Destined for deadlock? Russia, Ukraine, and the unfulfilled Minsk agreements

ABSTRACT

Bringing peace, security, and stability to the war-torn region of Donbas has proven to be a challenging – some would say near-impossible – task. The “Minsk II” agreement, signed in February 2015, was supposed to put an end to the armed hostilities, resolve the underlying political issues, and gradually restore Ukrainian government control of the country’s eastern border. None of this has happened. Despite continuous Western support and pressure, progress in the implementation of the peace plan signed in Minsk has been slow, also after the much-anticipated Paris summit of the “Normandy Four” (Russia, Ukraine, Germany, and France) in December 2019. This article discusses the underlying causes of the current stalemate, emphasizing factors such as the inherently complex nature of the conflict, the process through which “Minsk II” came into being, the vague and ambiguous language of this and other agreements, practical challenges related to the timing and sequencing of agreed-upon measures, and Russia’s persistent non-acknowledgement of its role in the conflict.

KEYWORDS:

• Donbas
• Russia
• Ukraine
• war
• diplomacy
• Minsk agreements

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Paul D’Anieri, Mathieu Boulègue, and members of the Humanities and Social Sciences Writing Group at the University of California, Berkeley, for taking the time to comment on earlier versions of the manuscript. Thanks are also due to the journal’s anonymous reviewers for helpful suggestions, and to Olexander Samarskiy for input on the Steinmeier formula.

Notes

1. Lillian Randolph’s four-stage model includes a pre-negotiation phase, a negotiation phase, an agreement phase, and an implementation phase (Randolph 1966, 347).

2. “ORDLO” is a Ukrainian acronym denoting the government-uncontrolled parts of the oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk. The term first appeared in Ukrainian legislation in October 2014, shortly after the signing of the first Minsk agreement.

3. The “Steinmeier formula” had been discussed at different junctures by the Trilateral Contact Group (Russia, Ukraine, and the OSCE). As late as at the group’s meeting on 18 September 2019, Ukraine’s representative, Leonid Kuchma, expressed his unwillingness to endorse the document (Kaftan 2019). Two weeks later, he signed a Ukrainian letter of approval addressed to the OSCE’s Special Representative in Ukraine, Martin Sajdik. Similar letters were submitted by Russia’s Contact Group representative, Boris Gryzlov, and by “DNR” representative Natalia Nikonorova and “LNR” representative Vladislav Deynogo.

4. The crucial and most difficult point is the order of implementation of articles 9 and 11 of the Minsk II agreement. Moscow insists on a “11–9” sequence (constitutional reform and “special status” before restoration of Ukrainian border control), whereas Kyiv insists on a “9–11” sequence (border control before constitutional reform and “special status”).