Ukraine: The War In Donbas And Implementation Of The Minsk Agreement

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Introduction

As the Ukrainian crisis has proceeded throughout the years since 2014, the focus of the conflict has shifted from the Crimean Peninsula to the war-torn eastern regions of Donbas. Different actors seek to influence these regions with the main parties being Russia and Ukraine. With the region suffering great casualties, several attempts to bring an end to the conflict has been made with the desire for peace. The most noticeable of these has been the Minsk Protocol agreements, however, these peace treaties have largely been a failure which will be mentioned later in the paper. The main purpose of this paper is to explain the current conflict in Ukraine, its background as well the difficulties to maintain peace.

Background

The war in Donbas in the eastern part of Ukraine is about to enter its sixth year in the spring of 2020 with fighting still happening between armed forces loyal to Ukraine and pro – Russian separatists. The war between them has led to severe causalities on both sides and the region is far from being stable. The conflict and the events that have followed and shaped it can be traced back to November 2013 with the beginning of the Euromaidan protests.

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The Euromaidan protest started as a reaction against former president Viktor Yanukovych due to his failure to uphold the promise that Ukraine would gain closer ties to the west and the EU. Prior to 2013, Ukraine and the EU had begun negations that would see reforms in the country. Signing the European association agreement would westernize Ukraine which would make it a potential member state in the European Union (Diuk, 2014:10). Due to pressure from Russia, Yanukovych suspended the agreement and later dropped it. Instead, negations with Russia would begin and on December the 17th Yanukovych struck a gas deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The decision to sign the deal and seek closer ties to Russia prompted many to take to the streets and protest, mostly by students. Soon mass protests started to emerge, and it became a nationwide movement (Diuk, 2014:11). Yanukovych responded by sending out police who with the use of violence causes the death of approximately 100 protesters. With the situation becoming more chaotic, Yanukovych along with his followers fled to Russia. With the former president gone, a new election was to be held in Ukraine and on 25th of May, Petro Poroshenko was elected president with the promise that Ukraine would seek closer ties with the EU (Morelli, 2017: 4). Russia’s response to the changes in Ukraine, which now choose to distance itself from Russia with policies that would reduce the importance of the Russian language in Ukraine, was that they saw it as a threat (Biersack, o`lear, 2014).

In February 2014, armed troops wearing green uniforms without insignias began to show up in the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea. The peninsula is known for its large Russian speaking population with almost 60 % identifying as ethnic Russian. Crimea had also before the Ukrainian referendum in 1991 been a part of the Soviet Union and is perceived by many Russians as Russian land. The troops which carried armed weaponry started to occupy important Ukrainian military bases belonging to the armed forces and navy. While the international community recognizes these as Russian armed forces, Putin viewed them as “local self – defence units who were there to protect the Russian speaking population (o`Lear, 2014). Russian armed forces successfully took control over the peninsula and on the 16th of March 2014 a referendum was held regarding independence and succession from Ukraine, almost 97% of the Crimean population voted to join the Russian Federation. The same week, Russia annexed Crimea and welcomed it as a subject in the Russian Federation (INGELEVIČ-CITAK, 2015:29)

During the same time as the annexation of Crimea, unrest began to show in the eastern parts of Ukraine, especially in the Donbas region. Like in Crimea, large crowds of the Russian speaking population started do demonstrate against Ukraine with the hopes to join Russia. Since 2014, pro – Russian separatist forces have formed The Donetsk people´s republic and Luhansk people´s republic. Separatists from the proto-state are engaged in open conflict with Ukraine that is still ongoing to this day, with evidence also claiming that Russia supports the pro – Russian forces with the supply of weaponry. Much of the peace talks in Ukraine regard this conflict how to end it and will further be analysed later in the essay (Morelli, 2017:22).

The primary causes of the degeneration of the situation in Ukraine steam from factors such as Nationalism and identity. The Ukrainian people had to choose which path they would take. Gaining closer ties to Russia or the EU, while a large part of the Russian speaking population chooses to identify with Russia. This brought along with it a strong feeling of Nationalism. Armed groups started to form with the goal to either be a part of Ukraine or Russia. The disintegration of the Soviet Union also plays a vital part. The border between Russia and Ukraine had to be redrawn with people being dispatched from their own ethnic and cultural groups.

Peace talks regarding the war in Donbass

The war in Donbas has left 10.000 people dead and has dispatched over 1.5 million as of the period between April 2014 and May 2017 (OCHR, 2019). With people suffering under war-like conditions, an end to the conflict is of most importance. Several peace attempts have made to bring the conflict to an end with many failing or coming to a halt. The most widely recognize and most important of these peace attempts in the international community has been the Minsk Agreements. The Minsk Agreements consists of a protocol. The protocol was signed in September 2014 with the addition of a package of measures which was signed in February 2015. The agreement was to be under the supervision of the intergovernmental organization OSCE. The agreement was signed by the involving parties in War in Donbas which included Ukraine, Russia, the two People´s republic of Luhansk and Donetsk as well as OSCE. The process that followed the signing of the agreement was to be monitored by the newly formed group called the “Normandy format” which consist of Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany (Stewart 2016:1).

