On Nov. 29 the foreign ministers of Ukraine and Russia, the parties to the conflict in eastern Ukraine, along with their mediating counterparts from France and Germany, met again in the capital of Belarus. The results of the meeting were deemed pretty insignificant – there was little expectation of any breakthrough beforehand, and the non-event garnered little press coverage after the fact.
In the post-mortem of the meeting, accusations of guilt and allocations of blame for the lack of progress were made, as is typical.
The problem is this; these meetings don’t happen very often, and the four men involved are busy people with hectic schedules. While they’ve walked away with nothing of substance, just some mutual blamestorming to show for their time, could we, should we, have expected more?
Minsk I, point one; Minsk II, point one
Both agreements start the same way, cease-fire. Why was this not the absolute minimum that could have been the stated goal of this latest round of talks? Where was the statement going in that, acknowledging the issues are many and complicated, the minimum the ministers expected to walk away with was an agreement on cessation of violence?
According to Reuters, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated that the reason for the lack of progress was “we’re not managing to agree on the sequence of steps.” As a student of the Minsk Agreements, my understanding here is that Lavrov was referring to the sequence by which the Donbas can reach a democratic end to the conflict, by holding free and fair elections.
How is a disagreement about the mechanics of an election that is, at the very best, at least six months away, any kind of reasonable excuse to stop people being killed tomorrow?
It’s not. It’s a very poor excuse.
What might have been the press reaction had Lavrov stated the same thing, in less diplomatic but more direct language: unless elections are held in accordance with the desires of the Russian Federation, the war will continue and people will die? Because, essentially, that is his (entirely unacceptable) position.
According to RFE/RL the problem that Lavrov had was regarding the question of introducing an armed monitoring mission to the conflict zone. “There will be no militarized missions either of the OSCE or any other organization, contrary to what Kyiv has been saying from time to time,” Lavrov said.
But here again we see the smoke and mirrors being used by Russia. It’s not just Kyiv who have been saying that there’s a need for an armed mission to protect citizens in eastern Ukraine – after the last meeting of the Normandy Four leaders in Berlin on October 19th, Vladimir Putin’s Spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters “Putin agreed to the deployment of such a mission during the talks. There is an understanding of the positive nature of the deployment of such a mission, but it needs to be worked out in the framework of the OSCE.”
Of course, Peskov’s inability to tell the truth (about his watch collection, or anything else) is legendary, but just five weeks after that pretty unambiguous statement, why does Lavrov get to insinuate that this is some kind of new and obviously unacceptable last minute condition being imposed by Ukraine out of the blue, and get to use it as an excuse for Russia not even to be pressed to order a ceasefire?
In writing about Minsk in the past I have noted that “there’s nothing in Ukraine’s ‘To Do’ list that can be used even as a scant excuse by Russia to refuse to meet Minsk commitments 1, 2, 3 and 10.” But, as time goes on, and with each new round of excuses, it appears that Russia simply doesn’t want a ceasefire. At the same time, then, it should be equally clear that the only way to get Russia to change their position regarding the conflict in eastern Ukraine is for there to be the threat of real costs.
Without costs, Lavrov and Putin are simply happy to tell the world barefaced lies until facts on the ground shift sufficiently enough to match the reality they’re trying to con into existence. And, the shocking thing is that they’re being passively assisted by a media that is either not interested, not informed, or just plain lazy.
Seek Truth and Report It
The Society of Professional Journalists declares four principals as the foundation of ethical journalism. The first of those principles is “Seek Truth and Report It.” In this regard, Ukraine is being done a great disservice in the way that coverage on Ukraine often grants equal weight to the claims of both sides in this conflict.
The first news story embedded in this article comes from Reuters. A reputable global news organization who have exceptionally high ethical standards. From that article: “Kiev (sic) and the west accuse Russia of stoking the separatist movement and aiding the rebels… The Kremlin denies these charges.”
The second news story embedded in this article comes from RFE/RL. Another reputable news organization that also has exceptionally high ethical standards. From that article: “Russia denies it has any troops in Ukraine.”
At what point did “Seek truth and Report It” morph into “trot out what both sides say, and that’ll be fine”? I am not a journalist, I say that as I have not studied journalism, but surely it cannot be correct to mindlessly, carelessly, dangerously, write from a “he said, she said” perspective. That cannot be what is taught in journalism schools, is it? If the goal, the very first principal of ethical journalism, is to report the truth, then where is the caveat following the reporting of Russia’s claims, stating that “this of course, is demonstrably untrue?”
It is a FACT that Russia has stoked the separatist movement, the Surkov Leaks and the Glazyev Tapes have proved in recent months that which those of us who most closely follow Ukrainian events have known all along: This whole war was created in the Kremlin.
It is a FACT that Russia has aided the “rebels.” (A debate on terminology is where we change the discussion to opinions, I’m sticking to facts for now though) It’s not only blatantly obvious that the people fighting against Ukraine have had significant ammunition resupplies from outside of Ukraine, otherwise they would have run out of ammunition within a matter of months, but that is also something that the OSCE has reported on. It is not only blatantly obvious that those fighting against Ukraine have been furnished with weapons of war by somebody, lots of work has gone into informing the world that those weapons of war have been supplied by Russia. The BUK missile launcher that brought down MH17 is the most obvious example, of course, but it is far from the only piece of Russian military equipment positively identified on Ukrainian soil.
It is a FACT that “Russia denies it has any troops in Ukraine” but it is equally a FACT that there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary. When journalists report on the war in Ukraine, something that has cost well in excess of 10,000 lives when we include the unreported, denied, number of Russian military dead, it is imperative that they report the truth, because giving the claims of Russia any ink or pixel space without providing context to that claim is a dereliction of the duties of journalists to seek truth and report it, in favor of some misplaced notion that all opinions have, or should carry, equal weight or prominence. Facts matter.
If we want Minsk to succeed, if we want peace to return to Ukraine, we have to start with the truth. The only way in which we can hope to justify demands for added costs to Russia for their obvious violations of Ukrainian sovereignty by their invasion of Ukraine is for the public to be informed about this by a responsible press. Maybe the journalists or their editors know the facts on the ground, they cannot assume that their audience is as well informed, especially when those journalists and editors fail to inform – leaving readers with a pair of “he said, she said” statements with an expectation or hope that the reader guesses the truth.
