You're reading: Divisive Deals

Winston Churchill once said that governments that chose shame to avoid war would get both.

Critics argue that it is exactly what President Petro Poroshenko achieved when Ukraine signed a cease-fire with Russia and Kremlin-backed separatists on Sept. 5 and pushed through a bill that gives separatists de facto control over huge swaths of eastern Ukraine on Sept. 16.

Another political concession to Russia was having a free trade deal with the European Union go into effect on Jan. 1, 2016. Ukraine and the EU, furthermore, may amend the terms of their landmark association agreement.

The concessions have been severely criticized by Poroshenko’s allies and opponents, including Yulia Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna party, Donetsk Oblast Governor Serhiy Taruta and Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi, who said that the measures were a betrayal of Ukraine’s national interests. Some detractors have accused the president of appeasement akin to the 1938 Munich agreement, under which Great Britain and France allowed Nazi Germany to occupy Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland.

Even the way that the law that gave special status to the Donbas, including Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, was passed proved to be controversial.

Lawmakers who were present, including Batkivshchyna faction member Andriy Shevchenko, tweeted that the bill was adopted with egregious procedural violations. Critics compared it with former President Viktor Yanukovych’s infamous “dictatorial laws,” which restricted civil liberties in January and contributed to his overthrow in February. The most radical groups like the Right Sector have even hinted that the fate of Yanukovych, overthrown by the EuroMaidan Revolution on Feb. 22, could befall Poroshenko if he continued along this route.

“(Former presidents) Leonid Kuchma served two terms, Viktor Yushchenko served one, (and) Viktor Yanukovych didn’t even serve until the end of his term, and Poroshenko might last even less if he continues like this,” Right Sector spokesperson Artyom Skoropadsky said at a protest near the Presidential Administration building on Sept. 17.

However, others say that the concessions were unavoidable after a series of military defeats suffered by Ukraine after an invasion by regular Russian troops in August. They believe that Ukraine had to acquiesce to Russia’s demands because it had no means to resist the Russian invasion as the West opted for a policy of appeasement and failed to supply weapons to Ukraine or impose sufficient sanctions against Russia.

The bill that grants special status to separatist-controlled territories in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts gives broad autonomy to them for three years, grants amnesty to militants and provides government funding for the areas. It was approved by the parliament on Sept. 16 and is yet to be signed by the president.

Opponents strongly objected to the clauses that they say effectively legitimize the actions of militants who killed and tortured Ukrainian troops, and which gives them immunity from criminal prosecution, arguing that the sacrifices Ukrainian soldiers made were in vain.

But the measure was welcomed by some commentators.

Enver Skitishvili, chief executive of Mariupol-based steelmaker Azostal, told the Kyiv Post that the region in general, and business in particular, needed peace most of all.

“The fact that we started moving towards a peaceful resolution of the conflict is a plus,” he said. He added that the law only represents the first step of many that need to be taken.

Activists from the militant nationalist movement Right Sector protested against the Sept. 16 adoption of laws that give self-rule powers to some some territories in the Donetsk and Lugansk oblasts controlled by Kremlin-backed separatists.

Explaining the rationale for the bill, Volodymyr Fesenko, head of Ukraine’s Penta research group, said that there were three alternative scenarios: a peace deal and subsequent reintegration of the separatist-controlled areas, a frozen conflict, or a full-scale war.

“The choice was not between a correct and incorrect scenario but between a complicated and uncertain situation and worse scenarios,” he said.

The current situation does not guarantee lasting peace but is at least a chance for peace, Fesenko added. The ceasefire deal satisfied everyone because, in Russia and in Ukriane, support for war has been decreasing, he said.

Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to the interior minister, wrote on his Facebook page on Sept. 17 that “these laws are a consequence of the (Sept. 5) Minsk agreements, which were concluded under (Russian President Vladimir) Putin’s threat of war when the West effectively refused to continue helping Ukraine unless it agreed to a peace deal with Putin by giving broad rights to the part of Donbas controlled by separatists.”

He also said that Poroshenko had no choice because, if he had refused to conclude the deal, Russian troops would have continued moving towards Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhia and Kharkiv, “given that not a single country in the world agreed to supply weapons to us and openly support us in our conflict with Russia.”

Military expert Dmytro Tymchuk,
head of the Information Resistance group, also described the measures as an
inevitable evil.

“We could have completed what we began and turned the militants to small
dust (which is the way things were going) if Putin had not sent his regular
troops to Donbass,” he wrote on Facebook on Sep. 16. “Ukraine proved incapable
of resisting this invasion.”

