No way out? Opportunities for mediation efforts in the Donbas region

ABSTRACT

This article examines why the Minsk II Agreement has been unsuccessful in achieving sustainable peace and focuses on the conflict mediators’ role in overcoming the stalemate. Based on negotiation theory, the underlying issues and circumstances before Minsk II and during the implementation process until 2019 are identified. The article postulates types of mediation leverage to overcome the stalemate. The findings reveal that United Nations peacekeepers could change the stalemate under certain conditions, whereas sanctions would be unlikely to critically influence the bargaining position, and increased United States involvement could have an impact on the conflict resolution.

KEYWORDS:

• Ukraine conflict
• mediation leverage
• negotiation theory
• conflict resolution

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Note on contributor

Jakob Landwehr is a research associate at the Department of International Relations, Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany. His PhD research focuses on conflict prevention, analysis and resolution, as well as negotiation and mediation theory and the United Nations and regional actors.

Notes

1 Aleksashenko (2016, 4) refers to Western sanctions mainly as sanctions imposed by the EU and the United States, but also considers countries such as Japan, Canada, Switzerland, Norway, Australia and New Zealand.

2 The Normandy Format, established in June 2014, has representatives from France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine.

3 The TCG consists of representatives from Ukraine, Russia and the OSCE.

4 Mediation leverage, for example peacekeepers, could contribute to overcoming the most controversial points of the Minsk II Agreement identified in this article. This includes point 9, border control, point 1 to ensure ceasefire, and point 2, the withdrawal of heavy weapons (for all 13 points of the Agreement, see the Minsk II Agreements).

5 The following sections entail a brief discussion on the difficulty of evaluating and measuring the impact of Western sanctions.

6 See for example Bergmann and Niemann (2013); Kydd (2006); Bercovitch and Gartner (2006); Bercovitch and Houston (2000); Bercovitch and Langley (1993); Bercovitch (1992); Bercovitch, Anagnoson and Wille (1991).