{"id":6119,"date":"2015-02-04T08:26:57","date_gmt":"2015-02-04T15:26:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/?p=6119"},"modified":"2015-02-04T08:34:08","modified_gmt":"2015-02-04T15:34:08","slug":"6119","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/?p=6119","title":{"rendered":"Financial Times (copied below) completely misrepresents the diplomatic process that led to the September ceasefire and the signing of the Minsk Protocol."},"content":{"rendered":"
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Putin, Poroshekno and Ashton meet in Minsk<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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This article<\/a> in\u00a0Financial Times<\/strong>\u00a0(copied below) completely misrepresents the diplomatic process that led to the September ceasefire and the signing of the Minsk Protocol.<\/em><\/p>\n

Firstly, the ceasefire was a Russian initiative, not a Ukrainian one.\u00a0 If Putin is to be believed, he drew up the outlines of the ceasefire plan whilst flying to the Mongolian capital Ulan Bator where he was attending a summit meeting. The Minsk Protocol was largely drafted by the Russians, which is why its language is Russian.<\/em><\/p>\n

Secondly, the claim that Poroshenko somehow blackmailed Putin into agreeing to a cease-fire by threatening to publish the name-tags of dead Russian soldiers, is a ludicrous one.\u00a0 If such evidence had existed there is no doubt the Ukrainians would have revealed it. The Ukrainians have never hesitated to publish \u201cevidence\u201d of this kind whenever they have had it (or have created it).<\/em><\/p>\n

The article admits this story is unconfirmed, which suggests that even the writer of the story doesn\u2019t really believe it.<\/em><\/p>\n

Thirdly, the article entirely ignores the gas talks that were a key part of the meetings between Poroshenko and Putin.\u00a0 Nor does the article mention that Poroshenko conceded all of Putin\u2019s demands in these talks.<\/em><\/p>\n

Fourthly and lastly, the article fails to give the real reason why the Minsk process failed. This is not because the Russians refused to hand over control of the border to Kiev. It is because the Maidan government refused to enter into constitutional negotiations with its opponents and with the rebels in the Donbass as by the Minsk Protocol it had committed itself to do. It is this refusal to negotiate on this key issue, which is the reason why Ukraine is now at war.<\/em><\/p>\n

The reason the article gives such a grotesquely skewed picture of the negotiations is because, as is obvious from its text, it takes the story entirely from Ukrainian sources. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

The article does however contain two important pieces of information which are probably true, because they appear to derive from Western sources.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

This first is that Poroshenko was prepared to delay ratification of the association agreement to allow time for negotiations with Russia.\u00a0 Barroso, the European Commission President, canned that idea, saying it might cause Poroshenko to be overthrown. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Given that it was the dispute over the association agreement that led to the Ukrainian crisis in the first place, Barroso\u2019s stance exposes the fanaticism and obduracy of the EU bureaucracy on this question. It seems that even when their policy provokes a civil war that causes massive devastation and loss of life, that is still not enough to make them change it.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Anyway, it is now clear that it is not the Ukrainians who are the drivers in seeking an association agreement with the EU.\u00a0 Rather it is the EU bureaucracy that is seeking to force an association agreement on the Ukrainians whatever the cost. Note that Barroso threatened Poroshenko with overthrow if he delayed ratifying the association agreement, just as had previously happened to Yanukovych.<\/em><\/p>\n

The second is that the article again appears to show Obama clutching at any straw that might give him a way out.\u00a0 Behind the bragging and the bluster it appears he has realised that he has badly miscalculated and that his political position back home (and Hillary Clinton\u2019s prospects of winning the White House) will be seriously damaged if a peace settlement is not found and his Ukrainian protege falls.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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It was late August and Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine\u2019s president, was running out of time: separatist rebels backed by thousands of Russian troops were pounding Ukrainian forces in the east of his country. He needed Vladimir Putin to agree to a ceasefire \u2014 and fast. So he played what he thought was his trump card.<\/p>\n

Mr Poroshenko told the Russian president that if there were no ceasefire, his staff would post on the internet hundreds of dog tags seized from Russian soldiers captured or killed in Ukraine. They would also contact the Russians\u2019 wives and mothers to explain where their husbands and sons were.<\/p>\n

