By the Wall Street Journal
Today the leaders of Russia, Germany and France will discuss ways out of the Ukrainian crisis in Moscow. Dmitry Peskov, the press secretary of the Russian President, stated that “the heads of the three countries will discuss certain steps which could be taken to encourage the end of the civil war in the south-east of Ukraine, which leads to numerous victims.” Ahead of the meeting, the Wall Street Journal expressed its view on the peace settlement process. Vestnik Kavkaza presents the article.
Western leaders launched an urgent, high-stakes mission Thursday to try to calm the resurgent conflict in Ukraine, as the prospect of U.S. weapons deliveries raised the pressure on a so-far unyielding Kremlin Moscow warned that any Western military aid to Ukraine would be seen as an escalation and a threat to Russia itself.
Chances for a quick diplomatic solution appeared slim as Russia and its separatist proxies in eastern Ukraine on one side, and Kiev and its Western allies on the other, differed sharply on what a peace deal should look like. Western governments have rejected a proposal Russian President Vladimir Putin quietly sent to Berlin and Paris this week, which seeks more territory and autonomy for the rebels, according to Western officials familiar with the text.
On Thursday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President François Hollande flew unexpectedly to Kiev for emergency consultations with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko before heading to Moscow, with U.S. backing, to present Mr. Putin with a counterproposal on Friday. “We are hopeful Russia will take advantage of a broad-based acceptance that there’s a diplomatic resolution staring everybody in the face,” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, also in Kiev, said after meeting Mr. Poroshenko himself. Mr. Kerry repeated demands that Russia-backed separatists pull back their troops and heavy weapons and that Moscow seal its side of the border.
Large shipments of Russian armor as well as fighters have been crossing into Ukraine to support the rebels, according to Western intelligence assessments. Moscow has repeatedly denied such charges.
A Kremlin spokesman said the leaders would discuss what concrete steps they could take to end the conflict, which he described as “a civil war,” Interfax news agency reported.
Russian officials said diplomats from Russia, France and Germany are expected to hold talks through the day Friday in Moscow, with the leaders scheduled to meet in the evening.
Rebel leaders, who aren’t expected to attend, said Thursday that they would agree to another cease-fire only if Kiev stopped fighting first. In recent days, they also have demanded that the cease-fire line be based on where the opposing forces now stand. That would give rebels hundreds of square miles of territory that was assigned to Kiev under a deal reached in September, which quickly fell apart.
Ukraine’s Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said Kiev wouldn’t agree to any deal that “undermines the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine, and its European future”—an apparent reference to Moscow’s efforts to derail closer ties between Kiev and the European Union. He also renewed his government’s appeal for Western military aid. “We strongly believe that to reach peace, Ukraine needs to increase its defensive capabilities,” Mr. Yatsenyuk said.
U.S. officials said this week that the Obama administration is considering providing weapons, including Javelin antitank missiles, to Ukraine as part of an effort to try to deter further aggression by the rebels. The White House made clear Thursday it was keeping its options open, despite opposition in France and Germany—and among some in Washington—to providing lethal aid. Press secretary Josh Earnest said President Barack Obama believes new steps may be needed because Western sanctions pressure “hasn’t resulted in the kind of decision-making we’d like to see from the Putin regime.” But, he added, “one of the concerns that we have about providing military assistance is that it does contain the possibility of expanding bloodshed, and that’s actually what we’re trying to avoid.” A senior administration official said Mr. Obama planned to discuss the issue with Ms. Merkel when she visits Washington next week, but declined to say how deeply the U.S. was involved in her latest diplomacy.
In Moscow, Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich warned that U.S. weapons deliveries to Ukraine “would be not only an escalation of the situation” in Ukraine, “but would threaten the security of the Russian Federation, whose territory has been fired on from the Ukrainian side.”
Mr. Kerry and European officials said the new diplomatic effort was aimed at reviving the principles agreed to in September by all sides, including Russia, in the Belarusian capital of Minsk.
Recent battlefield gains by the rebels appear to have spurred Mr. Putin to push for more. The Kremlin’s proposal, communicated privately, appeared to broaden the territory claimed by the separatists and called for a greater recognition of the rebel enclaves than the limited self-rule promised by Kiev. But people familiar with the talks said Western governments have rejected the plan—one Western diplomat called it absurd, another said it was cynical. Western officials said Mr. Putin’s plan would have cemented a “frozen conflict zone” in Ukraine’s east, which it could then use to maintain its influence over Kiev. Instead, Ms. Merkel and Mr. Hollande will try to forge a new deal with their own proposal, based on the previous agreement, officials said.
Neither the European leaders nor Mr. Poroshenko commented publicly after their talks in Kiev, which lasted until almost midnight.
Mr. Kerry, who wasn’t planning to go to Moscow, said he supported Ms. Merkel’s and Mr. Hollande’s mission. “It’s part of a concerted effort to see if we can put a little more meat on the bones,” he said at a news conference with Mr. Yatsenyuk. “To have a new deal, without executing the previous one, seems to me to be a trap,” he said. “We urge Russia to implement and execute what was agreed, signed and authorized personally by Mr. Putin” in September.
The nearly year-old conflict has resulted in thousands of deaths and exacted a heavy toll on Ukraine’s economy as well. The country’s beleaguered currency plunged again Thursday after its central bank raised interest rates and moved toward a free-floating exchange rate, underlining the increasingly dire financial situation.
Mr. Kerry announced $16.5 million in humanitarian aid to refugees fleeing the violence. He also ridiculed Moscow’s insistence that it isn’t supplying advanced weapons and Russian fighters to back up the separatists.The surprise mission to Moscow is the most dramatic effort yet by Europeans to broker a diplomatic solution. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier described it as an effort to avoid a situation in which “the overall state of things in eastern Ukraine gets fully out of control and international efforts can no longer help.” Ms. Merkel has spoken often by phone with Mr. Putin during the Ukraine crisis but resisted going to Moscow herself, in part because it would hand Mr. Putin a propaganda coup, people close to her have said. But a surge in violence in recent weeks has changed the balance, rekindling fears that Russia and Ukraine could be drawn into a full-fledged war. German officials have grown increasingly concerned about potentially large military setbacks suffered by Ukrainian forces in the railway hub of Debaltseve, which has been the focus of a rebel onslaught.
“Given the escalation in violence of recent days, the chancellor and President Hollande are strengthening their monthslong efforts to find a peaceful settlement to the conflict in eastern Ukraine,” Ms. Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert said in Berlin.
“In Ukraine, there is war,” Mr. Hollande said in Paris. “If we succeed, we will avoid an escalation of the conflict.”
The Russian economy has also suffered under the weight of Western sanctions on top of falling prices for oil, its main export. Official data showed consumer prices rose 15% on the year in January, a result of ruble weakness and a planned increase in transport tariffs.
Senior officials from European Union countries reached an informal agreement Thursday to expand the list of targeted sanctions against pro-Moscow rebels and some of their backers in Russia, according to several diplomats in Brussels. The tentative agreement could be approved by foreign ministers on Monday. But European diplomats say at this stage, there is only limited backing for expanding the bloc’s broader economic sanctions on Russia.
