In a rare public interview, President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia has a year to end its war against Ukraine.
Time is ticking for Russia to agree to a peace deal, said the president. However, he did not elaborate on the substance of this agreement or what Ukraine would do if Russia does not sign by deadline.
“The government can spend one year on the entire agreement,” said Zelensky in his interview with the Guardian on March 7.”Any longer is prohibited. If it lasts longer, we need to change the format and choose another strategy.”
Zelensky’s words come amid tough times for the president. His biggest campaign promise — to bring peace to Ukraine — has not succeeded so far, with over 20 Ukrainian soldiers being killed since the start of the year.
The president has had limited success in dealing with Russia since his election. He negotiated the release of 111 Ukrainians from Russian captivity in two separate prisoner swaps — one in September with Russia and the other with Russian proxies in December.
During his tenure, three military disengagements took place in Donbas, a region ravaged by Russia’s war against Ukraine, which took the lives over 13,000 people since 2014.
The president met his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, on Dec. 9 in Paris, during the Normandy Format meeting, which also included the leaders of France and Germany.
Zelensky even agreed to the so-called Steinmeier Formula, which greenlights elections in the occupied territories in eastern Ukraine after the withdrawal of Russian-backed troops. Yet the two sides see the formula differently. Ukraine wants the Russian proxies to pull back and disarm before elections can be held, while Russia wants elections to be held first.
Meanwhile, there are few signs that the war is ending. Russia-backed forces continue to shell Ukrainian troops.
Now Zelensky has put a timeframe on his promises.
Major steps, little results
It’s hard to accuse Zelensky of not wanting peace. On his campaign trail, he emphasized that the war must stop. He accused his predecessor, incumbent Petro Poroshenko, of not doing enough and promised that he will do a better job negotiating with Russia.
Poroshenko ran a more militaristic presidential campaign. His slogan, “army, language, faith”, alienated those who wanted peace – fast.
After winning the presidential elections in April, Zelensky soon began using back channel diplomacy to move on his promises.
In late June, Ukrainian armed forces pulled a kilometer back from the front line near Stanytsa Luhanska, a town of 13,000 people bordering Luhansk, the regional capital of 450,000 people that has been occupied by Russian-led militants since 2014.
Militants pulled a kilometer back as well, completing the disengagement, which was signed by Poroshenko in 2017 but never implemented. Two more similar disengagements followed in late October.
Meanwhile, Zelensky’s top aide Andriy Yermak negotiated a prisoner swap with Russia, which released 35 Ukrainians on Sept. 7 in exchange for 35 people who were sent to Russia.
On Dec. 29, Ukraine received 76 nationals from the Russian-controlled Donbas.
However, questions hung over both prisoner swaps. In September, Ukraine was forced to give up Volodymyr Tsemakh, a Ukrainian national who fought for Russian-led militants and was considered an important witness in Russia’s downing of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17, which killed all 298 people on board.
Russian-led militants used a Russian BUK missile system to shoot down the passenger plane, which was headed from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. Tsemakh was caught on video saying that he helped transport the BUK back to Russia.
The Netherlands and a number of other European countries expressed dissatisfaction with Ukraine after it allowed Tsemakh to leave for Russia.
A criminal trial of four people suspected in downing flight MH17 will begin on March 9 in the Netherlands. The four suspects to be tried in absentia include Igor Girkin, a former colonel of Russia’s FSB service; Sergey Dubinskiy of Russia’s GRU military intelligence service; Oleg Pulatov, a former soldier with the GRU’s special forces; and Leonid Kharchenko, who allegedly commanded a unit in the city of Donetsk, occupied by Russian-led militants.
Public dissatisfaction swelled after the December deal, which saw Ukraine release officers of the disbanded Berkut riot police force. The officers are suspected of killing over 100 protesters during the 2014 EuroMaidan Revolution, which saw the ousting of pro-Russian corrupt President Viktor Yanukovych.
Controversy also swirled around Zelensky’s agreement to the Steinmeier Formula, a simplified version of the 2015 Minsk peace agreement, which followed Russia’s offensive in Debaltseve that killed over 100 Ukrainian soldiers and injured 500 more.
Signing the Steinmeier Formula was the first real crash test to Zelensky’s leadership. Thousands of people took to the streets to voice their anger with the agreement, which they called a capitulation to Russia.
No peace in sight
Now, 10 months into his presidency, Zelensky still hasn’t achieved his main goal – peace with Russia.
In the Guardian interview, Zelensky expressed hope that his plan will eventually work. “I think he listened to me,” Zelensky said about his meeting with Putin in Paris. “I had that feeling. I hope it’s not a false feeling.”
Yet it doesn’t seem that Russia is ready to let go of Donbas. In July, Putin issued a decree allowing all residents of Donbas, even those living under the Ukrainian flag, to obtain Russian passports. Ukraine and its western allies slammed the move.
On Feb. 21, the sixth anniversary of former president Yanukovych’s flight from Kyiv, Russian news service TASS published the second part of its soft-ball interview with Putin. In it, Putin went on a rant about how Ukrainians and Russians are the same people and that modern Ukraine needs to integrate into Russia. This opinion does not correspond with history and has been overwhelmingly rejected by most Ukrainians.
Now, Zelensky is putting a timeframe on his potential peace deal – one year after the December Normandy meeting.
“I won’t give my five years, which were given to me by the Ukrainian people, to work on Minsk for five years. I won’t do it,” the president told the Guardian.
