Signs of peace at last in Ukraine
The ceasefire in the war in eastern Ukraine, the so-called
Minsk-2 agreement, was signed last February, but they never
actually ceased firing.
At least a thousand more people have been killed in the
fighting since then, and on one night last month (August 14)
the monitors of the Organisation for Security and
Co-operation in Europe recorded 175 separate ceasefire
violations.
On a visit to Kyiv that week, British Defence Secretary
Michael Fallon said the conflict was ”still red-hot” and
that he could not see an end to the fighting ”any time
soon”.
As late as September 11 Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko
was condemning Russia’s ”neo-imperial aggression” in
eastern Ukraine, where an estimated 9000 Russian soldiers are
on the ground in support of the breakaway provinces of
Luhansk and Donetsk.
But then the music changed.
When the annual Yalta European Strategy (Yes) forum opened in
Kyiv on September 12, Mr Poroshenko announced that the
previous night had been the first in the whole conflict with
no shelling.
”This is not the end of the war,” he said, ”but instead a
change in tactics.”
Maybe that’s all it is, but if it stops the shooting, that
would certainly be a step in the right direction.
And by and large the shooting really has stopped in the past
two weeks, although there is no sign yet that Russian troops
are leaving Donetsk and Luhansk provinces.
Mr Poroshenko claims that the shift in Russian tactics is
merely a switch from military offensives in the east to
political attacks intended to destabilise Ukraine ”from the
inside.”
He was presumably referring to a grenade attack outside the
parliament building in Kyiv on August 31 that killed three
soldiers and wounded more than one hundred people.
But it is very unlikely that Russia was behind it, and Mr
Poroshenko should know that.
It was really Russian President Vladimir Putin who took the
initiative to stop the fighting, although it was his local
allies who declared that they would observe a complete
ceasefire from September 1.
Since the better-armed rebels, with Russian support when
necessary, have consistently outfought Ukraine’s ill-trained
forces – all the changes in the front line since the
ceasefire have been rebel gains from Ukraine – it was the
rebels who had to move first.
They moved because Moscow has decided to freeze the conflict,
which has now served its main purpose of saving Mr Putin’s
face.
He was deeply embarrassed when the Ukrainians overthrew the
pro-Russian president in Kyiv 18 months ago.
His illegal annexation of Crimea, like his encouragement and
military support for the rebels in Donetsk and Luhansk, was
partly motivated by his need to restore his political
position in Russia.
Having ”lost” Ukraine, Mr Putin also needed to ensure that
it did not become a base for Western influence, and maybe
even Nato troops, on Russia’s southern border.
The best way of doing that was to ensnare the new government
in Kyiv in a chronic low-level conflict with Russia that
would cripple Ukraine’s economy and make Western governments
very nervous about getting too close to it.
Those goals are now accomplished. Ukraine has effectively
lost three provinces (all with Russian-speaking majorities),
and a permanent military stalemate between Kyiv and its
rebel-held provinces means that the likelihood of its ever
joining the European Union or Nato is approximately zero.
There is no need for further shooting, and Russia does have
other fish to fry.
Right through the conflict in Ukraine, Moscow has avoided
doing other things that would alienate the West.
It went on providing essential transit facilities for the
American troops withdrawing from Afghanistan.
It co-operated with the West in the negotiations that led to
the agreement on limiting Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
It continues to transport Western astronauts to the
International Space Station, since they have no transport of
their own.
Mr Putin never wanted a ”new Cold War” that Russia would
surely lose.
The cost of the old Cold War broke the Soviet Union, and Mr
Putin’s Russia is much weaker.
He just wanted to limit the options of a hostile Ukraine.
Now that he has succeeded it is time to freeze the situation
and both Mr Poroshenko and his Western supporters have
tacitly accepted that this is the least bad outcome.
They took a poll of the assembled experts at the end of the
Yes conference earlier this month, asking what they thought
Ukraine would look like three years from now.
Dome 53% of the Ukrainian participants, and 58% of the
international guests believed that it would see economic
growth and stabilisation despite a contained, ”frozen”
conflict in the east.
Only 3% of each group believed that it would see ”economic
decline, destabilisation, and a further loss of territory.”
So move along, please, sir.
There is nothing more to see here.
• Gwynne Dyer is an independent London
journalist.