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Leaders in Ukraine Talks Announce Cease-Fire Agreement Ukraine’s Latest Peace Plan Inspires Hope and Doubts
(about 9 hours later)
MINSK, Belarus — A renewed cease-fire and an overall agreement to end the war in Ukraine were announced here on Thursday by the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France after marathon overnight bargaining that nearly collapsed at the very end. MINSK, Belarus — The coming days will provide a quick, tangible test of whether a new peace agreement announced Thursday will prove any more effective in calming the nearly year-old war in Ukraine than a similar cease-fire last September that was widely ignored.
The cease-fire is scheduled to begin at midnight on Saturday, but the 13-point compact appeared fragile, with crucial issues like the location of the truce line and control of the border with Russia left unresolved. Over all, there seemed to be no guarantee that the problems that marred the cease-fire agreement reached here in September had been ironed out. Optimists point to the presence and personal imprimatur of Europe’s two most important leaders, as well as President Vladimir V. Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart, Petro O. Poroshenko, as a sign that this agreement, called Minsk II, would prove more resilient than the version reached here last September, Minsk I.
The very fact that it took more than 16 hours of intensive negotiations to reach an agreement, and that the leaders announced the accord in three separate news conferences, seemed to highlight the differences that remained. Pessimists — some would say realists — believe this latest accord only papers over many of the nagging problems that sparked the fighting in the first place.
But after so many hours spent in the grandiose Independence Palace in Minsk, the Belarussian capital, all four leaders emphasized that the agreement should be given the chance to quiet the nearly yearlong conflict in eastern Ukraine. Critical questions were left ambiguous or kicked down the road, including the status of the breakaway territories, a calendar for Ukraine to regain control over its border with Russia and even the truce line itself.
“It consisted of a long night and a long morning, but we arrived at an accord on the cease-fire and the global end to the conflict,” François Hollande, the French president, said at a news conference in a joint appearance with the German chancellor, Angela Merkel. “Minsk II raises tough questions and leaves difficult issues for later,” said Steven Pifer, a former American ambassador to Ukraine. “It is a fragile arrangement, requiring good faith and follow-through from parties that have shown little of that in the past.”
“What we have on the table today gives us great hope,” said Ms. Merkel, who unexpectedly began a mediation effort with her French counterpart last week. However, she added, that there was much work ahead. The Obama administration, which has indicated that it would send antitank missiles, surveillance drones and other far more serious battlefield weapons to Ukraine, said those plans would be shelved, for now, but would be revived if the parties failed to honor the agreement.
“We have no illusions,” she said, “A great, great deal of work still needs to be done. But there is a real chance to turn things around toward the better.” Given the fierce fighting in the railroad junction of Debaltseve in recent weeks, American officials said it would be evident immediately after the cease-fire comes into effect at midnight on Saturday whether the two sides are more serious this time than they were in September.
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and President Petro O. Poroshenko of Ukraine, in their separate briefings, highlighted those parts of the agreement that matched their demands, while noting crucial outstanding questions. “Any effort to grab more land between now and Saturday night will seriously undercut this agreement,” one of the officials said.
“Despite all the difficulties of the negotiating process, we managed to agree on the main things,” Mr. Putin said. Those issues included the withdrawal of heavy weaponry, a promise for constitutional change and “special status” for the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, he said. Nevertheless, Secretary of State John Kerry expressed guarded optimism, saying, “If the full agreement sticks, the United States will consider rolling back sanctions.”
Mr. Poroshenko, for his part, emphasized humanitarian issues, like the release of all prisoners, including Nadiya V. Savchenko, a female helicopter navigator who was elected to the Ukrainian Parliament while facing trial in Moscow. All foreign troops, military equipment and mercenaries should be withdrawn from Ukrainian territory, he said. The participants in the talks did not try to disguise the hurdles ahead. In Brussels on Thursday night, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, who steered the overnight negotiations along with President François Hollande of France, called the 13-point agreement outlining the steps needed to end the war “a glimmer of hope, but of course words must be matched by deeds.” She also stressed its fragile nature, saying, “There are a lot of possibilities that there may be difficulties on the ground.”
But the plan also included some tripwires, not least the questions about the truce line and the fate of the village of Debaltseve, an important railroad hub that has been the site of fierce fighting in recent weeks. Body language alone might prove a telling indicator. Mr. Putin and Mr. Poroshenko avoided eye contact as they shook hands at the outset of what proved to be more than 16 hours of difficult negotiations. At the end, each man stood wanly in a different room of the grandiose Independence Palace to announce that a deal had been reached.
