Impossible for Ukrainian authorities to end their civil war. [View all]

[another_liberal]

Why is it so difficult for the opposing sides of Ukraine's bitter and devastating civil war to finally implement conditions of the long ago agree to Minsk II peace accords? According to a number of experts on the Ukrainian situation, the hold-up is almost totally due to the limited options available to those who currently hold power in Kiev.

Ukrainian President Poroshenko sticks a Ukrainian decal on a Humvee given by the United States as military aid to Ukraine, March, 2015 (AFP)


Ending Ukraine's Civil War: Why Kiev Can't Risk Fulfilling Its Promises


The leaders of the Normandy Quartet (Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France) recently agreed to extend the implementation of the Minsk accords, drafted to restore peace in eastern Ukraine, into 2016. What does the extension mean, what are its prospects, and why do authorities in Kiev seem to have such a hard time fulfilling their obligations? On December 30, the leaders of the so-called Normandy Quartet on Ukrainian Reconciliation spoke by phone, agreeing to extend the Minsk agreements on the settlement of the conflict in Donbass, which expired on December 31, for another year.

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Among Minsk II's main stumbling blocks are the points on the search for a political settlement, specifically the prospects for local elections in the self-declared Donetsk and Lugansk republics. Negotiations "on modalities of conducting local elections," conducted within the framework of the political sub-group of the Contact Group, have resulted in deadlock, with elections previously set for October and since carried over to February looking more and more unlikely to take place.

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Speaking to the newspaper, Rostislav Ischenko, a Ukrainian political expert and president of the Center for Systems Analysis and Forecasting, recalled that "talk on the inevitable resumption of hostilities in the Donbass has been heard since the Minsk II agreement was first reached." The reality, the analyst suggests, "is not so much that Minsk II is at an impasse, but that the Minsk agreements were from the beginning simply not feasible for Ukrainian authorities. The fact is that if they were implemented, the current Ukrainian government would lose control of the country, and would have to leave office. Furthermore," Ischenko recalls, "Ukraine is home to [ultranationalist 'territorial defense'] battalions, which in the case of the implementation of the Minsk Agreements will be guaranteed to find themselves in prison or in the grave. It's clear that they too are doing everything they can to ensure that the agreements are not met – and this is a force consisting of tens of thousands of armed men."

Asked why the agreement was signed, if Kiev had no intention of fulfilling it, the expert explained that Ukrainian leaders "had expected that they would be allowed not to fulfill Minsk II, while Russia would be pressured to do so. But it soon became clear that everything had turned out in a completely different way, and from that moment Ukrainian authorities have been looking for ways to disrupt the agreements."

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Read more at: http://sputniknews.com/politics/20160101/1032576602/ukraine-civil-war-minsk-agreements-analysis.html