Although U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson spent only a few hours in Kyiv on July 9, his short visit yielded what could be a decisive move to restart the stalled Minsk peace process to persuade Russia to end its war against Ukraine after more than three years.
Traveling with Tillerson was the newly announced U.S. special representative for Ukraine, Ambassador Kurt Volker, who is known to have a clear understanding of the challenges Ukraine faces from Russia. Volker stayed behind for a few days in Kyiv, meeting with various people, but apparently did not grant interviews to journalists.
“We’re disappointed by the lack of progress under the Minsk agreement,” Tillerson said during a joint press with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on July 9. “We do call on Russia to honor its commitments that were made under the Minsk accords and to exercise influence over the separatists in the region, whom they do hold complete control over, and we call on them, again, to immediately call on their proxies to cease the violence that is ongoing in east Ukraine.”
Volker’s mission is to restart efforts to end the war, which has already claimed at least 10,000 lives, in coordination with the Normandy Four nations (Germany, France, Ukraine, and Russia), Tillerson said.
U.S. Department of State spokesman Robert Hammond said Volker was tapped for the new post on July 7, while U.S. President Donald J. Trump was attending the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany. Volker succeeds Victoria Nuland, who supervised Ukraine issues at the Department of State under the Obama administration, maintaining contacts with the Kremlin via Russian presidential aide Vladislav Surkov.
Volker’s appointment was met with huge optimism in Kyiv, with Poroshenko welcoming the decision.
The appointment is an “important & timely move in the interests of ending Russian aggression and restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, including Crimea,” Poroshenko’s Twitter account tweeted on July 7.
Speaking to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty on July 10, Ukrainian Presidential Administration deputy head Kostyantyn Yeliseyev claimed that Ukraine, with support from Germany and France, had lobbied for Volker’s appointment.
Volker immediately got down to work in Kyiv, meeting key officials, including Poroshenko, Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman, Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin, lawmakers and members of Ukraine’s delegation to the Trilateral Contact Group, which meets in Minsk, Belarus to discuss implementation of the Minsk peace agreements.
“We have a shared understanding of the origins of the armed conflict and Russia’s role in it,” Trilateral Contact Group member from Ukraine Olga Aivazovska wrote on her Facebook page after meeting with Volker on July 10.
Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin was optimistic as well, describing Volker in a July 10 statement as an experienced diplomat with “a good understanding of the realities of our region and the nature of the current Russian authorities.”
McCain’s man
During a long career in diplomacy, Volker has served five U.S. administrations, and in recent years he has been closely connected with U.S. Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona, a die-hard Kremlin critic.
Born in 1962 in Pennsylvania, Volker earned a degree in international affairs at Temple University in 1984. At just 24, he became an analyst at the CIA in 1986, but switched to a career in diplomacy in 1988. As a U.S. Foreign Service employee, Volker held different assignments in the United Kingdom, Belgium, Hungary, and Bosnia in the 1990s.
As a lawyer, Volker joined the McCain staff for 1997-1998, and then worked at the U.S. mission to NATO. In July 2008, just a month before Russia’s invasion of Georgia, Volker was appointed the U.S. permanent representative to the alliance. In 2009, he left public service to pursue a career in the private consulting and lobbying business.
Until recently, Volker was the executive director Arizona State University’s McCain Institute for International Leadership.
Russia hawk
“It is largely undisputed, in both Washington and Moscow, that in choosing Volker, Rex Tillerson has opted to appoint a Russia hawk who also believes in diplomacy,” U.S. journal the National Interest wrote on July 10, commenting on Volker’s appointment.
In fact, since the first days of Russian aggression against Ukraine following the EuroMaidan Revolution in early 2014, Volker has publicly called on the West to give a tough response to Moscow.
He has stuck to that position.
“…Ukraine has been invaded and NATO is almost invisible,” he wrote in an article in the magazine Foreign Policy on March 18, 2014, slamming the alliance for dithering as Russian troops established full control over the Ukrainian territory of Crimea.
Volker called for the immediate deployment of NATO ground troops along the eastern front, to send a clear message to Russian President Vladimir Putin that further invasion of Ukraine beyond Crimea would be seen as a direct military threat to NATO.
“NATO needs to re-learn the logic of deterrence: the willingness to use force if necessary, and to decisive effect, in order to deter conflict,” Volker wrote. “While Crimea may be lost already, deterrence is all the more relevant to prevent further Russian incursions into Ukraine and other areas of Eastern Europe.”
In his article, Volker also called on NATO and the EU to sell Ukraine modern military equipment on U.S. and EU loan guarantees, to start advising and training Ukrainian armed forces, share real-time intelligence data, and let Ukraine establish a permanent liaison body in NATO headquarters in Brussels.
Weeks before Russian commando squads started igniting the eastern region of Donbas in April 2014, Volker warned that the Crimea invasion would be followed by subversive activities in the mainland Ukraine.
A year after that, when the conflict in Ukraine escalated into full war against Russian-backed forces, Volker insisted that the time for half-measures by NATO was over.
“We need to undertake a full-scale effort to train, equip, and advise the Ukrainian defense forces,” he said in his next article for Foreign Policy on Feb. 18, 2015, written as Ukraine was losing the decisive battle of Debaltseve. “This should include the delivery of sophisticated anti-tank, counter-artillery, and anti-aircraft systems; intelligence-sharing; and military advisors embedded in the Ukrainian Defense Ministry.”
Providing Ukraine with advanced weapons would immensely increase the cost for war for Russia, forcing it to get back to negotiations rather that engaging its tanks and artillery, he said.
Volker was highly skeptical about the so-called second general Minsk ceasefire agreed on Feb. 15, 2015, which was followed by a heavy Russian assault on Debaltseve three days after. Until Ukraine’s sovereignty is completely restored and Russian troops and weaponry are withdrawn, sustainable peace in the region is impossible, Volker said in his article.
Volker called for tougher penalties on Russia, including an EU and U.S personal travel ban for Putin and his family, and kicking Russian banks and businesses off the SWIFT financial transactions network.
Tough job
Volker’s appointment was also welcomed by many of his colleagues in the West.
“Tough job, but no one better qualified for this assignment than Kurt,” former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul noted on his Twitter page on July 7.
Since arriving in Kyiv, Volker has said that fulfilling the Minsk agreement is the only way for Russia to have sanctions over Ukraine removed – a statement echoed by Tillerson.
The best help for Ukraine is to make its economy and democracy stronger, he said.
“We need to have Ukraine, which is a sustainable, resilient, prosperous, strong democracy, so that it would be attractive to the regions in the east, and (a country) where disinformation and propaganda attacks don’t really have much traction,” Volker said.
