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Ukraine Cease-Fire Agreed But Doubts Persist It Will Bring Peace

Ukraine Cease-Fire Agreed But Doubts Persist It Will Bring Peace

By Sergei L. Loiko And Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

MOSCOW — After two days of hard negotiations, the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France announced Thursday that they had crafted a new peace plan for eastern Ukraine but the accord was immediately met with skepticism over its power to end the war.

The four leaders worked for seven hours Wednesday night then through the morning Thursday to get Russian and Ukrainian commitment to the plan that would halt hostilities within three days, require removal of heavy weaponry from the battle zones and restore Ukrainian control over its Russian border by the end of this year.

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the agreement in a televised statement after the talks in the Belarus capital of Minsk. He hailed the plan’s promise of granting greater autonomy to separatist-occupied regions of eastern Ukraine but made no mention of its omission of a key Kremlin demand that Ukraine be transformed into a loose federation with a weakened central government in Kiev.

“We now have a glimmer of hope,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said of the plan, reflecting the general caution of its brokers, who have seen other cease-fires fall apart over the past ten months of fighting. “But the concrete steps, of course, have to be taken. And we will still face major obstacles. But, on balance, I can say what we have achieved gives significantly more hope than if we had achieved nothing.”

The deal was negotiated under the pressure of an emerging campaign among U.S. foreign policy officials to send arms to the Ukrainian government to help its troops put down the insurgency by Russia-backed separatists. The rebels have taken control of two sprawling regions on the Russian border, Donetsk and Luhansk, and Russia has overtly seized and annexed Ukraine’s Crimea region.

The Obama administration welcomed the agreement as “a potentially significant step toward a peaceful resolution of the conflict and the restoration of Ukraine’s sovereignty.” But the White House said in a statement that the deal needed to be followed by “immediate, concrete steps to fulfill the commitments by all parties.”

“The true test of today’s accord will be in its full and unambiguous implementation,” the White House said, adding that U.S. officials are “particularly concerned about the escalation of fighting today, which is inconsistent with the spirit of the accord.”

Artillery exchanges continued in eastern Ukraine on Thursday, with two Ukrainian soldiers killed and 21 wounded in the previous 24 hours, the National Defense and Security Council in Kiev reported on its website. Council spokesman Andriy Lysenko also told reporters at his daily briefing that Russia sent another 50 tanks and a dozen heavy guns into rebel-held territory overnight as the peace talks were under way.

Putin, in his televised statement, said the accord contained a provision “of extreme importance” that heavy weaponry be withdrawn from the current line of confrontation by Ukrainian government forces and that separatists pull back from the demarcation line that was identified five months ago. That would leave a broad no-man’s land, as the separatists have gained ground since the Sept. 19 front line was fixed, offering an alluring incentive for both sides to move in and take it.

Ukrainian politicians reacted to the cease-fire news with restraint.

President Petro Poroshenko did his best in Minsk and accomplished a lot but the deal still appeared shaky, a Ukrainian lawmaker and former commander said.

“We must remember that we are dealing with terrorists who violated all the previous cease-fire agreements many times,” Yuri Bereza, former commander of the Dnipro-I militia regiment, told The Times.

Vadim Karasyov, director of the Institute of Global Strategies in Kiev, said the accord gave more to the Ukrainian side in rejecting Moscow’s attempts to force restructuring of Ukraine in such a way that Russia would gain leverage over Ukraine’s national affairs through its proxies in Donetsk and Luhansk.

“Putin, faced with a new round of sanctions and the U.S. possible decision to supply Ukraine with weapons, was desperate to arrive at some compromise at any price,” Karasyov said. “Poroshenko needed to stop the war even temporarily but not at any price.”

The document signed provides for some special status for the rebel-held areas but it doesn’t oblige Ukraine to become a federation and it makes no mention of the separatists’ newly proclaimed “republics.”

