Truce, Blue Helmets, Sanctions and Peace

Last year ended with the free world expressing a collective, audible sigh of relief that the hopeless Minsk truce agreement has been extended thus providing acceptable but faux assurances that peace in Ukraine – and the world – has been preserved for our time to paraphrase Great Britain’s naive Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain.

Realistically, all installments of the Minsk Accords concluded by the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France are doomed to failure because Russia, the aggressor, invader and perpetrator of this latest crime against Ukraine, is a proven untrustworthy partner to any global compact. Moscow’s mission isn’t to preserve regional peace and stability but rather to incite global insecurity and calamity in order to emerge as the dominant player.

Some intellectuals and academics have attempted to explain Russia’s ongoing criminal belligerence as a means to protect itself against external threats, but their folly only dangerously reinforces the Kremlin’s self-prescribed license for aggression everywhere in the world including, now, Syria.

The Russo-Ukraine War of 2014-16 has been raging for almost two years and has killed more than 9,000 people, injured more than 20,000 and displaced some 2 million, while the road to peace and Russia’s withdrawal from Ukraine is still far from clear. Indeed, the fulfillment of both prerequisites is required for permanent regional peace, stability and confidence among neighboring countries. Some 3 million people live in the Russian-occupied oblasts, where movement is severely restricted and residents face daily threats of violence.

The leaders of Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany agreed two weeks ago to extend conditions for ending the war in Ukraine, acknowledging that the terms of a complex ceasefire agreement will be difficult to carry out.

In a conference call, Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia, Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine, François Hollande of France, and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany reportedly called for the Minsk peace agreement, which was originally signed in February of last year, to be carried out in full this year. They agreed to focus on holding dubious local elections in the occupied regions of eastern Ukraine as a step toward the elusive goal of peace, according to a statement on the Kremlin’s website, the principal source of information for western reporters.

Extension of the agreement was widely expected despite ongoing Russian violations and military incursions and combat with Ukrainian defenders that only resulted in increasing the Ukrainian body count. Media reports cite Russian sources that write about sporadic clashes though Ukrainian military officials on the ground paint a different picture. Truce or not, Russia has been moving troops and hardware into Ukraine, leaving all of the agreement’s terms far from being implemented.

The original hopeful terms of the Minsk deal were meant to restore Kyiv’s full control over its border with Russia. However, the border is still porous and Russians still occupy Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea. Russia’s war with Ukraine is still raging despite the so-called ceasefire and Moscow’s diversionary incursions into Syria.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, among others, noted Russia’s unending invasion of Ukraine and demanded: “Ukraine still does not have full control over its borders. Russia has still not withdrawn its troops or equipment; illegal groups have not been disarmed. So, it is really vital to make sure all the sides keep their commitments.”

Even Putin finally admitted that his armed forces are in Ukraine in clear violation of the UN Charter and international treaties. Though he is not inclined to withdraw them back to Russia.

For Ukraine to submit to any of the tenets of the truce would be tantamount to a victim giving up its possessions while the mugger is still pressing a cold steel blade against its throat.

While fighting has waned and waxed in recent months as it does at times of war, Poroshenko pointed out in a statement on his website that Russia and pro-Russia militants had not fulfilled the terms of the Minsk agreement, which includes a complete ceasefire. The Ukrainian president added that the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has been monitoring the conflict and should have full access to the entire region and that the separatists should not hold “fake elections.”

Unfortunately, Poroshenko’s assessment was ignored by the signatories to the accords and the free world in their wild-goose chase for peace. For Ukrainian president, the situation is difficult – peace or war. Granting amnesty to the Russians and giving them special status, as envisioned by Minsk, could be politically ruinous, turning him into a political weakling, and angering patriots across Ukraine who fought in the Revolution of Dignity and reject any concessions to the invaders.

President Reagan astutely cautioned that choosing unwisely between peace and war may be painful. “There is no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there is only one guaranteed way you can have peace — and you can have it in the next second — surrender,” said the last true American anti-communist.

Meanwhile, Putin has deployed an extra 20,000 soldiers to the frontline of Ukraine, as winter’s brutal cold adds to the region’s suffering. The fresh deployment raises the number of Russian troops in the region to 70,000, a move Poroshenko decried as blatant aggression aimed at causing further unrest.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s security service, SBU, said it had arrested an extremist cell involving three Russian nationals that had stockpiled bombs and planned to carry out “terrorist attacks.” A spokeswoman for security service said: “The insurgents planned to stage terrorist acts in Kyiv and Kharkiv to destabilize the situation in the country.”

Implementation of a truce agreement will not bring peace to Ukraine and the region. This unfulfillable truce will merely freeze the frontline between Russian invaders and Ukrainian defenders and preserve it as the status quo for the indeterminate future. Russians soldiers and terrorists will remain in Ukraine, giving rise to more extremist cells, that will threaten central and western Ukraine with war and bloodshed until Russia restores its prison of nations.

