Hopes for breakthrough: Moscow talks on Ukraine 'constructive,' joint document 'possible'
Published time: February 06, 2015 22:15
Edited time: February 07, 2015 07:20
Edited time: February 07, 2015 07:20
READ MORE: Putin meets Merkel, Hollande behind closed doors in Moscow
“On the basis of proposals made by the French President and German Chancellor, there is currently ongoing joint work to prepare the text of a possible joint document on the implementation of the Minsk agreements – a document that would include proposals made by Ukrainian President Poroshenko and proposals put forward today by Russian President Putin,” Dmitry Peskov said after the talks between the three leaders finished in Moscow on Friday.
He explained that after the document is prepared it will be presented to both sides in the conflict in Ukraine for approval. Peskov characterized the talks as “constructive, informative and substantive.”
The preliminary results of the talks will be discussed in a telephone call between the ‘Normandy Four’ – Russia, France, Germany, and Ukraine – on Sunday, he said.
The French government viewed the talks as having been “constructive and meaningful,” RIA Novosti reported, citing French media sources in the Hollande administration.
"On the basis of a proposal by Germany's chancellor and France's president, a possible joint document to implement the Minsk agreement will now be worked on," German government spokesman Steffen Seibert confirmed in a statement.
French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrived in Moscow on Friday evening. They headed straight to the Kremlin for talks on the Ukrainian crisis with President Vladimir Putin behind closed doors in discussion which lasted for nearly five hours.
The importance of the talks has been highlighted by the fact that the details have been shrouded in secrecy. RT’s Maria Finoshina reported from the Kremlin that the journalists were given a mere 30 seconds to take photographs of the three leaders, and none of them uttered a single word to the press during the photo-shoot.
The Minsk Protocol – an agreement to stop the conflict in eastern Ukraine – was signed in September by representatives of Kiev, the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, the Russian envoy to Ukraine, and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) following talks in the Belarusian capital.
The document outlined twelve points, urging a bilateral ceasefire and calling for measures to resolve the conflict in Donbass. A follow-up memorandum listed concrete steps to enforce a ceasefire, including a pullback of heavy weaponry, the creation of a 30-kilometer buffer zone, a ban on offensive operations and combat flights, as well as the setting up of an OSCE watchdog mission.
The ceasefire agreement was initially lauded as successful, with prisoner swaps taking place and fighting reducing in intensity. However, in January there was a rapid escalation in the conflict, with both the Kiev government and the rebels blaming each other for starting an offensive at Donetsk’s main airport, which was partly held by the Ukrainian armed forces at the time. Kiev stepped up its military operation and the shelling of Donbass cities after losing the airport, and self-proclaimed officials responded with harsh rhetoric, also pledging to fight back and attack.
Most recently, a dramatic escalation of fighting turned the eastern city of Debaltsevo, between Donetsk and Lugansk, into a warzone, with civilians coming under intense shelling. Destroyed tanks and armored vehicles littered the city’s streets. Local militia fighters said that they had negotiated a humanitarian corridor for civilians in the area, which was later confirmed by Kiev.
However, the evacuation of Debaltsevo did not go smoothly from the very outset. Russian journalists, including an RT crew, came under sniper fire at a checkpoint near the city, with militia firing back. According to RT’s Roman Kosarev, “bullets were flying two or three meters” away from the group. Luckily, nobody was injured in the shootout.
READ MORE: Russian journalists including RT crew come under fire in eastern Ukraine
The Moscow-based talks between Putin, Merkel and Hollande also comes at a time when the US is mulling to send lethal weapons to Ukraine – a step which even its closest allies, the UK and Germany, view as carrying potentially disastrous consequences for the ongoing crisis.
In an interview during the Munich Security Conference, British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon told Reuters that he fully supported a new effort by the leaders of Germany and France to try and halt the Ukraine conflict, while saying that supplying Kiev with weapons would only escalate it.
At the same time, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has stressed that the Ukrainian conflict cannot be resolved militarily and the world leaders should not “try and fix the problems at gunpoints.”
‘Problems in Washington and Kiev, not in Paris and Berlin’
The apparently widening policy rift between Washington and the European capitals with regards to the Ukrainian crisis did not go unnoticed, with critics saying that it is in fact the US and Kiev who are creating obstacles which stand in the way of the conflict’s resolution.READ MORE: Sending weapons to Ukraine would escalate violence – UK Defence Secretary
Martin Sieff, columnist for the Post-Examiner newspaper, spoke to RT about the Friday talks in Moscow: “I think we will be seeing an outlined document, I think there will be significant progress made towards the implementation of a ceasefire. Chancellor Merkel and President Hollande [have] belatedly recognized the seriousness of what is happening in Ukraine, they do want to move back from the brink, they do want to restrain the Kiev government, they are strongly in favor on a negotiated settlement. The problems will be in Washington and Kiev, not in Paris and Berlin.”
According to Sieff, the “key rogue player” in the conflict is the Kiev government, which has been backed by the West but is now getting out of control and want to play its own rules on the ground.
“The West created [Ukrainian] President [Petro] Poroshenko, but he is in many respects the tail that wags the dog, they cannot always rein him in. He is the rogue player, he is the joker in this hand,” Sieff argued.
If Washington goes ahead and sends arms to Ukraine as American hard-liners demand, it will be “a very dangerous move,” Sieff said, adding that Hollande and Merkel seem to have “a much greater sense of responsibility” regarding efforts to resolve the Ukrainian crisis.
“I don’t think they [the US government] are looking at the real situation on the ground in Ukraine, and I don’t think they’re putting this in the wider context of the crisis America is facing, the other crisis, in the Middle East, where they’re trying to contain ISIS [Islamic State] at the moment. Containing ISIS is quite enough for America to have on its hands after two exhausting war in Iraq and Afghanistan; they cannot afford to let Ukraine cut loose with American weapons and American support as well, that would be insane for the US, it will be an imperial overstretch,” Sieff said.
READ MORE: US partly to blame for Ukraine’s use of cluster bombs – McCain
According to the critic, to resolve the conflict, US President Barack Obama and US Secretary of State John Kerry need to “swallow their pride and get a genuine bilateral relationship going again with President Putin,” as the US-Russia ties are “the most important strategic relationship in the world.” The problem is the lack of debate in Washington about the responsibility of Western powers for the current conflict in Ukraine, as well as the strategic importance and sensitivity of the developments in the region for Russia, he said.