Why Minsk 2.0 is bound to fail

Image Credit: Mykhaylo Palinchak / Shutterstock.com

As negotiations between representatives of France, Germany, Ukraine, Russia and Russia’s proxies (aka the “separatists”) get underway in Minsk, the prospects for any fair and lasting peace accord are almost certainly nil.
In Vladimir Putin’s “19th century” mentality, which so surprised and dismayed the US Secretary of State, one negotiates in good faith only if one can get more at the table than on the battlefield. This is certainly not the case today: Russia-paid and Russia-armed “separatists”, led by spetsnaz special ops troops and supported by thousands of Russian paratroopers, as well as missiles, tanks and artillery pouring across the border, are steadily gaining ground. They are poised to surround and massacre the Ukrainian troops in the city of Debaltseve, which sits on the rail line connecting the capitals of the “People’s Republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk. They also could, if Moscow orders, storm the city of Mariupol, which would give Russia the strategically important land link to the Crimean Peninsula, annexed by Russia last March.



Furthermore, after a year of deafening  propaganda portraying a war on Ukraine as the defense of the Motherland against NATO aggression, Putin’s domestic  popularity — and thus the regime’s legitimacy — is inseparable from his Ukrainian campaign. While Kiev, Brussels and Washington want “peace”, Putin needs victory. He will accept nothing short of Ukraine’s de-facto capitulation.
As I suggested last week, such a victorious “peace” would mean Ukraine ceding to Russia its sovereignty over the south east of the country. The de-facto protectorates in Donetsk and Luhansk will have their own political, legal and security structures. There will be no disarmament of the “defense forces” of the “People’s Republics” and no repatriation of Russian “volunteers.”  The thuggish authorities of Donetsk and Luhansk will be granted full control of “elections” on their territory. A permanent bloc of seats in the Rada, the Ukrainian parliament, is likely to be set aside for the “Republics,” giving them (that is, Russia) de-facto veto power over the key political, security and foreign policy choices of Ukraine.
There will be no restoration of Ukrainian sovereignty over the Russo-Ukrainian border, and thus no end to the flow of Russian military and civilian supplies across it. With these arrangements in place, the Kremlin will be able to re-start trouble at a moment’s notice should  Ukraine appear to “misbehave”  by getting “too close” to Europe — or, more importantly, if the Russian domestic political situation calls for another round of patriotic hysteria and anti-West paranoia.
The admission of the Russian proxies (aka “pro-Russian separatists”) to the negotiating table — something that Kiev had resisted but was pressured to agree to by France and Germany — shows that Putin’s strategy is succeeding.
The only way Russia will sign and abide by anything negotiated in Minsk is if the West squeezes further concessions from Kiev on all other conditions of Ukraine’s surrender.