In Ukraine, even peace accords can be a Russian weapon

Despite proclamations of world leaders, Minsk deal offers no magic formula for avoiding another war.

In their frenzied diplomatic effort to dissuade Russia from a new invasion of Ukraine, Western leaders are pinning renewed hope on the long-stuck Minsk peace accords.

The Minsk agreements, first negotiated in 2014 and 2015, were intended to bring an end to the war with Russian-backed separatists, then raging in eastern Ukraine.

But the pact is fiercely disputed and flawed, with ambiguous provisions open to conflicting interpretation and serious contingencies unplanned for.

Since 2015, Russia has refused to put in place basic conditions required for its implementation and top Ukrainian officials say the peace deal itself is a weapon that Moscow is using to try to destroy their country.

All of that makes the accords, named after the Belarusian capital where they were developed, an unlikely vehicle for resolving the current crisis — even as world leaders insist there is no other option.

Standing with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Kyiv on Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron proclaimed the Minsk accords to be “the only path allowing us to build peace, the only path allowing us to build a viable political solution.” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and U.S. President Joe Biden have issued similar statements.

Macron also insisted that he had received a personal commitment from Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow the previous day to respect the Minsk agreement. “I believe that now is the time for all participants in these negotiations to engage in a dialogue in good faith. The path is possible,” he declared.

In fact, there is no path — just a dead end, according to senior officials and diplomats who have participated directly in years of tortured negotiations over the agreement and who know a lot more about its terms and its flaws than Macron does.

Russia insists that the Minsk deal once implemented will grant the now-occupied areas of Donetsk and Luhansk political autonomy that would give the Russian-backed authorities there a veto over major decisions in Kyiv, such as whether to join NATO or the EU. Kyiv says the deal provides for a degree of local self-governance but no such sweeping powers over the whole country’s future.

The Kremlin maintains that Ukraine is obligated to rewrite its constitution and immediately call local elections in the occupied territories. Ukraine says that the deal sets out a series of preconditions for elections that have never been met, including disarmament, removal of Russian fighters, and restoration of Kyiv’s legal authority.

Each side insists that only their interpretation of the deal is the correct one — and their interpretations are flatly contradictory.

On Monday, standing with Macron, Putin accused Kyiv of working to undermine the peace deal.

“In my opinion, it is obvious to everyone that the current authorities in Kyiv have set a course for the dismantling of the Minsk agreements,” Putin said. “There is no progress on such fundamental issues as constitutional reform, amnesty, local elections, legal aspects of the special status of Donbass.” He added that Ukraine “continues to ignore all possibilities for the peaceful restoration of the country’s territorial integrity through direct dialogue” with the Moscow-backed regional authorities in the east of the country.

Putin has urged Western powers to compel Kyiv to bow to his interpretation of Minsk. “Like it or don’t like it, be patient, my beauty — you must comply,” he said, using a Russian rhyme that parents use when forcing children to eat food they don’t like, and that has also been used in cruder contexts.

But Putin has also shifted his focus to three broader security demands that he has presented to NATO and Washington — leaving some analysts fearful that he has concluded Minsk will never be adopted to his satisfaction and that only military action will achieve his aims for eastern Ukraine.

Senior Ukrainian officials, including Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and the secretary of the National Security Council, Oleksiy Danilov, have said that Kyiv can never accept Russia’s version of the Minsk accords. Danilov has said that it would be tantamount to the “destruction” of the country. Long term, such officials say, Moscow could gain a permanent lever to control Ukrainian politics and thwart the country’s ambitions to join NATO and the EU. But more immediately, they warn, public anger over such concessions could lead to mass unrest and political instability, potentially splitting the country apart.

Zelenskiy, standing with Macron, answered Putin’s jab with one of his own that spelled out the fundamental differences between the two sides. “Ukraine is a beauty,” he said. “As far as ‘my’ is concerned, that’s a bit much.”