It was a potent threat in the east-west propaganda war. Mr Putin was denying to the world that regular Russian soldiers had ever set foot in Ukraine. The Russian leader then began to shift position. A few days later, Mr Poroshenko arrived at a Nato summit in Wales with a draft ceasefire deal, which would be signed within 24 hours.<\/p>\n

Mr Poroshenko has told the dog tag story to several senior western officials, though Russian officials do not confirm it. Some suspect it reflects a certain bravado on the part of a billionaire politician desperate to save his country from being torn apart.<\/p>\n

The Minsk accord, which was signed in the Belarusian capital on September 5, allowed all sides to pretend for a while that diplomacy could solve the Ukraine crisis<\/a>. But with deadly fighting flaring up again in recent weeks, the document has come to represent another failure to check Russia\u2019s ambitions in Ukraine<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the struggle for the country, Mr Poroshenko is the man in the middle \u2014 caught between Russia\u2019s aggression and the west\u2019s refusal to help him to counterpunch. Nicknamed Ukraine\u2019s \u201cChocolate King\u201d for the $1.3bn fortune he made from his Roshen confectionery business, Mr Poroshenko<\/a> is not necessarily the warts-free president the protesters who massed in central Kiev last winter against a corrupt, oligarch-dominated system would have envisaged.<\/p>\n

Mr Poroshenko was an oligarch himself. But he was the only one to stand with demonstrators on the Maidan, and his Channel 5 television network firmly backed the protesters. He was also a seasoned insider, a former foreign minister and economy minister who served in both the \u201cOrange\u201d government after Ukraine\u2019s 2004 pro-democracy revolution and, briefly, under pro-Russia president Viktor Yanukovich.<\/p>\n

Mr Poroshenko straddles east and west, with businesses in Russia as well as Ukraine. During his presidential campaign in May, he presented his ties to Russia as an advantage. \u201cOf course I know Putin well,\u201d he said. \u201cI have a lot of experience of talking with him. I can confirm these discussions are not always easy.\u201d Moscow officials say privately Mr Poroshenko is someone they feel they can deal with.<\/p>\n

As well as being able to talk to the Kremlin, Mr Poroshenko is the first Ukrainian president to speak English fluently and is comfortable navigating western diplomacy. At times during the crisis, the stocky, smooth-tongued leader has inveigled himself into the heart of European decision-making.<\/p>\n

During a summit of EU heads of state, he lingered in an anteroom closed to visitors so he could nab Angela Merkel when she came out to consult advisers. His persistence paid off, persuading the German chancellor to secure tougher language on the Ukraine crisis in the summit communiqu\u00e9. \u201cThere were grumbles, but it\u2019s Merkel, she can do what she wants,\u201d said a European diplomat. \u201cShe was trying to bolster him.\u201d<\/p>\n

But he has occasionally overplayed his hand. In an emotional address to a joint session of the US Congress in September, he thanked Washington for the non-lethal support it had given Ukraine\u2019s military, including blankets and night-vision goggles. \u201cBut,\u201d he added acidly, \u201cone cannot win a war with blankets.\u201d The White House, which has opposed arming Ukraine, was furious. \u201cIt was a stupid move on his part,\u201d says a US official.<\/p>\n

Mr Poroshenko\u2019s phone conversations with Mr Putin also sometimes left US, German and British officials in the dark. \u201cReminders have needed to be delivered to Poroshenko\u2019s team: if you want our help, you have to make sure that we have a clear understanding of what is going on,\u201d says a diplomat.<\/p>\n

A person close to Mr Poroshenko insists he kept EU and US officials informed. He also bombarded them with calls to \u201cstop them falling asleep\u201d over Ukraine, and to try to persuade them to join him in talks with Russia. One of the most important of those meetings came on August 26, as the fighting raged in eastern Ukraine.<\/p>\n

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Putin\u2019s demands<\/strong><\/p>\n

The dinner in Minsk, according to one person present, was \u201cone of the most surrealistic meetings I have ever had\u201d.<\/p>\n

Along with Mr Putin, Mr Poroshenko and three European commissioners, the guest list included the ageing authoritarian leaders of Belarus and Kazakhstan \u2014 Alexander Lukashenko and Nursultan Nazarbayev. A US official quipped it was a \u201cStar Wars bar of international diplomacy\u201d.<\/p>\n

