U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Kyiv today, where he will shortly be joined by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francoise Hollande. The trio have said they are trying to broker an agreement that restarts diplomatic negotiations to bring an end to Russia's nearly year-long war against Ukraine.
Several news
agencies reported that Merkel and Hollande would be staying the night in Kyiv
and then flying to Moscow on Feb. 6 to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Peace is under threat at the
borders of Europe,” Hollande told reporters today at Paris press conference. “Ukraine
is at war. Heavy weapons are being used and civilians are being killed daily.”
Merkel’s chief spokesman,
Steffen Seibert, said the pair were “stepping up efforts toward a peaceful
resolution” of the conflict “in the context of the escalation of violence in
recent days.”
Ukraine’s President
Petro Poroshenko will hold a separate meeting with Kerry, then Merkel and
Hollande, a Ukrainian Foreign Ministry source told Dzerkalo
Tyzhnia (Mirror Weekly).
A Kremlin spokesman confirmed
that Russian President Putin would then meet with the two European leaders on
Friday to discuss “the fastest possible end to the civil war in south
eastern Ukraine”.
According to Interfax,
a further meeting of Merkel, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and Poroshenko is
expected to take place on the sidelines of the February 6-8 Munich Security Conference,
and a discussion on Ukraine between the U.S., Germany, France, Ukraine and
Russia is being considered as well.
The flurry of
diplomatic activity comes ahead of this weekend’s annual Munich Security Conference
in Germany. It also comes at a time of an intensified military offensive by
Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine’s east, which has further shredded the
September Minsk accords that called for a permanent cease-fire, withdrawal of
weapons and troops by Russia, secure borders between Ukraine and Russia and
some political autonomy for separatist-held areas of the Donbas.
Russia’s renewed
military offensive this year is seen as the Kremlin’s attempt to scuttle the
Minsk peace accords and force more concessions from Ukrainian President Petro
Poroshenko, including a federalization of Ukraine’s eastern regions that could
give the Moscow proxies power to veto Ukraine’s foreign policy shift to the
West, including the prospect of joining the European Union and NATO in the
future.
Poroshenko has
categorically refused to let Moscow dictate Ukraine’s foreign policy and has
vowed to retake the separatist-held areas of the eastern Donbas. The war has
claimed more than 5,000 lives on the Ukrainian side and at least that many, by
unofficial estimates, on the Russian side.
The West, by
contrast, has insisted that Moscow adhere to the Minsk agreements signed by its
ambassador to Ukraine, Mikhail Zurabov.
If Putin does not
agree to a diplomatic solution to end the war quickly, the West is expected to
toughen economic sanctions against Russia. Support is also growing in the West
to supply Ukraine with lethal weapons needed to defend its territory against
the war prosecuted by Russian proxies and Russian soldiers.
However, Merkel and
Hollande this week publicly said they will not supply Ukraine with weapons and
U.S. President Barack Obama has opposed the delivery of lethal weapons to
Ukraine from America. NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg has said military
assistance to Ukraine is up to the military alliance’s 28 member nations to
decide individually.
Timothy Ash, the
head of emerging market research for Standard Bank in London, said: “Ion’t
think Merkel would get on the plane unless she thought that Putin was going to
offer something. Kind of in the last-chance saloon. Maybe all this talk about
the US arming the Ukrainians is driving Merkel and Hollande to go to Moscow to
say to Putin you have a chance to back down now, or some NATO countries will
begin to selectively arm Ukraine.”