“The expanding of powers for Ukraine’s regions will proceed within the framework of constitutional changes aimed at decentralization,” Poroshenko said in a statement posted on the presidential website. “We haven’t accepted a single compromise aimed at federalization.”

The agreement also provides for all “foreign troops and weaponry” to be withdrawn from Ukrainian territory.
Alexander Zakharchenko, leader of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, warned that his Russia-allied faction won’t renegotiate an agreement if the new cease-fire is violated by Kiev.

“There will be no new meetings and memorandums in case of violations,” Zakharchenko said, according to a separatist website. “All responsibility for any violations of the memorandum provisions will lie on Poroshenko.”

According to the agreement, prisoners on both sides of the conflict must be released within 19 days.

Captured Ukrainian pilot Nadezhda Savchenko, held in a Moscow prison and charged with complicity in the June killing of two Russian television reporters, will be set free according to an agreement with Moscow, Poroshenko said in Minsk.

Ukrainian authorities have long argued that Savchenko, who was elected to parliament in October while in Russian detention, was smuggled across the border and illegally held by Russia. Savchenko is reportedly on a hunger strike in Moscow’s Sailor’s Silence prison hospital.

The ten-month conflict, which started after Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula in March, has claimed over 5,350 lives and displaced nearly 1 million people, the U.N. said this month.
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(Loiko reported from Moscow and Williams from Los Angeles. Special correspondent Victoria Butenko contributed to the report from Kiev.)

Photo: Russian President Vladimir Putin (centre) shakes hands with his Ukrainian counterpart Petro Poroshenko during a meeting in Minsk, on February 11, 2015 (AFP/ Andrey Stasevich)

Ukraine Takes Historic Step Toward NATO

Ukraine Takes Historic Step Toward NATO

Kiev (AFP) – Ukraine took a historic step toward NATO on Tuesday in a parliamentary vote that stoked Russia’s anger ahead of talks on ending the ex-Soviet state’s separatist war.

Lawmakers in the government-controlled chamber overwhelmingly adopted a bill dropping Ukraine’s non-aligned status — a classification given to states such as Switzerland that refuse to join military alliances and thus play no part in wars.

President Petro Poroshenko had vowed to put Ukraine under Western military protection after winning an election called in the wake of the February ouster in Kiev of a Moscow-backed president.

“Ukraine’s fight for its independence, territorial integrity and sovereignty has turned into a decisive factor in our relations with the world,” Poroshenko told foreign ambassadors in Kiev on Monday night.

“European and Euro-Atlantic integrations — that is Ukraine’s XX course,” Poroshenko tweeted moments after the 303-8 vote.

Ukraine assumed neutrality under strong Russian pressure in 2010. It had sought NATO membership in the early post-Soviet era but — its once-mighty army in ruins and riven by corruption — was never viewed as a serious candidate.

Last winter’s revolution in Kiev upset Russian President Vladimir Putin’s plans to enlist Ukraine in a new bloc he was forging in order to counterbalance NATO and the European Union.

And Moscow had set Kiev’s exclusion from all military blocs as a condition for any deal on ending the pro-Russian uprising that has killed 4,700 in the eastern Ukrainian rustbelt in the past eight months.

Putin’s view of NATO as modern Russia’s biggest threat has only been reinforced by this year’s dramatic spike in East-West tensions over Ukraine.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov demanded that Kiev “put an end to confrontation” and stop adopting “absolutely counterproductive” measures that only stoked tensions between the twos sides.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said even more bluntly that “in essence, an application for NATO membership will turn Ukraine into a potential military opponent for Russia.”

Medvedev warned that Ukraine’s rejection of neutrality and a new Russian sanctions law that U.S. President Barack Obama signed on Friday “will both have very negative consequences.”

“And our country will have to respond to them,” he wrote in a Facebook post.

Perhaps the most immediate threat will be to delicate peace talks this week in the Belarussian capital Minsk that Poroshenko announced on Monday.

