The Minsk peace agreement is one of the most important questions in Ukraine today, so it is not surprising that this is something that everybody has an opinion about, and something about which debate rages from time to time.
The Minsk debate is flaring up again, as there appear to be renewed efforts towards implementing that stalled agreement following the recent Normandy Format meeting in Berlin, and so at the same time there is some push back from those who believe that the agreement is flawed (it’s not perfect) and/or doomed (it will be, if the issue of penalties for failure to comply are not addressed by the international community.)
There are many misunderstandings about Minsk. Some of them are down to urban myths being so often repeated that they’ve simply come to be accepted as truth. Some of the misunderstandings come from a deliberate intent on the part of the Russian Federation to misinterpret the agreement and then have their misinterpretations carried to the world by the international media. And a big reason for these misunderstandings is the critical failure of the Ukrainian authorities to communicate effectively.
Minsk Misunderstandings
It is not just a ceasefire agreement, as one Ukrainian lawmaker tweeted yesterday, “#Minsk is a ceasefire agreement, not an international peace accord.” Minsk is much more than a ceasefire agreement. It is indeed an international treaty, brokered by heads of state, and it is a peace treaty in that it envisages a way of ending the war, through a political process, and not just an pause to the present fighting or the freezing of the current conflict.
Minsk is not a “roadmap to lose Ukraine’s sovereignty” (the same Ukrainian lawmaker said this, incidentally) in any way that I can interpret the document. I just cannot see that there. A loss of Ukrainian sovereignty was Vladimir Putin’s desired goal at the outset of the conflict, that was the time when Russia was screaming “Ukraine must become a federalized state” from their propaganda channels a hundred times per day.
President Poroshenko did not agree to anything that amounts, in any way shape or form, to a loss of sovereignty. The only arguments I have seen to back up the argument that Ukraine can lose the right to make sovereign decisions involves a scenario whereby the current Kremlin-backed warlords of the Donbas would assume seats in Ukraine’s national parliament, a position from which they could torpedo Ukraine’s aspirations for enhanced ties with whomever Ukraine wants to enhance ties with. This “logic” fails on a couple of points:
- Ukraine’s Parliament has 450 seats, and works on a majority basis, there are about 15 free seats that would be filled by elections in eastern Ukraine. No veto here.
- Are we to assume that the incompetent Kremlin proxies illegally in power today would actually win a free and fair election? The key words there, of course, are “free” and “fair”…
Minsk does not “imply that Plotnitsky and other clowns will remain there” as another Twitter interlocutor claimed to me. Russia and their proxies “intend to control the mechanisms of the elections” is another statement that came up in my Twitter “research,” and the answer to that is: “Yes, they do.” That’s obviously what they would want to do, because rigging elections is a Russian norm, and this is, temporarily, a Russian occupied territory in all but name. But, again, that’s not what Minsk says.
Minsk says that elections must be held according to Ukrainian law, in accordance with Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe standards, and be monitored by both the OSCE and Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights. There is no way, IF those conditions are met, that one side (any side) gets to control the mechanisms of the election, obviously. If those conditions are not met, election results would be declared invalid, and if it is the “D/LNR” that has breached said conditions, by default Russia is in breach of Minsk (again) and sanctions against Russia will remain in place.
A side note on sanctions, before returning to the topic of Minsk:
There have been very clear messages coming from European leaders in recent weeks. Chancellor Merkel has said that there’s no debate about dropping sanctions until there is substantial progress on Minsk. Anders Fog Rasmussen, the former head of NATO and former Danish Prime Minister has called for sanctions to be renewed for 12 months instead of six. His logic was that the six-month renewal timeline was based on an expectation that we would see Russia implementing Minsk step by step, but this hasn’t happened.
From Russia’s side, despite Putin’s early talk of “sanctions don’t hurt us, they’re counterproductive, they make us stronger” the fact is, they do work. They have had a significant effect on Russia’s economy, and this was gloriously demonstrated just last week, when Putin drafted a law demanding that the United States cancel sanctions relating to their role in the conflict in Ukraine, and pay Russia damages for the costs incurred both by those sanctions and the counter-sanctions Russia introduced in a short-sighted and self-harming move. If sanctions did no damage, logically, what damages could Russia be seeking? The best way of interpreting this law, by the way, is this: “Russia demands the right to act with impunity on the territories of the independent nations of the former Soviet Union, and this may not be challenged.” This, message, this attitude, warrants very serious consideration.
More Minsk
Minsk is the only proposal on the table for ending the conflict in Ukraine. As I have experienced on several occasions, when people talk about Minsk being dead, etc., etc., a simple question of “OK, what would YOU replace it with?” is normally met with silence. I have yet to see someone come up with a better plan. I am open to considering any ideas and change my mind when presented with a better argument or new information, nothing so far has persuaded me to change my belief that the Minsk process is the best way to return peace to Ukraine, if it is fully implemented.
Minsk Musts
Minsk is about a democratic path to peace. The most fundamental pillar of democracy is the ability for people to freely elect their politicians from a reasonable group of candidates vying for their vote. The people of the Donbas, the vast majority of whom simply want to return to a peaceful life, are entitled to that fundamental democratic basic of being able to vote.
The elections must be held in an environment where people have an opportunity to educate themselves as to their options, and then exercise their right to vote free of any fear or intimidation or coercion. The conversation today must be about enabling this. In fact, all of Minsk is about enabling this.
Ceasefire. Pull back of heavy weapons. Securing those heavy weapons. Full access for international monitors to ensure all of the machines of war are behind lock and key. This is all about creating the preconditions to enable a peaceful vote.
The withdrawal of foreign troops and foreign military equipment is all about making sure that the vote would be free of influence from foreign nations.
The demands above (none of which are new) must now be supported by severe penalties linked to failure to comply.
The international mechanisms that have been stated in Minsk to ensure free and fair elections are a necessary element to the deal, and should give comfort to those who have fears similar to those expressed earlier in this article.
Ukraine needs to pass a law on how the election is going to work, in practice. This has not been done yet simply because there is no agreed mechanism on the content of such a law. The mechanisms must be worked out by the Trilateral Contact Group. There is a reasonable policy paper here dealing with some of the practicalities that should be considered in any election law, such as guaranteed equal access to media in order to campaign, which is an important consideration given the significant brainwashing that has taken place in the occupied areas over the last two years.
The policy paper linked in the previous paragraph does contain one significant error: the final point is titled “on decentralization” and the comments that follow do not refer to decentralization at all. They refer to issues relating to the Special Status and Temporary Local Self Governance elements of Minsk. The six heavyweight think tank signatories on that policy paper should know better, and in general people in Ukraine need to stop conflating these issues. Decentralization is a nationwide matter, the incorrect use of the term “decentralization” in the context of the conflict in eastern Ukraine is misleading.
That’s a fitting close, as the whole point of this article has been about clearing up misleading public statements regarding Minsk.
