Putin Predicts Peace Deal to Emerge Tomorrow from Minsk Negotiations

Up here in the Pacific Northwest the autumn chill can already be felt in the mornings. With gas deliveries having been suspended for the entire summer while fighting has raged in the Donbass, I'm sure the change in weather can felt by Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko.

Putin announced yesterday that a ceasefire agreement will be signed tomorrow in Minsk. Neil MacFarquhar describes what the deal would look like in today's "Putin Lays Out Proposal to End Ukraine Conflict":

In announcing the plan, Mr. Putin said he expected Ukraine and the separatists to wrap up an agreement after a new round of negotiations in Minsk, Belarus, on Friday. Ukraine, Russia and Europe are all party to the talks there, and they include representatives of the separatists. The two-day NATO summit meeting is also scheduled to end Friday. 

Aside from the cease-fire, the plan laid out by Mr. Putin called for Ukrainian artillery to pull back and out of range of the eastern separatists’ strongholds; an end to airstrikes; an exchange of all detainees; opening up humanitarian corridors for residents of the separatist areas; repairing damaged infrastructure; and deploying international observers to monitor the cease-fire. 

It made no mention of autonomy for the separatist eastern regions, the central political demand that Russia has emphasized since March. That is widely seen as critical to the Kremlin’s long-term goal of maintaining influence over Ukraine’s domestic affairs and blocking any future attempt to join NATO. 

Putin's plan made no mention of autonomy for Donetsk and Luhansk because it is unnecessary: a real ceasefire guarantees autonomy for the Donbass. It is the oft quoted "facts on the ground."

After a long phone call with Putin yesterday, Poroshenko declared that a lasting ceasefire agreement had been reached. He then walked it back, saying that the need for a ceasefire was agreed upon.

Likely what happened is that the U.S. nixed the deal. Obama, about to take his "great statesman" star turn at the Cardiff NATO summit, did not want to be upstaged yet again by Putin. A clue to this is the yapping of the neocon miniature terrier nonpareil, junta prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk. According to MacFarquhar:

In Kiev, the idea of a cease-fire was received with mixed emotions. 

There is open hostility to the idea that Russia will be able to dictate terms to its weaker neighbor after already wrenching away the Crimean peninsula in March. Any compromise after months of condemning the separatists as “terrorists” risks weakening Mr. Poroshenko in central and western Ukraine. 

Prime Minister Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk called Mr. Putin’s proposal “an attempt to confuse the international community” before the NATO summit meeting and the expected announcement of new sanctions from the European Union. 

“Putin’s real plan is the destruction of Ukraine and the resumption of the U.S.S.R.,” Mr. Yatsenyuk said, according to a statement posted on a government website. Peace will come only once Russia withdraws its troops and proxy force, it said. 

But many Ukrainians, horrified by the mounting toll of more than 2,600 dead and uneasy about the economic costs for a country already on the edge of bankruptcy, want an end to the violence. Winter is approaching, and the other confrontation with Russia, over gas sales, seems unlikely to be resolved while fighting rages in the east. 

“We are in a situation where any kind of cease-fire would be progress,” said Olexander Scherba, an ambassador at large in the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry. “Last week was devastating after Russia started this open invasion of Ukraine.”

Even if a agreement is penned tomorrow in Minsk, it doesn't solve any of the problems of how to implement such a ceasefire:

There is a long road ahead before any real settlement can be reached, analysts noted. Moscow does not fully control the separatists; nor is it clear that Kiev can automatically rein in the armed militias it has unleashed alongside its military in the east. 

Vladislav Brig, a senior official in the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic, said by telephone that the rebels expected Ukrainian forces to withdraw from the entire region as a condition for peace. “The negotiating side here is not Russia; it is the Donetsk People’s Republic,” he said. “We will stop the offensive when Ukrainian troops leave our territory.” 

Ukraine has said repeatedly that it will not contemplate a full withdrawal from the Donbass region. “It depends on Russia,” Mr. Scherba said. “Russia is the one that started this and can bring it to an end.”

In this analysis, MacFarquhar, a reliable USG voice, is not that far off from some of the more independent commentators of the blogosphere -- El Murid (as translated on Niqnaq's page), for instance.

What we know is this: Fall is approaching and Ukraine's standoff with Gazprom cannot be ignored for too much longer; Ukraine has been defeated militarily by the Novorossiya militias; and the political turmoil among the constituent junta parties is growing. A deal must be struck sooner rather than later.

Another hurdle to factor in for the junta is that as early as tomorrow the Dutch Safety Board is going to publish its report on the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. Even if the report avoids an opinion as to who was responsible for shoot-down of the commercial airliner and the death of its 298 passengers and crew, Kiev could come in for some criticism. This is from Nicola Clark's "E.U. Urges Sharing Data to Avert Air Disasters":

European legislators at the hearing [of the European Parliament’s transportation committee] on Wednesday expressed consternation as to why Ukrainian officials did not close the airspace to civilian air traffic and why international safety regulators appeared not to have questioned Ukraine’s assessment of the threat to passenger traffic.

Maybe I was right a few weeks back when I saw a deal coming out of Minsk. I was just a couple weeks off.