October 02, 2019

Normandy Four: who holds the keys to the Donbass settlement?

topic:	Democracy
located:	Russia, Ukraine, Germany, France
editor:	Igor Serebryany

The settlement of the five-year conflict over the status of two self-proclaimed republics in eastern Ukraine has remained beyond the horizon just days before the meeting of the so-called Normandy Four due in Paris.

On Wednesday, the members of the contact group (France, Germany, Russia, Ukraine) drafted a document outlining the disengagement along the frontline in Donbass and signed the so-called Stainmayer formula of the two entities' reintegration into Ukraine. This will be the first meeting of the four since 2016.

According to the preliminary agreement, Ukrainian troops and separatists must start dismantling of fortifications and sweeping minefields on the October 7. Still, Kiev and Moscow look forward to Paris meeting with skepticism rather than optimism, as its agenda offers no real solution suitable for either country. In Ukraine, President Vladimir Zelensky came under fierce attack from nationalist and pro-European parties alike, which accused him of high treason. 

Ex-president Petro Poroshenko, who lost the elections to Zelenskly earlier this year, even called the Walter Steinmayer's peace plan "Putin's formula". According to Steinmayer's plan, self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk republics will be granted a special status within Ukraine after the elections to be held under the auspice of the OSCE. Zelensky's opponents reject that formula on the ground that elections in Russia-controlled areas cannot be free and fair by default. If held, the elected members of the Supreme Rada (Ukrainian parliament) will become the Kremlin's puppets – they are convinced. 

Meanwhile, leaders of two separatist republics made a statement of their own. In brief, it could be translated as 'friendly advice' for at least three members of the contact group to mind their own business. "Donbass affairs, including integration with Russia, will be decided neither in Paris, nor in Berlin nor in Kiev but in Donetsk and Lugansk," they said in a joint communique on Wednesday. 

This is why the Paris meeting is doomed to failure before it even kicks off, political expert Alexander Rogers predicts. "The Normandy format, as well as Minsk agreements, are nothing more than an imitation of the peace process, which they are not," a native of Western Ukraine says. "They can be holding negotiations for years with no advancement because their final goal – reunification with Ukraine – has been rejected by Donbass people". Rogers is convinced that Donetsk and Lugansk residents will reject any "very special status" within Ukraine because their goal is unification with Russia, period. "They don't demand any special status as a precondition for unification with it". 

In fact, those two entities have already been deeply integrated with Russia through the use of the Russian currency and receiving Russian passports by its residents. "And Kiev does not influence the political decisions made in seceded areas", Rogers stresses. "Zelensky, like his predecessor, is not a player in that game. He is a pawn moved by the real players from the Western capitals. So he will sign any road map offered to him during the Paris summit regardless of the consequences", the expert says.

Meeting of the Normandy Four makes sense for Russia only in terms of achieving some very particular goals because the goal formally declared is unreachable, founder of the PolitRussia analytic service Cyrill Strelnikov echoes. "In no case would Russia leave Donbass on its own because Russia has already absorbed these territories de-facto", he says.

Russia is eager to facilitate disengagement and solution of humanitarian problems in those areas. For Moscow, the game is worth the candle. This is why Moscow participates in the contact group with peace of mind, Strelnikov explains. "All the goals set by the outer-to-Donbass players are achievable only if accepted in Donetsk and Lugansk. However pitiful it sounds for the "big four", the rules of the game have been set in those tiny entities", he says. 

Photo: Normandy leaders in Minsk with president Lukashenko, February 2015, Kremlin.ru