By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
There was never really any doubt about the outcome.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel gestures as she speaks with France's President Francois Hollande | Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP via Getty
The leaders of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine
talked late into the night about how to restart the long-stalled peace process
in eastern Ukraine. The meeting in Berlin did not achieve any major
breakthrough — but that was never the point. Rather, the goal was for the
leaders to be able to say they met, they tried, they are still working at it.
At that, at least, they succeeded.
The Minsk 2 accord has been a non-starter from the moment
it was signed in February 2015. And the leaders’ new agreement — to develop a
roadmap toward implementation by the end of November — is just the latest in a
series of delays that once again maintains the status quo: another frozen
conflict in the former Soviet Union.
Once again there were public pronouncements of abiding
hope and good faith. “All the participants of today’s meeting confirmed that
the basis of a settlement in southeastern Ukraine must lie in the Minsk
agreement,” declared President Vladimir Putin of Russia. “And all confirmed
their commitment to this agreement.”
President Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine declared the
roadmap would show “the steps we are taking to implement the Minsk agreement
and guarantee their implementation.”
But there is little reason to believe the Minsk
accord, brokered by Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and President François
Hollande of France, will ever be carried out.
To start, analysts note, history shows that Russia has
never backed out of any of the frozen conflicts that it has been involved with
in the former Soviet space, including in disputed regions of Georgia, Abkhazia
and South Ossetia, and in Transnistria in Moldova.
And in Ukraine the stakes are even higher. Carrying
out the Minsk accord would require Putin to help disarm separatist fighters and
restore the Kiev government’s control over the eastern Donbas region and the
border – steps that would reduce and eventually eliminate Russia’s leverage
over Ukraine, especially its ability to prevent Ukraine from ever joining the
EU or NATO.
“Analytically all you can do is look at behavior, it
doesn’t help to try to peer into the souls of the Russian leadership,” said
Matthew Rojansky, director of the Kennan Institute in Washington, the Woodrow
Wilson Center’s Russia-focused think tank. “The conduct suggests, no, the
Russians are not interested in resolving frozen conflicts because they are
useful instruments in extending Russian levers of power in their neighborhood.”
Another stumbling block is that the peace plan would
require Poroshenko to carry out local elections, which would likely serve to
legitimize pro-Russian, anti-Kiev leaders in the east, giving them an official
role in Ukraine’s government and control over budgets. It would also make Kiev
responsible for rebuilding the region with no guarantees of financial
assistance or reparations from Russia.
“So, it’s just a non-starter, unfortunately,” Rojansky
said, “but we don’t have anything better.”
‘Wait and Russia will come’
At a press conference after the meeting in Berlin,
Merkel said that as expected, the talks “achieved no miracles.”
Still, the meeting was crucial for her and Hollande,
who needed to demonstrate their best efforts on the issue to other European
leaders deeply divided over Russia.
They can attend Thursday’s EU summit in Brussels,
where leaders are scheduled to hold a wide-ranging discussion about Russia over
dinner, and report back that they pressed Putin over the bombing in Syria. EU
officials have already said discussion will not result in any new, concrete
steps, despite calls for new sanctions over Russia’s bombings of Aleppo, Syria.
In Berlin, Putin made clear he remains in the driver’s
seat in both Ukraine and Syria – at least in the short term. In a statement to
reporters about Syria after the meeting, Putin said: “I informed our European
parters about our view of what is happening there and what needs to be done in
the near future to combat terrorism, to eradicate terrorism on Syrian soil.”
Meanwhile, Poroshenko is scheduled to visit NATO
headquarters Thursday in a pointed reminder to Putin that Poroshenko wants to
align Ukraine as closely with the West as possible — which is precisely what
Putin seeks to prevent.
Despite the seeming lack of progress, one senior EU
diplomat counseled this is a much longer game, noting that, in the end, it will
be in Russia’s interests to reach an accommodation with the West.
“Who needs the other one more?” the diplomat said.
“Russia needs Europe more, despite our dependence on energy. Without EU
technology, Russia doesn’t go that far. I call it strategic patience. Wait and
Russia will come.”
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