As peace talks got under way on June 5 in Minsk, Belarus, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s representatives sat at the negotiating table for the first time. Meanwhile, Russia’s war against his country — now in its sixth year at a cost of 13,000 lives — has been taking its toll.
The same day as the talk, the army reported that three Ukrainian soldiers were killed on the front line. On June 6, another was killed — a grim reminder that all peace talks have failed.
Nevertheless, Ukraine’s new chief negotiator in Minsk, former President Leonid Kuchma, left the meeting with optimism. He suggested that the peace process has a modest chance of breaking free of years of deadlock.
“For the first time the meetings of the working groups were held in a constructive way,” Kuchma told the journalists. “All sides wanted to find a solution.”
This is not, however, the first time Kuchma is involved in the Minsk peace talks. He was appointed as the representative of Ukraine at the Trilateral Contact Group under Poroshenko in September 2015 and stepped down in October 2018.
The restarted talks give renewed hope for a cease-fire to millions living in the embattled Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. They will also fuel hopes for a prisoner exchange. Currently, about 200 Ukrainians are imprisoned in Russia and Russian-occupied Crimea and Donbas.
With other options few and far between, hope dies last.
Failed agreements
Ukraine and Russia signed their first peace agreement in Minsk in September 2014. The deal was updated in February 2015, following the disastrous battles for Ilovaisk and Debaltseve, where Russia openly sent regular troops to crush Ukraine’s army.
Many believe these agreements, signed at gunpoint, are unfavorable to Ukraine. Not even the first paragraph — the call for a cease-fire — has been honored by Russia. Nonetheless, nobody has a better idea for bringing peace.
The extensive frontline snaking through Ukraine’s Donbas region has not seen any significant changes since 2015. But thousands have still been killed in sporadic episodes of fighting over the past four years.
Kuchma said the sides have agreed to start a new cease-fire on June 10, in Stanytsia Luhanska, a government-controlled town with the region’s crossing point into the Russian-controlled part of Luhansk Oblast.
But Ukrainians can only cross the frontline over a heavily damaged bridge, which Zelenskiy recently promised would be rebuilt by the Ukrainian side.
Balazs Jarabik, an associate fellow at the Central European Policy Institute, said Zelenskiy has demonstrated stronger will to bring the peace talks out of deadlock than his ex-President Petro Poroshenko, who tended to speak more about sanctions against Russia than reaching peace.
“The most important thing in returning to Minsk is political will,” he said.
Prisoner exchange
Olena Duvanova from the Kharkiv Oblast city of Izium, some 580 kilometers southeast of Kyiv, is among those who have great hopes for the Minsk talks. Her husband Kim Duvanov was captured along with seven other soldiers by Russian proxies on May 22 and became one of the most recent hostages in Russia’s war.
A military truck that Duvanov was traveling in crossed the frontline and drove into a Russian-controlled part of Donetsk Oblast near the town of Novotroitske, some 30 kilometers southwest of the Russian-occupied city of Donetsk. Now Duvanov is held in Donetsk and awaiting a prisoner swap, a process that has been stalled since late 2017.
On June 6, Duvanova spoke to representatives of the Security Service of Ukraine, or SBU, who assured her that her husband is alive and receiving food and medical care. “Now we are waiting for the next meeting in Minsk on June 19 when they will discuss an ‘all-for-all’ prisoner exchange,” Duvanova told the Kyiv Post.
More than 200 Ukrainians like Duvanov are currently held in such prisons. Roughly the same number of Russian nationals and Russian-backed fighters remain in Ukrainian prisons, human rights activists estimate. But the last big prisoner exchange took place in December 2017, when 74 Ukrainians were released from prisons in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts in exchange for 233 pro-Kremlin individuals held on Ukrainian government-controlled territory.
