Tensions are mounting as the US and EU reject the Donbass November, 2 election as illegal. Speaking on Tuesday Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that the Donbass elections, should "go ahead as agreed" and Russia will "recognize the results".
That same day US Secretary of State John Kerry warned that the election in eastern Ukraine would be unlawful, and that Moscow's recognition of the results violates international agreements." This will be a clear violation of the commitments made by both Russia and the separatists that it backs in the Minsk agreements," Kerry said.
Will it, really? On September 5, at a meeting in Minsk the sides of the conflict, i.e. representatives from Kiev, Donetsk and Lugansk, with the mediation of Russia and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, agreed on a ceasefire that came into force on the same day. At the next Contact Group meeting in Minsk, held on September 19, the memorandum on the implementation of the ceasefire was signed.
Says Kirill Koktysh, political analyst and associate professor at Moscow's State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO):
We can’t say that any party contradicts with the Minsk agreement, if this party stays in the ideology of this agreement. The sense of the Minsk agreement is the agreement itself. The sense was to start the peace process. Definitely, if you speak about the spirit of the Minsk agreement, we can say that the election process is part of the peace efforts. So, this means that this is just the development of the Minsk agreement. And if we take the material part of this agreement, there is no obligation upon Russia not to support the democratic process in the Donetsk and Lugansk republics.
Kiev authorities have recalled the signature of their representative in Minsk General Yuri Dumanski under the document on the separation of forces in Donbass.
Kirill Koktysh: Well, it is just a demonstrative step which is for the demonstration itself. It reflects the struggle for power inside the Supreme Rada, but not the Minsk agreement itself, because the combination of the interest groups, that constitutes the Ukrainian power, has changed. It means that the hardliners are now taking the same role as the soft-liners.
They start interpreting these negotiations in tougher terms and struggling for more space in this agreement. They are looking for a reason to stop and cancel the Minsk agreement, and to return to the war development, because there are $3.1 billion at stake that Ukraine has to pay for the Russian gas. And in case the war is restarted, there will be no obligation to transfer this money to Russia and there will be a reason to spend this money on the war.
So, actually, first of all, it is the reflection of the internal Ukrainian struggle around the $3.1 billion. But that is not a struggle for peace and peace settlement, and not a struggle for peace agreement with the southeast republics.
When the Minsk agreements were signed, Kiev was on the verge of a military breakdown. Now, do they believe that they have recovered so much over this time to start another war?
Kirill Koktysh: Actually, there are several parties that are struggling for power in Ukraine. The hardliners are actually struggling for the business interests, first of all, because until now the entire Ukrainian strategy was just to put any brutal political development in the framework of a law. The so-called people’s lustration was made by the power of the law that legalized this brutal development. The struggle for the Ukrainian budget, using the war as the reason to get money from the Ukrainian budget, converted into the struggle with the southeast provinces of Ukraine.
Now the money that was transferred to Ukraine is at stake — the $3.1 billion. And this is the money that could be spent on the business interests of the group that is struggling for power. And for them this is the reason to get out of the peace process and restart the war struggle. Of course, they are not thinking about staying in power in Ukraine, they are taking care of their own business interests.
Poroshenko’s party is a party of the state and he is actually interested not in business, but in keeping his post as the President. Of course, he has a different position. He would prefer the peace negotiations, he would prefer the peace process and he would like to be prepared to meet the other challenges that Ukraine would face as a state. But actually this internal struggle has no clear outcome up to now. We can expect the continuation of the internal struggle, but not the monopoly of a single power – state power or business power that are struggling for the control over the state of Ukraine.
Anna van Densky, based with the "EU Reporter" in Brussels:
The general line, right from the start was an anti-Russian policy because, you see, the Ukrainian conflict basically became the anti-Russian conflict. Now with the sanctions and with their very hostile language against Moscow there is a big problem there, because instead of respecting Russia as a global partner…and in reality the US and Europe don’t have an alternative to Russia, because Russia is their major partner in solving the serious global issues. Instead of that they took this terrible stance against the Kremlin and they are following it. So, what they say now is a logical outcome of their political line that they are pursuing with regards to Ukraine and, logically, to Russia.
