; Kiev must pay the costs of occupied territory; and the self-appointed stooges of the Kremlin, who call themselves the leaders of the self-proclaimed “people’s republics,” have gained recognition and a say in constitutional change.
All-night negotiations on Wednesday ended with the signing of the Declaration of Minsk in support of the “Package of Measures for the Implementation of the Minsk Agreements” by Angela Merkel of Germany, Francois Hollande of France, Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine and Vladimir Putin of Russia and release of the full agreement. The talks, according to some reports, almost collapsed near the end as Ukraine and rebel leaders balked at signing.
Declaration of principles
The Declaration reaffirms the territorial integrity of Ukraine and the signers’ pledge to use their influence on relevant parties to implement the September 5 and 12 Minsk Accords as supplemented by the February 12 Minsk II agreement.
The short Declaration throws in two goodies for Putin—trilateral talks among the EU, Ukraine and Russia on the settlement of winter gas payments plus negotiations on Russia’s “concerns” over Ukraine’s Free Trade Agreement with the EU. Presumably, the former promises substantial payments into the Kremlin’s depleting coffers and the latter may give the Kremlin a form of veto over Kiev’s EU membership. Remember, the whole thing blew up a year ago because of Ukraine’s move to join the EU.
The Declaration raises a major concern. Russia pledges to “use its influence” on the separatists, on whom, the Kremlin has repeatedly claimed, it has little or no influence. TASS (the official Russian news agency) has already reported that the separatist leaders refused (at least at first) to sign the agreement. If rebels violate the peace agreement, Putin can revert to his insistence that “Russia is not a party to the conflict.” Russia is just a bystander. Let the parties involved—Kiev and the rebels—solve this mess, he would say.
The provisions
The text of the agreement raises as many questions as it answers and sidesteps the thorniest issues. First, it calls for the “pullout of all foreign armed formations, military equipment, and also mercenaries from the territory of Ukraine under OSCE supervision (and) the disarmament of all illegal groups.” Sounds good, but all other provisions are subject to strict timelines. This one is not. No deadline is given—I doubt this was a drafting oversight. And monitoring is in the hands of the feckless Organization for Security and Cooperation (OSCE). Under this provision, Russian mercenaries and regular troops can remain indefinitely on Ukraine soil. The removal of foreign fighters was Poroshenko’s main goal and he lost badly on this one.
Second, the parties agree to a ceasefire in “particular districts” of the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces as of midnight on February 15. This clause gives the Russian-backed forces another three days to consolidate their gains, particularly over the critical rail juncture at Debaltseve. (The Associated Press reports fierce fighting around this crucial rail junction that as of mid-day on February 13.) The agreement also concedes the illegal expansion of rebel-controlled territory between September 5 and 19 and does not address the 500 square kilometers taken by Russian-backed forces since the signing of the September 5 Minsk Accords.
Third, the text calls for an immediate and full pull back of heavy weapons to a 50 to 240 kilometer buffer zone depending on the range of the weapons within 14 days of the ceasefire, to be monitored by OSCE observers.
Fourth, the parties agree to release all hostages and illegally detained persons within five days of the pull back of weapons.
Fifth, Ukraine agrees to resume the delivery of humanitarian aid including payments of pensions and transfers to the conflicted areas. Germany and France will also restore the banking system in these conflicted areas for this purpose. This provision relieves Russia and the so-called People’s Republics of an enormous burden: financing welfare payments to those millions of people. It also leaves open the question of payment of substantial subsidies to the dying Donbass coal and metals industries. Minsk II therefore leaves it up to Kiev to provide the finances to run a territory in the hands of declared enemies.