As political pundit Roman Tsymbaliuk observed on the Charter 97 website: “Moscow is not planning to give up on Donbas because it needs to keep focus on the whole of Ukraine.”

Another maladroit peace plan proposed by Kyiv via the Permanent Mission of Ukraine to the United Nations is the deployment of UN peacekeepers in Ukraine.

Ambassador Volodymyr Yelchenko, who presented his diplomatic credentials as Ukraine’s latest permanent representative to the United Nations on January 4, told UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that the global organization must take a more active role in stopping the war.

Yelchenko said one of the possible ways the UN could engage in de-escalating the war in Ukraine would be the deployment of UN peacekeepers. “We are ready to discuss the mandate and other aspects of such an operation. In order to analyze the situation on the ground we invite the assessment mission of the UN Secretariat to visit Ukraine,” he said.

Yelchenko also noted that the establishment of a UN mission in support of the implementation of the Minsk agreements in Ukraine could be another possible area for cooperation. He opined that this mission could be engaged in coordinating demining operation in eastern Ukraine due to the huge experience of the UN in this area.

While the UN’s active role in seeking an end to Russia’s war with Ukraine would be welcome, the stationing of the vaunted blue helmets would not contribute to the restoration of peace and stability – and the withdrawal of the invading Russian armies.

UN peacekeeping operation in the war zone would also freeze the frontlines to the detriment of Ukraine, allowing Russian terrorists to circumvent Ukrainian soldiers and UN peacekeepers and launch attacks against other Ukrainian oblasts. The war, invasion, occupation and killings would persist.

Furthermore, the peacekeepers’ legacy is somewhat sullied by accusations of criminal misbehavior and sexual abuse. A day after Yelchenko met with the UN secretary-general, the UN News Center reported that the UN is investigating new allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse and other misconduct by peacekeepers in the Central African Republic, this time by forces under the world body’s flag.

Is there a solution? Yes, perhaps not the best, but still a solution that may force Russia to withdraw its soldiers and mercenary terrorists from Ukraine – sanctions and more sanctions. The European Union again moved on December 18 to extend economic sanctions against Russia for six more months.

The EU, which sadly today is not as united in this effort as it was in the beginning, linked any lifting of sanctions to the successful implementation of the Minsk accords. The restrictions are now to last until the end of July 2016.

The European Union has strongly condemned Russia’s invasion, occupation and annexation of Crimea and does not recognize it. In the absence of de-escalation by the Russia, the EU imposed on March 17 last year the first travel bans and froze asset against persons involved in actions against Ukraine’s territorial integrity. 

The EU imposed economic sanctions in July 2014 and reinforced them in September 2014. In March 2015, the European Council linked the duration of those economic restrictions to the complete implementation of the Minsk agreements. Sanctions against Russia were first implemented in July 2014, as a reaction to Moscow’s occupation and seizure of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea.

The sanctions mean that EU nationals are not able to buy or sell long-term bonds and equities in a list of banks, defense companies and energy firms. Asset freezes and visa bans have also been applied to 149 people and so-called 37 “entities.” Restrictions also entail a ban on the provision of military technology and energy-related equipment and technology. There are prohibitions on investment and provision of tourism services in Crimea to the extent that no EU cruise liners may dock there unless in an emergency.

But Russia does have a major weak spot that must be targeted and exploited. The country is in a deep recession and teetering, with the country’s central bank warning that Russia could continue to see negative growth this year. While the country has been damaged by the sanctions it has been particularly hurt by the plummeting price of oil, which was priced at $32.88 on January 8, a drop of some 70% since the start of the war with Ukraine. Russia is a major exporter of oil and has built its budget based on $100 a barrel.

The free world wrongly fears to engage Russia militarily and politically, thus allowing Moscow to ride herd on near and distant countries. But it shouldn’t overlook the potential success of deep sanctions, which should be intensified to the point of hurting the entire country and nation, not just the leaders and oligarchs. The sanctions should not be applied with one hand and canceled with the other. Moscow shouldn’t be castigated by one group of world leaders and admired by another. Business, as usual, should not be applied to Russia while its invading armies are in Ukraine and air force bombs Syria. Russia should be isolated and banned from the global table for its unrestrained belligerence and human rights violations.

Freedom of Ukraine and the other former captive nations is at stake and the free world – the United States, Canada, the European Union and any other country with moral fortitude – must stand their ground in Ukraine. Using economic pain and national shame, the free world must push the Russian people to stop supporting Putin and arise to oust him to assure themselves of a dignified legacy.

As President Reagan also said: “If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth.”