Merkel and Hollande fail to ‘achieve miracles’ on Ukraine

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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