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Americans like to say that “it is hard to see the forest because of the trees”. So, in the midst of all the diplomatic shuffling and shuttling, the turbulence of artillery and explosions, and the passionate commentaries of pundits, let’s put the laptop aside, take a deep breath, and count to 10. Now we can better see the forest. The picture that emerges is that of Angela Merkel, Francois Hollande, and Vladimir Putin seated around a cozy, circular table while re-enacting the ancient ritual – not unlike the one favored by Neville Chamberlain - called the “peace process. In the middle of the photo sits Putin….a small, corrupt, deeply flawed, and insecure despot with a KGB mindset and hands bloodied with thousands of Chechens, Georgians, and Ukrainians. It is he who started – without cause or provocation - the whole cycle that has destabilized much of the world, caused great destruction and suffering, and set back the clock 80 years to the 1930s. Having grossly underestimated Ukrainian resilience and determination to (forevermore) emerge from under Russia’s shadow, his ego does not allow him to do what only he can do to restore peace – make one phone call to his murderous clowns in Donetsk and Luhansk
There is no doubt that he wants a “diplomatic solution”, and that he would restore peace in a heartbeat, provided that he gets to determine the size and shape of Ukraine, keeps some of its territory, retains veto power over its sovereignty, and reconstructs the nation in a way that is unacceptable to almost all its citizens, while reducing it to a meaningless appendage of Russia.
On either side of him sit Merkel and Hollande. They, too, have a diplomatic solution – it’s called the Minsk Agreement. But five months have passed and neither Putin nor his clowns had shown the least bit interest in living up to their commitments. They can afford to wait and ramp up the mayhem until European leaders offer up major concessions on Ukraine. The best that the two European leaders could do is float some trial balloons such as demilitarized zones and freezing of the conflict in place. Undoubtedly, Ukrainian authorities would have responded by suggesting Schleswig- Holstein or Alsace-Lorraine as suitable alternatives for testing Russian trustworthiness and frozen conflicts.
Both sides have offered up their diplomatic solutions and have no more to offer. Putin is not particularly distressed. His trains and “”humanitarian convoys” filled with troops and armaments will keep rolling into Ukraine busily implementing a military solution while claiming that there are no “military solutions”. Merkel and a host of European leaders, for their part, will join the chorus by denying Ukraine defensive weapons because – after all - there “can only be a diplomatic solution.”
Those who support Putin’s strangely strident insistence that Ukraine remain defenseless postulate the following:
(a) Putin is prepared to “absorb huge costs” in subduing Ukraine.
(b) The U.S. risks being drawn into the conflict.
(c) Ukraine should settle (in the words of a recent op-ed writer) for a “festering frozen conflict” or a perpetual buffer state.
As to (a) Ukraine is also prepared to “absorb huge costs” in defending its independence. Are the proponents of this argument suggesting that Europe and the U.S. make it easy for Russia to subdue neighboring states? Arm Ukraine with defensive weapons and let Putin figure out how muchRussians are ready to pay for his fantasies.
As to (b) Ukrainians have unequivocally stated that they are confident of their own ability to defend their nation. They have the personnel and they have the determination….all they need are the tools and the training. It is highly unlikely that even saber-rattling Putin would want to draw the U.S. into conflict over weapons needed to curtail his own aggression. Putin may be unbalanced but he’s not stupid.
As to (c) the proposal is so absurd (and arrogant) that the only response it deserves is that the proponent go fester and buffer himself..
However, there IS a diplomatic solution. Putin wants no part of it because it spells the end of his military solution and would force him back to the negotiating table. It is logical, simple, and has worked for thousands of years. Whenever two countries go to war they will fight for as long as one country believes it can defeat the other. When it becomes clear that neither party will “win” and that continuance of hostilities will simply increase costs but without benefits, they will seek a “diplomatic solution”. In fact, Putin knows that 70% of his citizens do not want to go to war against Ukraine and that his economy is already reeling from oil prices, isolation, and sanctions and has nowhere to go but down. Providing Ukraine with the weapons it needs may very well be the one missing piece needed to stop the war and ensure lasting peace in that area of the world.
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Ukraine's army and pro-Russian rebels in the country's east clashed on Friday, killing at least seven civilians and 11 soldiers in the past 24 hours, Ukraine's military spokesman Andrij Lysenko told reporters in a briefing.
"The enemy continues to build up forces in the main areas of the armed conflict," he added.
Intense fighting was reported from eastern Ukraine's Debaltseve, a strategic railway hub that is the point of contention between the Russia-backed rebels and Ukraine's forces. Separatist forces had almost completely encircled a Ukrainian garrison in Debaltseve, compromising the garrison's access to supply routes, the Associated Press said.