Poroshenko said the deal for Kiev and rebel negotiators to meet in the presence of Russian and European envoys on Wednesday and Friday was struck during a joint call with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande — the West’s top mediators on Ukraine.

The last two rounds of Minsk consultations in September produced a truce and the outlines of a broader peace agreement that gave the two separatist regions partial self-rule for three years within a united Ukraine.

But the deals were followed by more fighting that killed at least 1,300 people. The insurgents’ decision to stage their own leadership polls in violation of the Minsk rules effectively ended political talks between the two sides.

A new meeting in Minsk had been hampered by Kiev’s refusal to discuss lifting last month’s suspension of social security and other benefit payments to the rebel-run districts.

Ukraine’s leaders suspect the money is being stolen by militias in the Russian-speaking Lugansk and Donetsk regions and used to finance their war.

Donetsk negotiator Denis Pushilin stressed that Kiev’s continuing refusal to budge on the issue could still prevent talks from going ahead.

“We have no information about the date of any meeting in Minsk,” Pushilin told AFP by telephone.

“We are ready to meet, or we could conduct a videoconference,” said the rebel envoy.

“But only along the lines of the agenda that we discussed before,” he added in reference to the suspended payments.

AFP Photo/Genya Savilov

Ukraine’s Fight With Russia Is ‘America’s War, Too,’ Poroshenko Says

Ukraine’s Fight With Russia Is ‘America’s War, Too,’ Poroshenko Says

By Michael A. Memoli, Tribune Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — Ukraine’s new president thanked the United States for showing solidarity with the people of Ukraine, but warned that greater tests lie ahead, telling Congress that his nation’s fight against Russian aggression “is America’s war, too.”

Petro Poroshenko, addressing a joint meeting of Congress at the start of a daylong visit to Washington on Thursday, called incursions into Ukrainian territory by Russia “one of the worst setbacks for the cause of democracy in the world in years.” He asked for additional political and logistical help, and for the United States to give his country a special non-allied partner status in NATO.

“Democracies must support each other,” Poroshenko said. “They must show solidarity in the face of aggression and adversity. Otherwise they will be eliminated one by one.”

Elected president of Ukraine in May following Russia’s annexation of Crimea and as fighting escalated against Russian-backed separatists in the east, Poroshenko acknowledged fears of “a new Cold War” but said that it must not be accepted “as an inevitability.”

Even as he warned that the “imperialistic mindset” of the former Soviet Union persisted today in Vladimir Putin, Poroshenko said he stood ready to work with Russia to sustain the recent cease-fire agreement. But he said he would never agree to “Ukraine’s dismemberment,” calling the annexation of Crimea one of the “most cynical acts of treachery in the modern era.”

“We will never obey or bend to the aggressor,” he said. “We are ready to fight. But we are a people of peace.”

Poroshenko is set to meet with President Obama later Thursday at the White House. His visit comes as the United States has been consumed by the new threat posed by Islamic State militants.
Poroshenko acknowledged that Americans are weary of conflict after a decade of war, but said this was a moment in history “whose importance cannot be measured solely in percentages of GDP growth.”

“Values come first — this is the truth the West would remind Ukraine of over the last years. Now it is Ukraine’s turn to remind the West of this truth,” he said.

Poroshenko was greeted warmly by members of Congress, and his speech was interrupted repeatedly by standing ovations. He broke from his prepared text at the start of speech, saying it was “impossible to imagine what I am feeling right now.” The famously sentimental House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-OH) also teared up as Poroshenko hailed the ties between the two nations.

He concluded his speech by linking the well-recognized New Hampshire state motto, “Live free or die,” to the spirit of his nation’s own clashes: ” ‘Live free’ must be the message Ukraine and America send to the world, while standing together in this time of enormous challenge.”

