Michael Birnbaum is The Post’s Moscow bureau chief. He previously served as the Berlin correspondent and an education reporter.
Custom Search
UKRAINE ANNOUNCES PROGRESS IN ACHIEVING A CEASE FIRE DEAL
Michael Birnbaum and Annie Gowen
Sept. 2, 2014
MOSCOW — Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on Wednesday announced a cease-fire in eastern Ukraine, although major questions remained about whether it would be implemented.
The surprise decision comes as Russian-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine have made rapid strides to retake territory in the last week, after apparently receiving an infusion of support from Russia, which the Kremlin denies.
Poroshenko’s office announced the cease-fire in the eastern Donets Basin region, also known as Donbas, after a telephone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“The conversation resulted in an agreement about a lasting cease-fire in Donbas. There was a mutual understanding achieved about steps that will promote the establishment of peace,” Poroshenko’s office announced in a brief statement on its Web site.
Poroshenko’s office later changed the wording of the statement from a “lasting cease-fire” to a “process for achieving a cease-fire.” It gave no reason for the change, but the apparently softened language appeared to reflect the tenuous nature of the steps.
Meanwhile, European leaders delayed new sanctions against Russia over its role in the Ukraine conflict.
Sept. 2, 2014 Ukrainian fighters from the Azov Battalion ride on a truck at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Mariupol. Mariupol, a large city of about 500,000 peop
le, is about 30 miles from the Russian border. Alexander Khudoteply/AFP/Getty Images
The Kremlin said that no cease-fire deal had been reached because Russia is not a party to the conflict. Rebel leaders told Russian news agencies that they had not been consulted before the cease-fire was announced.
The separatist leader who has been conducting negotiations with Ukraine said via an aide that rebel forces would agree to a cease-fire only if Ukrainian troops withdraw from eastern Ukraine.
“This is some sort of a game on the part of Kiev,” the unnamed aide to Andrei Purgin told the state-run RIA Novosti news agency. He said that unless Kiev’s forces withdrew, a cease-fire would be “unfeasible.”
Just last month, Ukraine’s military appeared to be on the verge of defeating the pro-Russian rebels who had waged a bloody war in eastern Ukraine since mid-April. But the balance shifted last week after a column of tanks and armored personnel carriers flying rebel flags rolled into southeastern Ukraine and advanced toward the key port city of Mariupol, opening another front in the conflict. Kiev’s forces have been forced into a sudden and major retreat.
It was not immediately clear whether the cease-fire would hold. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday that the two leaders had not agreed on a cease-fire but merely discussed steps needed to achieve peace, state-run Rossiya 24 television reported. Russia has steadfastly denied that it is a party to the conflict and says that it has no control over the rebels.
President Obama, who on Wednesday was visiting Estonia as a show of support for Eastern European nations that have felt threatened by Russia, reacted cautiously to the cease-fire, saying that it was “too early to tell” what the Ukrainian announcement meant.
“We haven’t seen a lot of follow-up on so-called announced cease-fires,” he said at a news conference. If Russia is prepared to stop financing, arming, training and in many cases joining rebel forces and is serious about a political settlement, he said, “that is something we hope for.”
Poroshenko also does not maintain full control over pro-Kiev volunteer militias that have joined the regular army in the fight against the rebels and that may be inclined to keep fighting despite instructions from Kiev.
Rebel leaders gave conflicting responses Wednesday to Russian news agencies about whether they would adhere to a cease-fire. A day earlier they were saying that they wanted independence from Ukraine, a step that would be politically impossible for Poroshenko to agree to.
Even if the hostilities come to a temporary end, Poroshenko appears likely to come under fire from Ukrainian hard-liners who have put heavy pressure on him to stop at nothing short of a full military victory in the east. A previous cease-fire in June quickly broke down after each side accused the other of violating it.
But Ukraine’s military — never well-equipped or well-trained to begin with — has been suffering steep losses in recent weeks, and it has been unclear how long it can hold out against tough attacks from the pro-Russian side. NATO has said that at least 1,000 Russian soldiers are fighting on Ukrainian soil and that Russian artillery has been firing on Ukrainian positions from both inside and outside the country.