The deal calls for heavy artillery to be withdrawn at least about 15 miles from each side, and the biggest missiles even farther. The withdrawal is scheduled to start two days after the cease-fire and to be completed within two weeks. None of the leaders themselves signed the agreements — that was left to other representatives of the antagonists and the European truce observers — sending a discreet signal that they were not taking full responsibility for the outcome. Ms. Merkel did note that Mr. Putin had to pressure the rebel leaders to sign.
Mr. Putin said that Mr. Poroshenko refused to acknowledge that the separatist forces had surrounded up to 8,000 Ukrainian soldiers in Debaltseve, but the Russian leader said he hoped that consultations between military commanders would settle that matter. The agreement also states that the Ukrainian military and its separatist opponents will complete the withdrawal of heavy weapons — with the largest missiles pulled back more than 40 miles — no later than two weeks after the start of the cease-fire.
The Russian leader warned that the situation there carried the potential for renewed fighting, but he called on both sides to stop the bloodshed. Russia has been accused of trying to create a so-called frozen conflict that it could heat up in order to destabilize Ukraine any time it draws too close to the West. Critics of the new agreement said it will help Moscow achieve that over the long run, even while Ukraine takes financial responsibility for the rebel regions.
Even as all sides endorsed the pending cease-fire, the fighting that has left more than 5,400 people dead since last spring continued.
Pro-Russian rebel forces mounted a counterattack on areas east of the coastal city of Mariupol, trying to retake some of the ground seized in recent days by the volunteer, right-wing Azov Battalion.
Residents of Mariupol, an industrial port on the Sea of Azov that is widely expected to be the next target of rebel attacks if the truce agreed to in Minsk does not hold, said they could hear heavy shelling throughout the morning.
City and military officials said the fighting had not hit civilian areas in the city, but had been confined to small villages to the east.
The status of the Russian-Ukrainian border promised to remain contentious. Kiev and NATO have said the border has remained porous, despite attempts at international monitoring, allowing Moscow easily to supply the two breakaway regions with men, money and matériel.
he new pact, which calls for Kiev to assume control by the end of 2015, but only if certain stringent conditions are met, particularly Kiev’s amending its constitution to allow far greater autonomy for the breakaway regions.
Russia said such border control by Kiev should be a lower priority than other issues, including the constitutional changes and local elections, which the compact says also should come by the end of 2015.
The Kremlin is seeking to establish autonomous republics with their own economic and foreign policies, while Ukraine has talked only about decentralization. The compact says that decentralization will be carried out, but the degree of autonomy was left ambiguous.
“This was not simple; in fact, unacceptable conditions were offered,” Mr. Poroshenko said, calling a new cease-fire the main achievement. “We did not agree to any ultimatums.”
The nearly four-page compact was signed by representatives of the separatists, Russia, Ukraine and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe — which monitored the last fruitless cease-fire effort — and mirrored the September accord.
Aside from the cease-fire, the agreement called for a dialogue between the two sides on holding elections, with the talks to start the day after heavy weapons are withdrawn.
It also said that the Ukrainian Parliament should define by law the territory of the areas to have self-rule and should pass an amnesty for the separatist leaders. Kiev should also establish the means to pay pensions and other social benefits that have been cut off, it said, including linking the banking system back to the national network.
The peace talks appeared on the verge of collapse even as they were drawing to a close. News conferences originally scheduled to announce an agreement were postponed, and the leaders went back to the bargaining table.
The return was accompanied by a flurry of Russian news agency reports that Mr. Poroshenko had declined at the last minute to accept the outlines of the deal relating to the independent status of the breakaway areas of Donetsk and Luhansk, as well as the cease-fire demarcation line.
When the leaders of the breakaway regions joined the talks in the morning, they also initially balked at signing the agreement, according to the official Russian news agency Tass.
Even after the signing, questions remained about whether the agreement will really end the fighting, or whether like the last cease-fire, it will be honored in name more than fact.
Russia is believed to be trying to create a frozen conflict that could be used to destabilize Ukraine any time it draws too close to the West and prevent Kiev from joining NATO.
“The practical, realistic expectation is a frozen conflict with no effective control by Kiev over those areas, but no formal responsibility of Russia,” said Fyodor Lukyanov, the editor of the journal Russia in Global Affairs.“The practical, realistic expectation is a frozen conflict with no effective control by Kiev over those areas, but no formal responsibility of Russia,” said Fyodor Lukyanov, the editor of the journal Russia in Global Affairs.
