Ukraine

Ways out of the impasse

Prior to the first anniversary of the Minsk Ukraine negotiations behind the Scenes hectic diplomacy operated. But the fronts are hardened. From Kiev reported Frank Hofmann.

One year ago: The presidents Vladimir Putin and Petro Poroshenko meet in Minsk

Since the end of the Orthodox Christmas in the first week of January to meet the diplomats again every week on Wednesday in Minsk. Here are also the OSCE representatives and facilitators from its member States, including from Germany and France. In several “working groups” will then be on political and economic issues and about Waffenstillstandsbrüche between Ukrainians, Russians, and the Moscow-supported rebels spoken.

Currently, the OSCE observers monitoring the deep worry lines, because once again more fighting and weapons back in the buffer zone. On economic issues, there are negotiations from a German representative from the Berlin foreign office to be conveyed. Here calling the Rebellenvertreter and Russia mostly at the end of the Kiev Wirtschaftsblockade against the occupied territories. Kiev points out that “hardly a Bank is willing to explain, armored car there to bring” – from which pensions or social welfare to the citizens to be paid off. Because you could it is the rebels just transfer directly.

The trump card of the sanctions

The same two days each week, the negotiators of the “political group”. But a lot of time is not necessarily a lot of results. Here are the points of the Minsk peace agreement is for the discussion about the future of the prorussischen rebel occupied areas in the East of Ukraine to decide. As there should in future be chosen? What is the Status of the Region? How can Ukraine deal with its border to Russia back in control? Nothing is clarified. “We need a new impulse to get out of the dead end to come”, says a high Ukrainian Diplomat in Kiev.

On that Monday, the Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko for talks in Berlin. Above all, it could be but next week, the foreign Ministers of the so-called Normandy format from Germany, France, Russia and the Ukraine again, and even before the Munich security conference meet, it says. Russian foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has as a first a date: the 8. February. Moscow wants to after the beginning of the Ukraine war and collected sanctions from the EU and the USA against Russia to get rid of. The EU countries had them last until summer extended. Apparently, the Kremlin is willing, he supported the government in the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk to sacrifice. Everything Rumors.

The scars of war: Destroyed homes in Mariupol, in Southeast Ukraine

New Russian weapons supplies

Alone: signals friendly willingness to negotiate makes the Kremlin seem to miss. In January, had the responsible for Europe U.S. Deputy Secretary of state Victoria Nuland and the Ukraine competent Putin Confidant, Vladislav Surkov to the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad met. “We were about the results of the discussions will be informed immediately,” says the Kiev Diplomat. Concrete proposals have Moscow but not so. “The Kremlin wants from a Position of strength to negotiate,” says another observer in Kiev. So could the recent troop movements in the Moscow-supported rebels explain.

The Ukrainian foreign Ministry had in a written communication by the end of January said, “according to the findings of the Ukrainian security service” were again weapons from Russia with freight trains across the border to the rebels have been transported. According to the Minsk agreements of February 2015 is likely to already no longer happen. Accordingly, should Kiev for four weeks of its Russian border control. But not even the OSCE observers present, each of the boundary points to visit.

Hardly Central points implemented

But Ukraine is not providing more: Kiev has not yet been enacted, the elections in the Separatistengebieten would enable the constitutional reform to decentralization falters, the areas of a special grant, but also the self-provinces of the Western Ukraine more independent from the Central government in Kiev would do. President Poroshenko has no two-thirds majority in Parliament. Open is also the question of whether the rebels of Kiev amnestied. “After legal examination,” says the Ukrainian foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin. Moscow wants a General Amnesty. So it goes for months again and again to the Verhandlungstischen in the Belarusian capital, Minsk.

“Now we need clear guarantees that the agreements are implemented,” says the high-Kiev Diplomat. Otherwise you get no more: “I want to know what happens, if a page of the agreements will not be implemented.” A new roadmap. In Kiev, write to Newspapers, already of a “Minsk III agreement”, but without hope of implementation. Finally, there were the first agreements of September 2014, in the following winter, and in the “Russian Aggression” after it sank, it led to the of Germany and France mentioned negotiations a year ago. At the time agreed “an immediate ceasefire” was only more than half a year later begun to achieve. In Kiev has apparently become accustomed to: quick solutions to the conflict in Eastern Ukraine believe only a few.