However, other observers have argued that the might of the Russian army
was exaggerated and that it had few battle-worthy units – a situation that
they say makes Putin’s recent claims that Russian troops could easily take Kyiv and even
Warsaw and Bucharest spurious.

Kyiv Post+ is a special project covering Russia’s war against Ukraine and the aftermath of the EuroMaidan Revolution.

Putin agreed to the ceasefire deal because Russian troops had a lot of casualties and turned out to be insufficiently effective, while Ukraine needed time for a respite, military expert Oleksiy Arestovich said.

He predicted the ceasefire won’t last long, adding that he expected Russian and separatist troops to start another offensive in the near future.

Separatists and Russian troops have routinely violated the Sept. 5 ceasefire every day, according to authorities in Kyiv, enabling Poroshenko’s opponents to argue that his promise of lasting peace with Russia cannot be fulfilled.

Though Poroshenko is trying to use the talks with Russia and separatists
to create the image of a peacemaker before the Oct. 26 parliamentary election,
they could also hurt his electoral prospects. The president’s opponents,
including Batkivshchyna and Oleh Lyashko’s Radical Party, may benefit during
the election by accusing Poroshenko of betraying Ukraine’s national interests,
Fesenko said.

Critics of the ceasefire deal have also argued that any agreements with Putin are not worth the paper they are written on and that they will only provoke further aggression.

“In his actions over the past 15 years and during the ongoing war against Ukraine, Putin demonstrated that the only language he understands is one of genuine resistance,” Andrei Illarionov, a former Putin aide and now a Russian opposition activist, told the gordon.ua news site on Sept. 16. “An
attempt to indulge, appease him results in his appetites increasing. That is
why, if someone accepts his actions based on the notion of appeasement, he
makes a serious, fundamental mistake stemming from a fatal failure to
understand his approach.”

He said that Ukrainian authorities and Western countries failed to
understand the nature of Putin’s regime.

“Those who think that they can get off easily by granting some ‘special
status’ understand neither the nature of the Russian regime nor the
opportunities given by this law and agreement to these terrorist organizations
and the Russian regime to inflict long-term, structural, strategic damage on
the Ukrainian state and Ukrainian society’s free choice, whatever it is,” Illarionov
said.

Another concession slammed by critics was a delay in the implementation
of the association agreement’s economic part until the end of 2015.

The ratification of the association deal by the Ukrainian and E.U.
parliaments on Sept. 16 was hailed by Poroshenko’s supporters as a major
victory that finally realized the goal of the Euromaidan revolution. However, this
“victory” was labelled by some as a defeat after the E.U. and Ukraine agreed to
postpone the implementation of some of the agreement’s clauses as a concession
to the Kremlin.

After trilateral talks between Russia, Ukraine and the E.U. on Sept. 12,
the parties agreed that Ukraine would continue to supply its goods duty-free to
Europe, but E.U. goods would be subject to duties until the end of 2015. The
Kremlin has strongly objected to duty-free supplies from the E.U. to Ukraine,
claiming that European goods would be illegally re-exported to Russia and
threatening to slap duties on Ukrainian products.

Fesenko said, however, that the deal was “advantageous” for Ukraine
because it would protect Ukrainian goods from European competition.

But Russia will try to impede the ratification of the association deal
in specific E.U. countries, Fesenko said.

”There is a risk that Russia will throw a spanner in the works,” he added.

Another possible concession to Russia could be made at a meeting of the
Association Council scheduled for Nov. 17.

Though neither Ukraine nor the E.U. specified what kind of changes were
on the agenda, they announced plans to tweak the association deal after Russia
proposed amendments to it earlier in September. The amendments cannot be
introduced in the text of the agreement itself but can be passed as additional
agreements to the deal.

At the Association Council meeting, the parties will discuss amendments proposed
by Ukraine and the E.U. but might also “theoretically” discuss those suggested
by Russia, Serhiy Sidorenko, an editor at the Yevropeiskaya Pravda news site,
said by phone.

Russia suggested that Ukraine and the E.U. cancel decisions on cutting
or abolishing 2,376 out of the 11,660 customs duties specified in the
association agreement.

However, subsequently Russia drastically reduced the number of proposed
amendments, Sidorenko said.

Meanwhile, E.U. representatives have said that they could start
implementing the association agreement before the end of 2015 if Russia pulled
out of its free trade deal with Ukraine, Sidorenko said.

“They’re playing a game with Russia,” he added. “Nobody wants to
implement the agreements (between Ukraine, Russia and the E.U.).”

Kyiv
Post staff writer Oleg Sukhov can be reached at [email protected].