With mounting fears that Russia will send in troops, talks on Ukraine continue

The talks, prompted by the buildup of more than 100,000 Russian troops accompanied by tanks, artillery and other equipment near the Ukraine border, which began two weeks ago in Geneva between the U.S. and Russia, and were followed by meetings of the NATO-Russia Council and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), continued last week in Kyiv, Moscow, Berlin and Geneva. And with increasing fears that, despite the warnings of severe consequences, Russia will send in its troops, either to occupy portions of eastern Ukraine now controlled by pro-Russian separatists or even, with troops in Belarus, its partner in their Union State, that are less than 100 kilometers from Kyiv, to replace the government headed by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy with a pro-Russian figurehead, the meetings and talks continue.

Last Monday, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock met in Kyiv with Zelenskyy and Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and on Tuesday she met in Moscow with Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov. Also on Tuesday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg met in Berlin with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht, and subsequently announced he would be reconvening the NATO-Russia Council. On Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken met in Kyiv with Zelenskyy and Kuleba and last Thursday he met in Berlin with Baerbock, and both of them met as well in the Transatlantic Quad with French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and British Minister of State James Cleverly. Last Friday, Blinken met in Geneva with Lavrov. On Monday, President Biden held a video call with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, European Council President Charles Michel, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, Polish President Andrzej Duda, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Stoltenberg. Also on Monday, the EU’s Foreign Affairs Council, which consists of the foreign and defense ministers of the 27 member states met, joined by Blinken, to discuss the security situation  in eastern Europe. Yesterday, Macron and Scholz met in Berlin and today representatives of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine met in Paris to prepare for the resumption of talks in the four-country Normandy format.

Perhaps the most important message that came out of several of those meetings, including most notably, the meetings in which Baerbock or Lavrov, or both, were involved, is that there is in fact a clear pathway toward a peaceful resolution of the crisis. Prior to her meetings last Monday with Zelenskyy and Kuleba, Baerbock she said she would be seeking a diplomatic resolution to the continuing conflict between Ukrainian troops and the forces of the pro-Russian separatists that control significant portions of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions in eastern Ukraine. In particular, she emphasized the need to make progress in implementing the Minsk agreements of 2014-15: “I will sound out…whether there is any readiness to reach solutions on the diplomatic path – particularly to reanimate the Normandy process and at last make progress in the implementation of the Minsk Accords.” The reference to the Normandy process is, of course, a reference to the informal contact group of Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine, the leaders of which initially met in Normandy on D-Day in 2014 and subsequently negotiated agreements in Minsk in September 2014 and February 2015 to end the continuing conflict in eastern Ukraine. (For a summary of the agreements, see on this site, “After talks in Geneva, at NATO and at the OSCE, Ukraine crisis continues…,” January 20.) After the talks in Kyiv, both sides noted the need to implement the Minsk agreements and expressed their hope that another summit in the Normandy format would be held in the near future.

From Kyiv, Baerbock went to Moscow where she met last Tuesday with Lavrov. Following their meeting, in a joint news conference Lavrov said they had a “businesslike discussion” of many urgent bilateral issues, including the ongoing certification and upcoming commissioning of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. But their discussions focused on two issues – Russia’s proposal that there be no further eastward enlargement of NATO, meaning that Ukraine would never become a member of NATO, and implementation of the Minsk agreements. Regarding the latter, Lavrov said, “We have a common understanding that there is no alternative to the Minsk Package of Measures [i.e., the agreements]. We let our partners know that it is unacceptable to attempt to portray the Russian Federation as a party to the conflict (such attempts have been made recently) and to shift responsibility for the lack of progress in implementation of the Minsk agreements onto Russia. We hope that our German colleagues will use their influence with Kiev and have them fulfill their obligations. We exchanged views on further prospects for cooperation within the Normandy format and on the kind of steps that need to be taken by the four countries in order to promote implementation of the Minsk Package of Measures, primarily through stepping up the activities of the Contact Group which represents Kiev, Donetsk, and Lugansk.”

