Poroshenko admits Ukraine can get Donbass back only peacefully

… from TASS,  Moscow

[ Editor’s Note: Thousands from the Right Sector’s Neo-Nazi Azov battalion and its supporters rallied in front of Ukraine’s parliament to protest having elections in Donbass. They are totally against implementation of the Minsk agreement, which the Kiev coupmeisters have been also against… up to now it seems.

The Azov criminals would not be out in the street if they did not sense a shift in the wind. And we have had a flurry of events to show that someone has twisted an arm to get on with the Minsk accords. This public admission by Poroshenko that there is no military solution, along with a decrease in ceasefire violations by Kiev is not a minor event.

Poroshenko has called on the Rada to pass the decentralization amendments to the Constitution to “return Donbass peacefully”. But the jury is still out on where the political push will come from to get the measure voted through when in the middle of forming a new government and bringing in a new prime minister.

On the one hand, the Right Sector is threatening to overthrow the government if it proceeds. On the other, the IMF is due a visit in June, when Ukraine would like to make sure the next part of the funding goes through. So the Western pressures might be threatening behind the scenes that, if the Rada’s stalling  of the Minsk accords continues, then the funding might be stalled, also.

Trusting in the altruistic aims of the West in all this is a dangerous game. Both France and Germany had been guarantors of Kiev’s compliance with the Minsk accords, and we see now that was a lame joke. Neither of them put any real pressure on Kiev to comply.

The consensus there was that, with the constant crowing from Washington and EU that the Russian sanctions would not be removed until the Minsk accords were fulfilled, it was a trap they had lured the Russians into. Everyone agreed to the accords, but the compliance monkey was put on Putin’s back.

But the US also trapped the EU because it has been bearing 90% of the Russian counter-sanctions; and hostility over the EU bowing down to the US continually hanging Europeans out to dry like this has been rising in the past year.

As for Crimea, all the new power lines from Russia are now operational, so Ukraine can say goodbye to selling any power for badly needed revenue. The Kerch Strait’s new transportation bridge, cars, rail and pipelines is on schedule. And the Russian Navy has prioritized beefing up its Crimean base, and the NATO moves have triggered a responsive build up on SE Russia as expected.

We shall hope these are signs of a true desire to end the senseless waste of lives and resources of a country that is going down the tubes economically. With the EU visa regime on track, we are going to see an exodus of Ukrainians bailing out for Europe; and good luck catching them when they overstay their visas… Jim W. Dean ]

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– First published  …  May 21,  2016 –

Ukraine will be able to get Donbass back only through political and diplomatic settlement of the conflict there, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said on Friday a yet another time at a meeting of the National Security and Defense Council.

“I’d like to say once again there’s an absolutely clear position and it suggests there’s no getting Donbass back militarily,” he said.

Poroshenko also pointed out the inadmissibility of disruptions of peace processes, as that would make reverting of a part of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions into Kiev’s sway impossible.

“As President, I can’t admit of it,” he said. “That’s my scenario.

Poroshenko added that most Ukrainians supported the peaceful re-establishment of Ukrainian sovereignty over today’s self-proclaimed independence-seeking Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, which stand beyond the sphere Kiev’s control.

He said Ukraine’s essential position boiled down to assuring solidarity with and support for this country abroad, as it ensures the necessary level of security, release of prisoners of war, and return of Kiev’s control over the state border.

“Also, it offers an opportunity to make efficacious use of the Special Monitoring Mission of the OSCE and an introduction of a specialized armed police mission (an international police force TASS) that will be able to assure a peaceful transition period,” Poroshenko said.

Earlier, Poroshenko has insisted on many occasions on the essentiality of sending a peacekeeping mission to Donbass.

In the meantime, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made it clear upon the end of a meeting of foreign ministers of the Normandy Four countries in Berlin on May 11 that Moscow did not see any need for an expansion of the OSCE monitoring mission’s mandate.

The OSCE Secretary General, Lamberto Zannier told AP, on his part, the OSCE was mulling a dispatch of an armed police mission to the part of Donbass controlled by self-defense forces for the period of local elections there.

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Jim W. Dean

Jim W. Dean is VT Editor Emeritus.  He was an active editor on VT from 2010-2022.  He was involved in operations, development, and writing, plus an active schedule of TV and radio interviews.  He now writes and posts periodically for VT.

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