The casualties were the first to be reported after leaders of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine met in Belarus' capital, Minsk, and signed a deal with rebel representatives to enforce a ceasefirethat goes into effect at the beginning of Sunday morning (2200 GMT Saturday).
Enforcing a buffer zone
Once the ceasefire is enforced, both sides are expected to withdraw heavy weapons from the frontline and discuss the exchange of prisoners, although there were doubts on whether Russia would release a Ukrainian pilot it had detained.
"It goes without saying the Ukrainian side brought it up, but the president (Russia's Vladimir Putin) repeated his position, that has been voiced many times before, that in this case, she is under investigation and the degree of her guilt or innocence will be established by a court," Russian government spokesman Dmitry Peskov said .
Russia, however, expected all points of the deal to be implemented, Peskov added.
The Kremlin spokesman also said leaders from Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France were in touch over the Ukraine crisis and that Moscow was expecting a phone conversation to be agreed upon in the coming days.
Meanwhile, US and EU leaders maintained pressure on Russia by holding on to their sanctions against Moscow. The leaders believe that Russia backs separatists in Ukraine's east, but Moscow has denied the allegation.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe is tasked with observing the ceasefire. The group's head, Lamberto Zannier, said in Kyiv that he hoped hostilities would be halted by the Sunday deadline.
"We would really hope to see a decrease already between now and that moment," he said.
The OSCE will have to patrol a 50-km (31-mile) buffer zone to be established between Ukrainian military troops and pro-Russian separatists.
The Ukraine crisis has resulted in the deaths of more than 5,400 people since it began last year in April.
mg/sms (Reuters, AP, AFP)
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Published time: February 13, 2015 15:45
Edited time: February 13, 2015 17:32
Edited time: February 13, 2015 17:32
Ukraine’s Right Sector leader Dmitry Yarosh said his radical movement rejects the Minsk peace deal and that their paramilitary units in eastern Ukraine will continue “active fighting" according to their "own plans."
The notorious ultranationalist leader published a statement on his Facebook page Friday, saying that his radical Right Sector movement doesn’t recognize the peace deal, signed by the so-called 'contact group' on Thursday and agreed upon by Ukraine, France, Germany and Russia after epic 16-hour talks.
Yarosh claimed that any agreement with the eastern militia, whom he calls “terrorists,” has no legal force.
In his statement, Yarosh claimed that that the Minsk deal is contrary to Ukraine’s constitution, so Ukrainian citizens are not obliged to abide by it. Thus if the army receives orders to cease military activity and withdraw heavy weaponry from the eastern regions, the Right Sector paramilitaries, who are also fighting there “reserve the right” to continue the war, he said.
The Right Sector paramilitary organization continues to deploy its combat and reserve units, to train and logistically support personnel, while coordinating its activities with the military command of the Ukrainian army, paramilitary units of the Defense Ministry and the Interior Ministry, he said.
The breakthrough Minsk agreement was reached on Thursday following marathon overnight negotiations between Ukraine, France, Germany and Russia, and offer hope the fighting in Eastern Ukraine may come to an end. The talks were part of a Franco-German initiative. President Francois Hollande and Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Kiev and Moscow before meeting the Russian and Ukrainian leaders at the negotiating table in Minsk.
Bluntly rejecting the German and French initiative, Yarosh said President Petro Poroshenko should have turned to the US or UK which “observe a consistent anti-Kremlin policy.”
In January, Russia’s Supreme Court banned the activities of the Right Sector within the country. In July last year the Interpol put Right Sector leader Yarosh on its wanted list.
The radical movement was formed as a coalition of nationalist and neo-Nazi organizations during the Maidan protests in Kiev at the end of 2013.
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LONDON—
When the leaders of four major countries convene at a neutral location for high-profile talks aimed at ending a war, results are expected.
It took all night – 16 hours in all – but they got results. The questions now are whether they can implement their agreement, and whether it will be enough to end the conflict.
There is a good chance that they can’t, and it’s not.
There is a good chance that they can’t, and it’s not.
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