The most recent versions of the Minsk protocol are the Minsk II agreement which was mentioned earlier was signed in early 2015. The additions in the new agreements modify the points previously implemented in the protocol due to the formers failure to resolve the conflict. The points in the Minsk II agreement are the following:

“1. Immediate full bilateral ceasefire as of 15 February 00:00. 2. Withdrawal of all weapons by both sides. 3. Effective monitoring regime for the ceasefire and withdrawal of heavy weapons by the OSCE.4. Launch of Dialogue on modalities of local elections in accordance with Ukrainian legislation. 5. Pardon and amnesty of figures involved in the conflict. 6. Release of all the hostages and other illegally detained people, based on the `all for all ‘principle. 7. Safe delivery of humanitarian aid to those in need, based on international mechanism. 8. Restoration of full social and economic links with affected areas. 9. Full Ukrainian control over its border with Russia throughout the conflict zone. 10. Withdrawal of all foreign armed groups, weapons and mercenaries from Ukraine’s territory. 11. Constitutional reform in Ukraine with decentralisation as a key element. 12. Local elections in Donetsk and Luhansk regions to be held according to OSCE standards. 13 Intensifying of the work of the Trilateral Contact Group” (Bentzen 2016, 2016)

To summarize the Minsk peace protocol is that the points listed tries to resolve the conflict between the involving actors by reaching a resolving agreement that includes political security, economic and humanitarian aid. By signing the agreement separatist forces have promised to disband the forces and permit a reintegration to the state of Ukraine. In accordance, Ukraine promised to disband militias in the eastern regions.

In a conflict where most of the decision-making and fighting is performed by men, there is no surprise that the role of the woman in the conflict had been under under-represented. Both regarding the peace-making progress and the causalities in the war. Women and children suffer from military intervention. Many are at the risk to be used in sexual violence as well as human trafficking. Economic consequences are also waiting with lack of labour opportunities, education, humanitarian assistance and medical care in the war-torn areas. Regarding the woman´s role in peacemaking, In the Normandy Format, only one woman serves as head of state, Angela Merkel. The same can be said by the supervising actors of the OSCE, approximately only 15% of their 700 monitors are of the female gender (Ann-Sophie Gast, 2016).

Implementation of the Minsk II agreement

How has the peace progress regarding the agreement processed throughout the conflict implementation? Largely, the agreement has been a failure to halt the war. The treaty itself is not a legally binding document, rather it could be seen a political commitment. The ceasefire was expected to begin on the 15th February, however fighting was still ongoing until 18th February, resulting in over more than 100 deaths in the expected ceasefire period, with also attack OSCE monitoring the ceasefire. The peace accord is according to many deeply flawed, details in has not been clearly stated which bring different interpretations by the different actors (Peters, Shapkina, 2019:1-3). As of 2016 only one of the 13 points in the agreement has been fully implemented. The intensifying of The Normandy format group. The other points had only partially been implemented like the withdrawal of heavy weapons, while others are still pending, for example, elections to be held by OSCE standards in the Donbas region (Stewart, 216:2).

Another problem with Minsk protocols is that does no treat Russia as an actor in the conflict and therefore do not put obligations on the regime in Russia. The points only put emphasis on Ukraine and the Separatist despite the evidence that Russian troops, volunteers and weaponry has been seen along the Ukrainian border. This brings an acceptable situation for Russia where it can claim that it is not involved in the conflict. Russia has positioned itself as an outside mediator which makes it easier for them to blame Ukraine for the failure of the peace treaty. For Russia to accept a possible peace treaty would only work if the treaty itself prevented Ukraine from getting closer ties to the west (Klijn, 2019). Point 11 in the treaty mentions “Constitutional reform in Ukraine with decentralisation as a key element” which means that changes must be made in Ukraine in order to fulfil the treaty. Whether change happens in Ukraine, Russia as a member of the Normandy format groups needs to be satisfied (Carnegie Europe, 2017).

Conclusion

With peace talks failing and ceasefires regular being broken, efforts to bring an end to fighting has stalled since 2016. The hopes of peace become more unlikely as time progress. The relations between Ukraine and Donetsk and Luhansk grows increasingly worse. The instability that takes place favours the two peoples republic. With implementation still pending, the two proto-state still exists with continued Russian support. (Fisher, 2019). Hopes were that the Minsk Protocol treaty would bring an end and resolve the conflict. With the expectation of short ceasefires. The Minsk treaty failed to reflect the situation due to interpretation and involvement by the involving actors.

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