The tone was set by Mr Lukashenko, often referred to as \u201cEurope\u2019s last dictator\u201d. Over dinner, he bragged of a new Belarusian bread that caused no weight gain and watermelons as tasty as Spanish ones, but with less sugar.<\/p>\n

Yet most surreal was what was left unsaid. Though Russian tanks had begun pouring over Ukraine\u2019s borders, no one wanted to mention the war. Even in earlier plenary meetings when Mr Poroshenko tried to discuss the fighting, Mr Putin steered the talks back to something else: a trade deal.<\/p>\n

By now it was easy to forget the Ukraine crisis had been sparked by EU plans for a free-trade agreement with Kiev. For Mr Putin, allowing a land seen as the cradle of Russian civilisation to move into Europe\u2019s orbit was unthinkable. For the EU, the stakes were also high: Ukraine was central to its plans to spread democracy and European standards to more former Soviet states through its \u201cEastern Partnership\u201d programme.<\/p>\n

This, in fact, was the ostensible reason for the Minsk meeting: to discuss how Ukraine\u2019s EU deal could be made compatible with the nascent \u201cEurasian Union\u201d<\/a> Mr Putin was forming with Belarus and Kazakhstan. The Russian president had long wooed Kiev to join his group \u2014 and saw Ukraine\u2019s revolution not just as a western plot, but also as a serious blow to his economic prospects.<\/p>\n

Now Mr Putin would try again to torpedo the deal, which Mr Poroshenko had signed in June, but not ratified. He insisted on renegotiating 2,340 tariff lines, which could delay the trade pact by months or years. Ukraine\u2019s president stood firm: negotiators could talk some more, but nothing would keep the country from ratifying the deal.<\/p>\n

As the other guests left, Mr Poroshenko and Mr Putin retired to a separate room \u2014 for their first solo face-to-face meeting as presidents. Mr Poroshenko opened by demanding Russian troops leave Ukraine, an official present in Minsk said. Mr Putin made his much-practised denial that any Russian troops were there. Then he added menacingly that if he really wanted to invade, he had 1.2m soldiers armed with the world\u2019s most sophisticated weaponry. They could be in Kiev in two days \u2014 or in Tallinn, Vilnius, Riga and Bucharest, all capitals of EU and Nato countries.<\/p>\n

Despite the threats, Mr Poroshenko put forward a peace plan. If Mr Putin didn\u2019t like it, he said, the Russian president should suggest his own ideas.<\/p>\n

As the carnage in east Ukraine mounted in the coming days, the two leaders continued speaking by phone. According to a western diplomat, Mr Poroshenko feared he could be \u201cgone [from office] in two days\u201d unless he delivered victory, or peace. But Mr Putin was under pressure, too, as news leaked at home of Russian soldiers\u2019 bodies returning from Ukraine \u2014 making Mr Poroshenko\u2019s dog-tags threat all the more potent. On September 3, the two men agreed the framework of a deal.<\/p>\n

Obama\u2019s endorsement<\/strong><\/p>\n

The next morning, Ukraine\u2019s president arrived at a Nato summit in Cardiff, Wales, with a surprise: his draft ceasefire agreement. He unveiled it first to the \u201cQuint\u201d: US president Barack Obama, Ms Merkel, French president Fran\u00e7ois Hollande, British prime minister David Cameron and Italian premier Matteo Renzi. To add pressure on Moscow to comply, Mr Poroshenko told the leaders that the west should go ahead with new sanctions against Russia. But the EU should be more flexible in implementing its trade deal with Ukraine \u2014 including renegotiating the thousands of tariff lines Mr Putin objected to.<\/p>\n

Mr Obama responded first, according to a person in the room. Was this something Ukraine wanted, or Mr Putin wanted? Mr Poroshenko made clear he was the one seeking it. Mr Obama turned to Ms Merkel: if the Ukrainians want it, why not? She agreed.<\/p>\n

