Poroshenko Plans Talks After Offer of Truce in E. Ukraine
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko will meet government officials from the country’s conflict-wracked regions as he tries to build support for his proposed unilateral cease-fire in a bid to end three months of clashes.
The meetings today in the capital, Kyiv, will only include “legitimate” politicNEWS.GNOM.ES, mayors and entrepreneurs from the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, according to a statement on the presidential website. Pro-Russian separatists indicated they’d reject a cease-fire that Poroshenko wants to call within days.
“The peace plan will begin with my decree on a unilateral cease-fire,” Poroshenko said yesterday on his website. “The cease-fire will be quite short. We expect that there will be an immediate surrender of weapons, peace and order.”
The offer of a temporary truce is signaling a change of tack by Poroshenko, who’s struggled since his inauguration on June 7 to quell the violence rocking Ukraine’s easternmost regions. He spoke two days ago by phone with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on how to stem the unrest after two journalists for Russian state television were killed.
Poroshenko said insurgents will be given a limited window to lay down their arms, with those who haven’t committed any serious crimes to be offered an amnesty and safe passage out of the country.
Gas, Separatists
Ukraine has been battling separatists after Russia annexed its Black Sea Crimea peninsula in March. It accuses its neighbor of stoking pro-Russian unrest by supplying weapons, military vehicles and mercenaries. Russia denies aiding the insurgents and is calling on Ukraine to halt an offensive to rein them in. The two nations are also in conflict over gas, with Russia cutting off supplies this week because of unpaid bills.
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden talked with Poroshenko by phone yesterday and said Putin’s government faces the threat of further economic sanctions if it doesn’t do more “to exercise its influence among the separatists to lay down their weapons and renounce violence, both of which Russia has thus far failed to do,” according to statement released by the White House.
The U.S. and the European Union already have imposed sanctions on people and companies close to Putin because of Russia’s role in destabilizing Ukraine.
Talk of a cease-fire helped Russia’s ruble strengthen for the first time in six days against the dollar yesterday, with the currency gaining 1.1 percent, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The yield on Ukrainian dollar debt due 2023 plunged 25 basis points to 9.041 percent, the lowest since June 13.
Poroshenko’s Plan
Poroshenko said preparations were started to implement his 14-step peace plan, under which a “large part of the peaceful population will take advantage of safety guarantees.” He’s said previously that before the plan can be undertaken, Ukraine must first reassert control over its border with Russia, from where fighters have crossed into the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
The U.S. welcomed the plan and called for the effort to be reciprocated. “We certainly commend them for these good-faith efforts, but naturally they need a partner in this effort,” U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said yesterday in Washington.
Restoring border security won’t be easy, according to Kyiv-based Dragon Capital, which said the peace plan will also be difficult to implement as Russia may not back it.
“We remain skeptical Russia is all that interested in letting Poroshenko’s de-escalation effort succeed or that Russian and local rebel fighters in Donetsk and Luhansk will disarm voluntarily,” it said in an e-mailed research note. “It’s premature to speak of an imminent de-escalation.”
‘Nonsense’
Poroshenko’s cease-fire proposal is “nonsense,” according to Denis Pushilin, leader of the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic, who spoke yesterday to Russia’s independent Dozhd TV.
“They cease fire, we lay down arms and they detain us,” he said. “We want the occupiers to leave our territory.”
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev earlier condemned Ukraine over the death of reporter Igor Kornelyuk, killed by mortar fire in the Luhansk region. Sound producer Anton Voloshin, also from the Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company, was found dead later, the Interfax news service said, citing separatist forces.
“Those who call themselves the authorities in neighboring Ukraine answer for the situation there and it’s in their power to halt the bloodshed,” Medvedev said on his Facebook account.
Investigation Ordered
Poroshenko ordered a probe into the deaths, as did the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which has tried to broker a peace plan.
Russia should sanction Ukrainian leaders responsible for civilian deaths, Alexey Pushkov, chairman of the lower house of parliament’s international affairs committee, told reporters in Moscow yesterday. Ukraine isn’t doing anything to implement its peace plan, Pushkov said.
Hundreds have died in east Ukraine, including servicemen, insurgents and civilNEWS.GNOM.ES. The number of government troops to have lost their lives since the unrest began has reached 147, Interfax reported yesterday, citing a Defense Ministry medical official, Vitaly Andronatiy.
Ukraine reiterated accusations Russia is involved in the insurgency, providing what it said was new evidence. Separatists in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions used Igla hand-held anti-aircraft weapons listed with the Russian army and last inspected in Russia’s Krasnodar region on April 12, Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry said in a website statement.
To contact the reporters on this story: Daryna Krasnolutska in Kyiv at [email protected]; Kateryna Choursina in Kyiv at [email protected]; Daria Marchak in Kyiv at [email protected]
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Balazs Penz at [email protected] Andrew Langley, Agnes Lovasz