Lavrov came back several times to the Minsk agreements in responding to questions at the news conference: “We talked in detail about the developments in Ukraine and around it, primarily the subversion of the Minsk Agreements by the Kiev regime.…We underscored the need to stop this subversion and start taking steps in the sequence laid out in this document. These agreements are clear. …We are merely demanding meticulous implementation of what we agreed upon. This applies to the Minsk Agreements that are being subverted by Kiev and the general security architecture in Europe.” When asked whether the Normandy format members will meet anytime soon, Lavrov replied, “The Normandy four summit was held in Paris in 2019, where specific steps to be taken by the Kiev authorities were articulated and approved by the summit participants as a result of difficult talks. So far, nothing has been done in this regard. There are many examples of the Ukrainian side sabotaging the ceasefire agreements reached back in July 2020. We need to be clear in advance about what we are going to discuss at a Normandy format meeting of any particular level. This work is being done by foreign policy advisers and the Normandy format leaders. Our approaches are well-grounded, clear and open. We look forward to Berlin and Paris hearing multiple iterations of these approaches, because there’s no hope that Kiev ever will. Our only hope is that Berlin and Paris will force Mr. Zelenskyy to deliver on what he promised so many times. As President of Russia Vladimir Putin has repeatedly pointed out, as members of the Contact Group and the Normandy format, we will do our best to help create favourable conditions for reaching agreements on ways to implement the Minsk Package of Measures. We are genuinely interested in making this happen…We have good reasons to believe that the current [U.S.] administration has a more realistic outlook on the Ukrainian settlement; in particular, it recognizes the need to start off with resolving the problem of the special status of Donbass. I assure you that as soon as we achieve clarity with regard to the powers that Donetsk and Lugansk will receive under the Minsk Agreements, the remaining issues will be resolved much more easily. Now we are stuck with the stated, codified policy of the Kiev regime to drag out the political aspects of the Minsk Agreements.”

While Lavrov and Baerbock were meeting last Tuesday in Moscow, Stoltenberg met in Berlin with Scholz and announced that he had invited the members of the NATO-Russia Council, which had met the week before, to a series of meetings to address NATO-Russia relations and a series of security-related issues. And while those meetings were going on, Blinken arranged to meet in Kyiv the next day with Zelenskyy and Kuleba, then meet in Berlin on Thursday with Baerbock and the foreign ministers of France and the UK in the Transatlantic Quad, and then meet in Geneva on Friday with Lavrov.

On January 2, President Biden had spoken by phone with Zelenskyy to underscore the commitment of the U.S. and its allies to Ukraine prior to the meetings that would take place starting a week later with the U.S.-Russia meeting in Geneva. In the call, he reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. But importantly, the White House reported that “he also expressed support for confidence-building measures to de-escalate tensions in Donbas and active diplomacy to advance the implementation of the Minsk Agreements, in support of the Normandy Format.” The purpose of Blinken’s meetings with Zelenskyy and Kuleba last week was to reiterate that message, both in regard to the U.S. commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and its support for advancing the implementation of the Minsk Agreements.

In his joint press availability with Blinken after their meeting last Wednesday, Kuleba  said, “The main topic of our discussions today was the security situation in – along the border of – the Ukrainian border and in temporarily-occupied areas in Donbas. …Today we had a very fruitful discussion about the Normandy Format. The U.S. supports Ukrainian efforts and efforts of Germany and France to reinstate the work of the Normandy Format. At the level of leaders, we were talking about the Trilateral Contact Group, and our efforts are aimed at making sure that Russia moves forward in diplomatic format…If Russia truly, not only in its slogans, aims at political regulation and political solution, it should participate in diplomatic discussion with Normandy Format, with foreign partners, Western partner, and U.S.”

Last Thursday, Blinken met with both Scholz and Baerbock. After their meeting, both Baerbock and Blinken underscored the necessity of moving toward full implementation of the Minsk agreements if a Russian incursion were to be averted. Baerbock made a point of mentioning the Normandy Format and said she and French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian will do what they can to “breathe fresh life into that format…We plan to visit Ukraine together in the very near future as far as Minsk is concerned with an eye to the Minsk Agreement, because the situation in Donbas is especially, under pandemic circumstances, very – making life very difficult for the people there, in humanitarian terms, amongst others, and thus, the two of us will make the point of visiting exactly that part of the country. And then we’ll be using different formats to prepare the resumption of the Normandy Format discussions.” Blinken, speaking of that format, said, “The U.S. fully supports it and we have made that clear to Russia, and I’ll reiterate that tomorrow when I see Foreign Minister Lavrov, as well as to Ukraine. And we’ve simply said that if there is anything that we can do to support that effort, to further facilitate it, we’re ready at any time to do that…And our hope is that the different parties will engage meaningfully and productively, because that is the single best way to implement the Minsk agreements, which really are the solution, the agreed solution by both Russia and Ukraine, to the situation in the Donbas, and ultimately the best way for Ukraine to get its eastern border back.”