But when Jos\u00e9 Manuel Barroso, the European Commission president who had fought hard for the trade deal, was told of the plan later, he was incredulous. \u201cBarroso was, like, WTF?\u201d recalls a US official. Did Mr Poroshenko fully understand the consequences of his request? After all, the failure of his predecessor, Mr Yanukovich, to sign the EU deal had brought Ukrainian protesters on to Kiev\u2019s Maidan square. If it was not ratified as planned, \u201c[we feared] he would be defenestrated like Yanukovich was,\u201d said an official who discussed the issue with Mr Barroso in Wales.<\/p>\n

To many observers, it was clear Mr Obama wanted a peace deal at any cost. Domestic pressure was mounting over the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. US officials had been ringing other capitals even before the summit to search for something that could placate the Kremlin so Mr Obama could focus on Isis at the Nato meeting. \u201cI got a phone call from the Americans as well: can\u2019t we offer something, a symbol for the Russians,\u201d said one European summit insider. \u201cI told them there\u2019s no such thing as a symbol. It\u2019s a really big gift.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Barroso held his ground \u2014 and a compromise plan emerged. The European Parliament and Ukraine\u2019s Rada (parliament) would ratify the trade deal on September 16. But measures allowing EU goods open access to Ukraine\u2019s markets, the substantive issue behind Mr Putin\u2019s request to amend 2,340 tariff lines, would be suspended until 2016. (A Russian minister accepted this compromise, later earning a stern reprimand from the Kremlin.)<\/p>\n

All the elements were in place for the ceasefire to be signed. As Nato leaders held the second day of their summit on September 5, a thousand miles away in Minsk, representatives of Kiev, Moscow, and eastern Ukraine\u2019s two rebel \u201cpeople\u2019s republics\u201d signed the 12-point deal.<\/p>\n

It was supposed to provide considerable autonomy for the rebel republics \u2014 while allowing Mr Poroshenko to claim he had preserved Ukraine\u2019s borders. Within hours, the fighting began to lessen. But it never stopped.<\/p>\n

Failed accord<\/strong><\/p>\n

Any optimism about the Minsk deal would be shortlived. Russia failed to implement key provisions allowing Ukraine to secure its borders, and Russian military support continues to flow across it today. Face-to-face attempts in Brisbane and Milan by Ms Merkel and other leaders to persuade Mr Putin to comply with the deal have failed.<\/p>\n

Dozens of civilians have been killed by heavy shelling since mid-January in east Ukraine, and with the fighting back near the levels of last August, the Minsk accord is all but dead.<\/p>\n

The escalation has left western capitals baffled once again about Mr Putin\u2019s motives. Is he seeking to force the west into broader negotiations on issues such as his demand for guarantees that Ukraine will not join Nato? Or is he seeking to create a \u201cfrozen conflict\u201d in the east as a way of destabilising the Kiev government? It has also revived the debate about providing arms to Ukraine \u2014 one which could yet undermine the unity between the EU and the US.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Russia\u2019s economy has gone into a tailspin, hurt by falling oil prices and sanctions. Over time, this could hinder Mr Putin\u2019s ability to keep financing military action in Ukraine. But it might also persuade him to up the ante militarily, just as after the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17<\/a>, and use patriotic fervour to distract Russians from their falling living standards.<\/p>\n

From Berlin to Washington, western leaders are concluding that the rupture with Russia marks a fundamental shift. In echoes of the cold war, diplomats once again talk of \u201ccontainment\u201d.<\/p>\n

The failure of diplomacy so far to resolve the crisis has led to concerns that Mr Putin may simply not want a resolution. A former German ambassador says that after months of contacts with the Russian leader, Ms Merkel has come to an unhappy conclusion.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe he\u2019s not interested in restoring order,\u201d he says. \u201cMaybe his advisers are telling him that Russia is better off in a world without order.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Putin, Poroshekno and Ashton meet in Minsk This article in\u00a0Financial Times\u00a0(copied below) completely misrepresents the diplomatic process that led to the September ceasefire and the signing of the Minsk Protocol. Firstly, the ceasefire was a Russian initiative, not a Ukrainian one.\u00a0 If Putin is to be believed, he drew up the outlines of the ceasefire […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6120,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[113,104],"tags":[770,303],"class_list":["post-6119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-germany","category-featured","tag-eu","tag-ukraine"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/x_lon_handshake2_140826_7d0ad1983d2991bc44f595fe4ca2c75a.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s2SfUR-6119","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6119"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6125,"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6119\/revisions\/6125"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}