AFP Photo

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EU Steps Up Russia Sanctions As ‘1,000 Troops’ Remain In Ukraine

EU Steps Up Russia Sanctions As ‘1,000 Troops’ Remain In Ukraine

Kiev (AFP) – The European Union has agreed to slap a new round of sanctions on Russia on Friday despite a fragile ceasefire in Ukraine, where NATO said Moscow still had 1,000 troops on the ground.

Diplomatic sources in Brussels said EU member states decided Thursday to go ahead and implement the threatened punitive measures after heated debate on the timing because of the truce agreed last week by Kiev and the pro-Russian separatists.

The announcement came as the Ukrainian authorities acknowledged that the insurgents had extended their control over territory on the eastern border to the Sea of Azov after a lightning counter-offensive late last month.

In the days before the ceasefire came into force last Friday, the separatists had swept south — reportedly backed by elite Russian troops and firepower — in an attempt to secure a land corridor from the Russian border to annexed Crimea.

Some EU member states — wary of further economic reprisals by by Kremlin — had said they wanted to wait and see what happened on the ground in Ukraine before imposing the new measures that target Russia’s stagnating economy.

Thursday’s announcement sent the ruble plunging to a new record low.

NATO said last month that Russia had funneled in at least 1,000 elite troops and heavy weapons in what some described as an invasion by stealth to bolster the rebel surge that dramatically reversed recent advances by the Ukrainian army.

But in surprise announcements Wednesday seen as helping sustain the peace pact, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko pledged greater autonomy for the separatist east and said Russia had withdrawn 70 percent of its forces.

The withdrawal would be “a good first step” if confirmed, a NATO military officer said in a statement to AFP.

But “the fact of the matter is there are still approximately 1,000 Russian troops in eastern Ukraine… and approximately 20,000 troops on the Russian border”.

Washington also described Poroshenko’s comments on the troops as “a good, tiny first step” but said it was unable to verify what would be a potentially significant development in the five-month crisis.

The stepped up sanctions against major Russian businesses and allies of President Vladimir Putin reflect deep Western concern over Moscow’s territorial ambitions.

Putin has accused NATO of making up the charges over its involvement in Ukraine to justify its decision to deploy a new force in eastern Europe and encroach on Russia’s western frontier.

“The crisis in Ukraine, which was basically provoked and created by some of our Western partners, is now being used to revive this military bloc (NATO),” Putin said.

Rattling the truce, Kiev said Thursday that its military positions had come under attack 20 times in the past 24 hours, while AFP correspondents reported hearing artillery fire overnight near the main insurgent bastion of Donetsk.

But Poroshenko said the ceasefire — the first backed by both Kiev and Moscow since the insurgency erupted in April — had nevertheless dramatically improved security in the war-ravaged industrial rustbelt.

Elected in May on a promise to crush the rebellion and preserve Ukraine’s unity, Poroshenko also waded into explosive political territory by promising to submit a bill to parliament granting parts of the east temporary self-rule.

He stressed this did not mean that the rebel-held territories were slipping from Kiev’s control.

“Ukraine will not make any concessions on issues of its territorial integrity,” he said.

But the number two in the separatist leadership of Donetsk said the rebels still planned to seek outright independence from Kiev.

“We are not considering remaining part of Ukraine,” Andrei Purgin told AFP.

Friday’s truce was signed in the Belarussian capital Minsk after months of warfare that has killed more than 2,700 people and forced at least half a million from their homes.

Kiev said the lives of eight Ukrainian servicemen and one civilian had been lost since Friday.

Sanctions were ratcheted up by Brussels and Washington after the July downing of a Malaysian jet over rebel-held territory that claimed 298 lives and raised concerns about Russia’s alleged military support for the revolt.

A preliminary report by Dutch investigators Tuesday did not apportion blame over the crash but appeared to back claims the plane was hit by a missile.

Kiev and Washington believe it was blown out of the sky by a Russian-supplied ground-to-air system, but Moscow said Kiev bore “full responsibility” for the disaster.

AFP Photo/Anatolii Stepanov