But the conflict has also reached a point where Russia would have to commit significant new resources for any advance, which helped clear the way for a settlement, Mr. Lukyanov said. Moscow said border control from Kiev should come only after other issues — including a constitutional amendment to allow greater autonomy in the east and local elections — have been settled, which the compact says should be by the end of 2015. That seemed to Ukraine and its allies to be an open invitation to Russia to keep the border open, allowing soldiers and weapons to move across at will.
Dalia Grybauskaite, the president of Lithuania, one of the Baltic States feeling threatened by Russia’s treatment of Ukraine, called the agreement weak.
“There is no agreement on border control at all, and this is the weakest part,” she told reporters in Brussels during a European Union summit. “It’s a very partial solution,” she added. “We already had a very bad experience of not implementing Minsk 1. We’ll see what Minsk 2 will mean.”
Aside from the cease-fire, the agreement called for a dialogue between the two sides on holding elections in the east, with the talks to start the day after all heavy weapons are withdrawn, or roughly two weeks from this Sunday. Kiev has refused to negotiate directly with the separatists.
The agreement also said that the Ukrainian Parliament should define by law the territory of the areas to have self-rule and should pass an amnesty for the separatist leaders. Kiev should pay pensions and other social benefits that it cut off last year, the agreement said.
The Kremlin is seeking to establish autonomous republics in Donetsk and Luhansk with their own economic and foreign policies — a model established during conflicts with Georgia and Moldova — while Ukraine has talked only about decentralization. The compact says that decentralization will be carried out, but the degree of autonomy was ambiguous.
Russia denies accusations from Ukraine and its Western supporters that it supplies men, money and war matériel to the separatists.
Analysts suggest that until now, Russia has committed minimal resources to southeastern Ukraine, an important consideration at a time when a severe drop in oil prices combined with Western sanctions is slowing draining the Kremlin’s coffers.
“The Russians have fought what is largely a proxy war in eastern Ukraine — and on the cheap, too,” Mark Galeotti, a military analyst, wrote in Foreign Policy magazine. “Even the government in Kiev, which is prone to alarmism, estimates that Russia has deployed, at most, some 9,000 troops.”
But the conflict has also reached a point where Russia would have to commit significant new resources for any further advance, which helped clear the way for a settlement to consolidate its gains, Mr. Lukyanov said.
The separatists “cannot advance very much without direct Russian involvement, and Russia does not want to get directly involved,” he said.The separatists “cannot advance very much without direct Russian involvement, and Russia does not want to get directly involved,” he said.
Mr. Putin and Mr. Poroshenko, in their separate briefings, highlighted those parts of the agreement that matched their demands, while noting crucial outstanding questions.
“Despite all the difficulties of the negotiating process, we managed to agree on the main things,” Mr. Putin said. Those issues included the withdrawal of heavy weaponry, a promise of constitutional changes and some variety of “special status” for the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, he said.
Mr. Putin said that Mr. Poroshenko refused to acknowledge that the separatist forces had surrounded up to 8,000 Ukrainian soldiers in Debaltseve, but the Russian leader said he hoped that consultations between military commanders would settle that matter. The Russian leader warned that the situation there carried the potential for renewed fighting, but he called on both sides to stop the bloodshed.
Mr. Poroshenko, for his part, emphasized humanitarian issues, like the release of all prisoners, including Lt. Nadiya V. Savchenko, a helicopter navigator who was elected to the Ukrainian Parliament while facing trial in Moscow. All foreign troops, military equipment and mercenaries should be withdrawn from Ukrainian territory, he said.
Even as all sides endorsed the pending cease-fire, there was only a slight drop off in the fighting that has left more than 5,400 people dead since last spring.
Ukrainians greeted the news with much the same skepticism as the experts, though mingled with relief. “We had a cease-fire before, but it was not observed, almost from the beginning, so how can we have much faith?” said Dmitri Kolesnik, an 18-year-old student in Kharkiv, a city in southeastern Ukraine that has been touched sporadically by the violence.
He paused on the steps leading down to a subway station, and said he puts the odds of peace at no better than 50-50.
“Putin is a very aggressive person,” Mr. Kolesnik said, as bustling throngs made their way home in the late afternoon. “You cannot always trust that just because he says something that it will happen.”