Is Paris worth a mass?

Normandy Four Summit in Paris appears to have ended on an optimistic note, with the warring sides being in the process of withdrawing heavy armaments from the line of demarcation and the Donbas elections issue having been formally resolved. However, good decisions on Donbas have been made more than once with the situation remaining alarmingly unchanged. The good thing is that there were no skirmishes several days prior to the summit, that the ceasefire was kept, but how can one be sure that hostilities will not resume? After all it would take several hours to return the armaments to the front line. Also, it is unclear when the Ukrainian POWs – including those kept in custody in Russia – will be released. Setting them free would be a positive signal indicating that the other side means business.

The holding or cancelation of local elections scheduled for October 18 in Donetsk and November 1 in Luhansk will show whether or not Putin meant to keep his promise to influence the separatists. If canceled, this would be proof that Putin wants a lower degree of tension in Donbas. The other scenario can’t be ruled out, either. The separatist leaders may well declare that Normandy Four isn’t binding on them and proceed with the elections that are unlawful under Ukrainian legislation. Should this be the case, all Paris summit participants would find themselves in a difficult situation. This would mean a blatant violation of the Minsk Agreements after agreeing in Paris on the possibility of extending them in 2016, until the end or at least the middle of the year (all this playing into Putin’s hands, of course).

If the separatist elections take place in the LNR and DNR, the Minsk process will be as good as dead, all because of the separatists. This might well be Putin’s objective. Then the Western partners would have to punish Moscow and impose further sanctions on Russia. They would be loath to do so. Putin senses this attitude and may risk burying the Paris accords. If so, the militants will keep the ceasefire and the Ukrainian troops won’t dare breach it.

Another option: Putin could use the ceasefire to freeze the conflict in Donbas and leave Ukraine and the West facing the fait accompli. The separatists would proceed to form bodies of authority and crowd all things Ukrainian out of the DNR and LNR territories. President Obama, turning into a lame duck too early during his tenure, wouldn’t be likely to react too sharply to Russia’s burial of the Minsk Agreements. There is no way to guarantee that such actions on the part of Moscow would evoke harsher sanctions from the West. All might end up with declarations and symbolic gestures. If enacted, this scenario would constitute the worst danger to Ukraine. At best, Kyiv could respond by a total blockade of the occupied territories, severing all ties with them, to make the burden unbearable for Moscow.

However, this pessimistic scenario for Ukraine appears to be a remote possibility because it spells a great deal of risk for Moscow. What if the West responds with harsher sanctions? Even if they remain the same, no good news for the Kremlin. Russia’s economic condition is aggravating because of a drop in oil prices, with the sanctions still effective. Putin, therefore, is increasingly interested in producing a semblance of political settlement in Donbas to have the main sanctions lifted. If oil prices keep on a downward curve, Russia will shortly ask not to lift sanctions but for urgent financial aid from the West in the form of soft loans. Such loans could be granted only in return for specific and significant political concessions, as was the case during the perestroika campaign. Putin is in a hurry, aware that the period of relative well-being for the Russian economy is drawing to a close, with long “lean” years ahead. The Russian president wants all his unlawful possessions made in the course of aggression against Ukraine – Crimea and Donbas – legalized as soon as absolutely possible.

Putin wants Crimea to remain part of Russia, once and for all, but he would like to return the occupied territories of Donbas to Ukraine – as a Trojan horse, to block all Kyiv attempts to integrate into the European Union and NATO and thus rid Ukraine of Russia’s suffocating embrace. Part of this scenario could be the media reports on the DNR and LNR leaders’ proposal to postpone the elections in return for changes to the Ukrainian election laws, something Kyiv is not likely to accept. First, the militants demand amnesty for all activists of the self-styled republics. Second, the separatists insist on amending Ukrainian legislation where it says that in the course of elections on a majority basis only candidates officially registered in Ukraine can be nominated. The DNR/LNR leaders want candidates nominated by “NGOs” in Donbas and Luhansk oblasts to be eligible, too. This requirement undermines Ukraine’s political integrity even more than that for amnesty for the militants.

Should Kyiv accept this requirement in some or other way, the result would be the existence in Ukraine of nationwide political parties and organizations along with regional organizations that would reduce their activities to one or at best two neighboring regions while taking equal part in elections on various levels. Such amendments to national legislation would encourage separatist moods not only in Donbas. Hopefully, all more or less responsible Ukrainian politicians are aware of this and will make no concessions to the separatists in this principal matter. Such concessions would have a destructive effect on Ukrainian statehood.

According to the spokesperson of the Presidential Administration, they wanted Petro Poroshenko to accept these terms – amnesty for the militants even before the elections, a new law on the special status of Donbas, and one on elections considering the separatists’ requirements – in Paris. The president of Ukraine did not give in to blackmail. Most likely the separatists, aided by Russia, will try to push through similar demands during the meeting of the Contact Group in Minsk. The DNR and LNR leaders are well aware that no NGOs or political organizations hastily put together in the self-styled republics will stand a chance of being registered with the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine, so they are trying to make a deal beforehand, to have a right to participate in some principal matters, particularly in elections, and operate outside Ukrainian legislation.

As a matter of fact, no amendments to Ukrainian legislation demanded by the separatists could have been technically made before November 18, so their proposal to postpone the elections could be a ruse to evoke flat refusal from the Ukrainian side.