Yevgeny Magda
The latest interview of German Ambassador
to Ernst Reichel provoked a lively reaction of the Ukrainian establishment.
Volodymyr Groysman during his Brussels visit heard many encouraging words about
Ukraine. Federica Mogherini flew across the Atlantic in search of balance in
relations with Trump administration.
This week, Minsk Agreements turn two. At
the end of 2015, the Normandy Four leaders prolonged them by a year, while
their last year’s meeting saw no such outcome.
However, the matrix of the Donbas
settlement both fails to be fulfilled and attracts plenty of attention. It
seems like, in fact, everyone needed that interview of German Ambassador Ernst
Reichel, who drew parallels between the occupied areas in eastern Ukraine and
former East Germany and at the same time did not rule out the holding of
elections in Donbas before the withdrawal of Russian forces. Germany and France
needed it so that their leaders and foreign ministers could refresh their
awareness of what is happening in Donbas. Russia needed it in order for Moscow
to hear that even the German diplomat bluntly speaks of Russian troops being
present in Donbas. Ukraine - in order to demonstrate the diversity of resentful
response, ranging from "Nein" spray-painted on a piece of the Berlin
Wall by MP Oleksiy Honcharenko to Petro Poroshenko’s statement that such a
scenario is impossible for Ukraine.
By the way, Reichel’s interview could
trigger a discussion on the prospects for the transformation of the Minsk
format, whose ineffectiveness has become too apparent amid fierce shelling of
Avdiyivka. Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkiavicius and Lithuanian Ambassador
to Ukraine Marius Janukonis February 10 visited the war-torn Avdiyivka, seeing
a tragic aftermath of the bombardment by Russian artillery.
Lithuanian diplomats have shown true
solidarity, while on February 14, the European Parliament will give its assessment
of the escalation of the Donbas conflict. It should be noted that Poroshenko
emphasizes that Ukraine has enough evidence of Russia’s aggression. The
situation in Donbas is on the agenda of talks of the world's leaders: Merkel
urged Putin to influence the militants in Donbas and opposed the lifting of
sanctions against Russia, along with her Polish counterpart Beata Szydlow.
Volodymyr Horbulin presented the report by
the National Institute for Strategic Studies titled "Global Hybrid
Warfare. Ukrainian Front." The report includes no definitive recipe to
resolve the conflict, at the same time giving a fundamental assessment of what
has happened to the Russian-Ukrainian relations and international politics in
general in recent years. There is also a clearly designated understanding that
the Ukrainian front is not the only arena of hybrid confrontation.
The study echoes the interview given by
Yevhen Marchuk who noted that Ukraine was close to the point when our fellow
citizens had to see some clearly spelled out compromises needed to resolve the
conflict. Apparently, the Ukrainian elite has yet to live up to this as at the
moment, the tone is set by the old-timers of big politics.
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