But they’re saying the elections contradict the Minsk agreements?
Anna van Densky: I think that you can’t go a legal way, because it doesn’t make sense. It is a purely a politically motivated decision to color it that way. Ukraine has left a legal field with the Maidan revolution and it never came back, because what we see now – this election in Ukraine is basically a farce. And we know, for example, the way the communists were treated. So, you can’t call this election fair by any means. But what they try to do, they try to blackmail Russia and you can’t explain it in any legal or logical way. It is a purely politically motivated step, because the idea is to diminish Russia. That is their major goal.
The West is still in this Machiavellian kind of policy. They try to dominate the world and they do what they consider might help them on this way, to diminish the strong ones and to lift up the weak. That was basically the politics towards the former Soviet Union. What they were trying to do, they were trying to create frictions, they were trying to create problems between Russia and the other states. And you see that it also reflected, for example, in the NATO policy, because the enlargement was and is a big problem that they’ve created. As we know, when Gorbachev has agreed to remove the Russian troops from the Eastern Europe, they made the promise. It is there, they never denied it.
But what they do now, they used their one success and they continue using it to promote their interests. And they neglect any chance for Russia to establish its own interests. Neither in private life, nor in public life you can’t have a one-way street, because Russia has its own interests. And what they are doing, and are considering it to be pretty normal, like during the Caribbean crisis, they said – no, there will be no ballistic rockets in Cuba, because it is an American interest and we can’t allow it to happen. What they are doing with promoting NATO and enlarging NATO, they do exactly the same. And Russia says – no, we don’t accept that there will be military bases so close to the Russian border. And they pretend that they don’t understand what is happening. I mean, that is a Machiavellian policy and, I'm afraid, that doesn’t work.
So, what you said about the elections, it is logical and I think that it is crucial for Russia to understand it and stay their ground, because Russia has a moral responsibility, Russia has twice the political responsibility – to the Ukrainian people and to the global community. If Russia now steps down, there will be nobody to protect the human rights in a good sense. The point is that the Americans pretend that they are the biggest protectors of human rights, but in reality that doesn’t happen. And we know about the Abu Ghraib imprisoned men and about many other cases.
So, I think that Russia now has, as I said, three responsibilities. It is a moral responsibility to the Ukrainian people, because if the Russians don’t do that nobody really would. The problem is that nobody cares about the Ukrainians. Now it is a game between the groups of oligarchs and nobody cares about the interests of Ukrainians, because if they do what the West is pushing them to do, they will have an economic catastrophe and nobody thinks about it. So, there is the responsibility to the Ukrainians, there is the responsibility to the Russians in Ukraine or in these regions of Ukraine, there is a political responsibility and there is a global responsibility, because everybody looks at Russia as an alternative center of power in the world that can resist the US.
And we need it, as humanity, because otherwise you see what happens in the world. The American policy has become so aggressive that, for example, around the EU we have a belt of conflicts. Now there are more than 50 million displaced people. It is the scale of the WW II. So, this mad policy doesn’t do good and as a world community people need Russia, and people need strong Russia to go on resisting that. I'm a very strong proponent of Russia as a protector of the idea of a multilateral world. And I think that it would be a real disaster if they strop protecting the Russians in Ukraine, and also protecting the Ukrainian interests, because, basically, what they are saying and what they are doing – they are trying to stop this madness. If the Ukrainians would not only sing but do what Europe says, it will mean an economic catastrophe and there will be multitudes of unemployed.
So, I hope that it will not happen, because, for example, in the foreign policy, fortunately, Lavrov is not just an ordinary minister, he is out of ordinary, because he is also the Russian intellectual. And I think he is also very strong as an independent mind, he is not just a civil servant serving his country. He is an independent mind and I see that he understands his, I would say, giant historical responsibility in this issue.