It remained unclear Wednesday what concessions, if any, Poroshenko had made to Putin. The Russian leader called for “statehood” for the separatist regions of eastern Ukraine in an interview broadcast Sunday, although his spokesman later said that what Putin meant was autonomy within the Ukrainian state. Russia has also sought guarantees that Ukraine would never be able to join the NATO defense alliance.
In a briefing in Kiev, a Ukrainian military spokesman, Col. Andriy Lysenko, affirmed Poroshenko’s announcement and did not take questions. Officials said privately that the agreement was between the two presidents but that the details had yet to be worked out.
“As a result of a conversation, there was an agreement about a cease-fire,” Lysenko said. “There were a mutual understanding agreed upon about the steps that will help to establish peace.”
Lysenko charged Wednesday that the Russian incursions into Ukrainian territory had continued even as the two leaders were talking peace. He said there has been increased drone surveillance coming from Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula annexed by Russia in March. He also showed a video of a long column of Russian tanks and armored personnel carriers that he alleged had entered the country around Krasnodon, in the Luhansk region.
Russian tanks, troops and military firepower helped turn the tide against the Ukrainian forces around Aug. 25, as Kiev reported a large-scale incursion north of the town of Novoazovsk, near the Sea of Azov. That town, as well as many byways to the key port city of Mariupol, remain under insurgent control.
NATO later released satellite photos of Russian military forces in the country, which supported Ukraine’s claims that Russians were fighting on Ukrainian soil.
Ukrainian forces in Novoazovsk as well as around the cities of Ilovaysk and Luhansk suddenly found themselves outmanned and outgunned in the face of the Russian-supported onslaught. On Monday, rebels supported by Russian forces retook the airport at Luhansk, a key strategic victory.
Analysts theorized that the purported cease-fire may advance Moscow’s aims, which include slowing Ukraine’s further alliance with Europe and establishing a “frozen conflict” in Ukraine’s east with breakaway territories living under Russian support, similar to the current situation in Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia.
Putin reportedly recently told a top European Union official that “if I wanted to, I could take Kiev in two weeks,” a further ratcheting-up of rhetoric that has contributed to the impression that the Kremlin was unwilling to allow the rebels to be defeated. A top Kremlin aide on Tuesday did not deny that Putin had made the remark in conversation with E.U. Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso but said it had been taken out of context.
Before the Ukrainian cease-fire announcement, Putin’s spokesman told Russian news agencies Wednesday that the two leaders had found common ground on how to end the bloodshed in eastern Ukraine, according to Interfax, the Russian news agency.
“The viewpoints of the presidents of the two countries largely coincide on possible ways out of the grave crisis situation,” Peskov was quoted as saying.
Russia said Tuesday that it was reviewing its military strategy in the face of expected NATO plans to establish a rapid-reaction force capable of deploying quickly to Eastern Europe, raising tensions ahead of a NATO summit this week.
NATO leaders meeting in Wales are expected to endorse the creation of a military force of about 4,000 troops capable of deploying to Eastern Europe on about eight hours’ notice.
Russia’s intent to improve its plans to counter NATO forces, announced without further detail Tuesday by a top Kremlin official, brings the sides closer to a large-scale armed confrontation than they have been at any other time since the end of the Cold War.
“The issue of NATO military infrastructure encroaching on our borders, including through the expansion of the alliance, will remain among the biggest military threats to the Russian Federation,” Mikhail Popov, deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, told RIA Novosti.
Western officials in recent years told the Kremlin that NATO was not focused on Russia, Popov said. But now, he said, the Kremlin’s long-term concerns about the alliance have been proved correct.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a news conference in Moscow on Tuesday that Ukraine’s moves to join NATO were undermining efforts to end the war there. He called on the White House to use its influence on Poroshenko during his planned visit to Washington this month.
“The most important thing is the need to talk sense into the party of war in Kiev, and in large part only the United States can do this,” he said.
Gowen reported from Kiev. Daniela Deane in Rome and Katie Zezima in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed to this report.
Annie Gowen is The Post’s India bureau chief and has reported for the Post throughout South Asia and the Middle East.
VIEW VIDEO AND GALLERY