Clock ticking on tentative Geneva agreement for Russia-Ukraine detente
WASHINGTON – Not until the final minutes of more than seven hours of negotiating was an agreement struck in Geneva this week to calm boiling tensions along the shared border between Russia and Ukraine. But the deal won’t be sealed until its terms are met, and patience is wearing thin as time runs out.
Skepticism that it might work deepened Friday as pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine continued to occupy government buildings in defiance of the accord and showed no inclination to abide by its call to surrender their weapons.
The U.S. and European Union say they will slap Moscow with a new round of sanctions against oligarchs and advisers to President Vladimir Putin by the middle of next week if the separatists do not disarm and give up control of buildings they seized in recent riots to local authorities.
In return, Moscow is demanding guarantees that Ukraine’s promised constitutional reforms will give pro-Russian separatists a say in the distribution of government power.
Few believe that either side will get what they want before the clock runs out.
A statement Friday by Russia’s foreign ministry accused the U.S. of “trying to whitewash” Kyiv’s threat to ratchet its campaign against the insurgents. The State Department, meanwhile, said that Secretary of State John Kerry had urged full and immediate compliance with the Geneva agreement during a follow-up chat with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
Kerry “made clear that the next few days would be a pivotal period for all sides to implement the statement’s provisions, particularly that all illegal armed groups must be disarmed and all illegally seized buildings must be returned to legitimate owners,” the State Department said in a statement.
Officials in Washington praised the interim Ukraine government’s offer Friday to give regions more authority, including a draft law offering amnesty to all willing to lay down their weapons and to leave occupied buildings. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Russia now has “a responsibility to take steps to call on the separatists to evacuate.”
Moscow dismissed the U.S. urging as “highly disappointing” and said Kyiv is “set to suppress by force” the separatist protesters in eastern Ukraine, according to a statement published by Russian news agency Itar-Tass.
Ukraine separatists said Friday they have no intention of leaving regional government buildings now under their control unless Kyiv’s leaders step down as well. The separatists believe that Ukraine has been run illegally since late February, when a pro-Western revolt unseated the nation’s president, who was loyal to Putin.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry repeated that notion Friday. “It’s obvious that when we talk about disarmament, we have in sight first of all the removal of weapons from the fighters of Right Sector and other pro-fascist groups participating in the February overthrow in Kyiv,” the ministry said in a statement.
The parrying Friday was illustrative of the back-and-forth a day earlier between Western and Russian diplomats in Geneva, who niggled on a single paragraph for 90 minutes.
A recount of the Geneva talks Thursday, as offered by a U.S. official who participated in them, portrays the excruciating efforts to show the negotiations were not a waste of time.