On June 5, Kuchma said that there is some hope for another prisoner exchange, which was also part of the Minsk agreements. Valeria Lutkovska, a former Ukrainian human rights ombudswoman who was recently appointed by Zelenskiy as a humanitarian representative to the Minsk group, wrote on Facebook that “we’ve got a little hope for a positive step forward.”
Activists and relatives of Ukrainians held in Russian jails hold their portraits and names and urge for their release during the rally in Kyiv, on June 1, 2019. (Volodymyr Petrov)
Ending trade blockade
After the latest Minsk talks, Kuchma also said that Ukraine might lift the blockade on trade with Russian-occupied parts of Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts, which was imposed in 2017 under pressure from activists and volunteers who fought for the Ukrainian side in Donbas.
This idea sparked concerns in Kyiv. Since 2017, most Ukrainian government institutions and private companies working in Russian-controlled parts of Donbas have been seized by Russian proxies who changed their ownership.
Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko warned that resuming trade with these companies is now illegal and may be prosecuted as “financing terrorism.”
Poroshenko claimed this move would “legitimize the occupation” of parts of the Donbas “through the mechanisms of recognizing the tax regime and ownership.”
“A peace on the terms of capitulation is not a peace, it’s capitulation,” he said during a briefing on June 6.
Volodymyr Fesenko, head of the Penta political think tank, said both Lutsenko and Poroshenko are not being genuine, because, when the blockade was implemented in 2017, they did not support it.
“Until February 2017, this trade flourished with the blessing of Petro (Poroshenko),” he said.
Nevertheless, Fesenko believes it will now be difficult to relaunch trade cooperation.
Jarabik said that lifting the economic blockade could help Ukraine solve the problem of its coal supply after Russia banned the export of crude oil, oil products, and coal to Ukraine starting on June 1.
“Now Ukraine needs coal to avoid an energy crisis in winter,” he said.
Yevhen Mahda, head of the Kyiv-based Institute of World Policy, said he sees no benefit from lifting the economic blockade, but the move would be useful for Zelenskiy.
“Zelenskiy needs some success stories,” he said. “That’s why he is taking this reverent step toward voters from Donbas,” who will benefit from the trade.
However, this would be seen by Russia as a concession and could help resume the prisoner exchange program, Mahda said.
This map shows the Russian-occupied part of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, an area of more than 15,000 square kilometers. The frontline between government-controlled and Russian-controlled parts of Donbas stretches for 450 kilometers and remains without major changes since February 2015.(Source: Ministry of Defense)
What Russia wants
Kuchma also claimed that, at the next meeting in Minsk on June 19, all sides would discuss the terms of a full cease-fire. That could include a ban on the shelling of schools and kindergartens, as well as a ban on opening fire in response when soldiers are being attacked from civilian areas.
But a key question remains: Will Russia and its proxies in the Donbas abide by it?
Fesenko said Russian-proxy forces started an escalation during Zelenskiy’s first foreign visit to Brussels, where he reaffirmed Ukraine’s path toward Europe.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on June 6 that he doesn’t understand Zelenskiy’s policy toward Russia and the Minsk process, claiming that “very vague signals” are coming from Kyiv.
Zelenskiy’s ideas to hold referendums on NATO membership and relations with Russia, have sparked significant criticism in Ukraine. But Zelenskiy has also withdrawn Viktor Medvedchuk from the Minsk talks. A pro-Russian politician and friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Medvedchuk was previously the only person in Ukraine allowed to make direct flights between Kyiv and Moscow. Now, he has lost the privilege he enjoyed under Poroshenko.
According to Mahda, while tactics in the Minsk talks will likely be different under Zelenskiy, Ukraine’s government will not agree to start direct talks with Russian proxy leaders in the Donbas, something Russia has demanded for years.
But many see little chance for a real breakthrough in the Minsk process, believing that the war will continue as long as Putin wants it to continue.
In the short run, the best that can be expected from Minsk is a long-term ceasefire, Jarabik believes.
“What they can do is to freeze the conflict, because (now) the conflict isn’t frozen,” he said.
