Ukraine’s leader must tread carefully over plans for permanent peace as…

Ukraine Leader Walks Fine Line as Peace Deal Test Voters.

Ukraine’s leader must tread
carefully over plans for permanent peace as he gears up for
parliamentary elections.

President Petro Poroshenko has signed a cease-fire in
Ukraine’s east, providing breathing space to mold a resolution
to five months of fighting. Having stepped back from a pledge to
defeat the pro-Russian insurgency by the Oct. 26 ballot, he now
needs a diplomatic win he can sell to voters.

That puts Poroshenko in a bind. On one hand, Ukrainians
want a lasting peace that enables the new administration to
follow through on promises made during the protests that swept
Viktor Yanukovych from power. On the other, bowing to President
Vladimir Putin’s demands as bargaining starts over the status of
Ukraine’s east risks alienating voters and bolstering rivals.

Poroshenko “is walking a fine line, because he can’t give
too many concessions, particularly with an election in the
offing,” Amanda Paul, an analyst at the European Policy Centre
in Brussels, said by e-mail. That’s all the more difficult
because “Putin wants to ensure he’ll walk away from this, in
his eyes and that of Russian society, the winner, with Moscow
having a strong foothold.”

As fighting of varying intensity tests the truce signed
Sept. 5 for the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, conflict-resolution
talks may resume in the Belarusian capital of Minsk this week.
Before that, the two sides have begun laying out their
positions.

‘Giving Up?’

Ukraine will grant special status to about a third of the
two regions, according to Yuri Lutsenko, an aide to Poroshenko.
A bill will be submitted to lawmakers this week, military
spokesman Andriy Lysenko told reporters Sept. 10.

The separatists have other ideas. They’re demanding the
full territory, known as Donbas, Russia’s Interfax news service
reported Sept. 9, citing Andrei Purgin, first deputy prime
minister of the self-proclaimed People’s Republic of Donetsk.

“A significant part of the electorate will be very
sensitive to territorial concessions,” Yuriy Yakymenko head of
the political department at the Kyiv-based Razumkov Center, said
Sept. 9 by phone. “Would concessions be seen as giving up? That
would be used by radical forces who support the idea of war
until victory.”

Russia, whose annexation in March of Ukraine’s Black Sea
peninsula of Crimea was a precursor to the eastern unrest, has
its own demands. Putin has suggested Ukraine switch to a federal
system of governance that would give Donetsk and Luhansk a veto
over major state decisions.

NATO, EU

Russia, blamed by the U.S. and the European Union for
fueling the conflict, opposes talk of a possible Ukrainian bid
for membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and has
questioned attempts at political and economic integration with
Europe through an EU association agreement.

Yanukovych’s rejection of the EU pact was the trigger for
the street uprising that toppled him as Ukrainians wearing
ribbons with the 28-member bloc’s symbol demanded a new
government that adhered to European democratic standards.

Those who joined the protests, which began toward the end
of last year, want Ukraine to push on with that European path,
not go backward, according to Iryna Ligor, a 47-year-old speech
defectologist at a kindergarten. She said she may not back
Poroshenko’s party in the election if he changes course.

“I hope he understands that people rose up in November
because of the EU,” Ligor said in Kyiv. “Otherwise, what was
the point of it all? We’re watching what he’s doing.”

Playing War

It’s not just voters who may rebel over concessions to
Russia. The settlement over Donbas also risks dividing Ukraine’s
rulers as the truce immediately brought to the surface tensions
within the administration.

Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk dismissed Putin’s peace
plan that presaged the truce as “window dressing for the
international community,” saying in an e-mailed statement that
it’s a ploy to duck U.S. and EU sanctions. Poroshenko hit back
by saying he “won’t allow” politicians to “play at war.”

In a sign of tensions among the country’s rulers, talks to
form a joint platform for the election broke down yesterday.
Yatsenyuk opted to run on the People’s Front list along with
Oleksandr Turchynov, the speaker of parliament and former
interim president, the Interfax news service reported. The Udar
party of Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko, the ex-boxing world
champion, will join Poroshenko’s alliance, it said on its
website.

The president’s Petro Poroshenko Bloc is the most popular
with 21.5 percent backing, a survey by the Kyiv International
Institute of Sociology showed. Next is the Radical Party of Oleg Liashko, a firebrand politician and Poroshenko critic who says
he sponsors volunteer battalions fighting the rebels.

‘Delicate Position’

Liashko’s group has 7.6 percent, according to the Aug. 23-Sept. 2 poll of 2,040 voters in all regions of the country
except Crimea and Luhansk. That’s more than Yatsenyuk’s People’s
Front with 3.7 percent, the data showed. The survey has a margin
of error of 1.4 to 2.8 percentage points.

Poroshenko is in a “delicate position” and faces
considerable hurdles to sell a potential peace deal to the
electorate, according to Otilia Dhand, an analyst at Teneo
Intelligence in London.

“If he promises Russia what it wants, he risks the voters
will turn to the Radical Party,” Dhand said Sept. 11 by phone.
“If he tries to implement an agreement that potentially gives
Donbas veto power over foreign-policy decisions, then it might
not take too long before there’s a million people on the streets
of Kyiv and elsewhere again.”