Last Friday, Blinken met for an hour and a half with Lavrov in Geneva. Much of the meeting naturally focused on Russia’s proposals for a treaty with the U.S. and an agreement with the NATO member states, both of which would provide it with “legally binding security guarantees” that, among other things, would prohibit any future eastward enlargement of NATO, including membership for Ukraine. In a news conference after the meeting, Lavrov said the U.S. response to what had been discussed in the earlier Geneva meeting of their deputies was, as the U.S. had indicated beforehand it would be, preliminary and was accompanied by follow-up questions, the answers to which would help the U.S. prepare a written response to Russia’s written drafts of the treaty and agreement. He described the meeting as an interim one and said that Blinken had assured him several times that the U.S. will give Russia a written response this week.

Regarding Ukraine, Lavrov said, “Secretary Blinken reaffirmed the fact that President Biden spoke about the United States’ willingness to assist in the implementation of the Minsk Agreements. I urged him once again to use their decisive influence with the Kiev regime in order to talk sense into them so that they stop sabotaging this critically important document, which is designed to put an end to  the internal Ukrainian conflict.” Later, responding to a question about the current discussion in the Russian Duma in regard to recognizing the Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics (the would-be states created by the separatists), Lavrov said, “The participants in the Normandy format meeting, where the Minsk agreements were drafted, seriously discussed the referendum in the DPR and the LPR. The leaders of France and Germany were going all-out to compel us to persuade the representatives of Donetsk and Lugansk to sign the Minsk agreements. In fact, they met the Normandy Four halfway by cancelling their decisions on independence, with the understanding that the parties would fulfil all the terms of the Minsk agreements. Primarily, they expected that these territories would be granted a special status, that this status would be permanently codified in the Constitution of Ukraine in the context of decentralization, that a full amnesty would be offered and elections held. All these issues must be resolved in cooperation with Donetsk and Lugansk. This is the short history of the status of these territories. Today we demanded, once again, an end to the connivance with the Kiev regime. We did this when the Foreign Minister of Germany visited us and during contacts with our French colleagues. It is time to make Kiev fulfil not just what it promised but what was endorsed by the UN Security Council.” Clearly, for Russia the peaceful resolution of the current situation requires full implementation of the Minsk agreements.

Yesterday, at the conclusion of its discussion of the European security situation, the EU’s Council on Foreign Affairs condemned Russia’s continued aggressive actions and threats against Ukraine and called on it to de-escalate, abide by international law, and engage constructively in dialogue through the established international mechanisms. Recalling the European Council’s conclusions at its meeting last month, it reiterated that “any further military aggression by Russia against Ukraine will have massive consequences and severe costs. This includes a wide array of sectoral and individual restrictive measures that would be adopted in coordination with partners.” And, it said, “The Council underlines the importance of the full implementation of the Minsk Agreements and reiterates its full support to French and German efforts within the Normandy format, underlining Russia’s responsibility as a party to the conflict.” Meanwhile, while the EU ministers were urging that Russia de-escalate and engage constructively in dialogue, according to the White House readout of President Biden’s call with the European leaders, while underscoring their shared desire for a diplomatic solution to the current tensions, the leaders “also discussed their joint efforts to deter further Russian aggression against Ukraine, including preparations to impose massive consequences and severe economic costs on Russia for such actions as well as to reinforce security on NATO’s eastern flank.”

Last Wednesday, in a speech to the European Parliament in Strasbourg marking his country’s six-month presidency of the EU Council, Macron, saying it was not sufficient to leave the resolution of the Ukraine crisis to Russia and the U.S., said he hoped to renew the four-country Normandy format and, in so doing, give the EU a voice and a role in resolving the crisis. He subsequently spoke by phone with Putin. Yesterday, he met in Berlin with Scholz to discuss resumption of the Normandy format talks, the first steps of which were taken in a meeting today in Paris of political advisers from France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine. Macron mentioned that he would be speaking with Putin Friday, presumably after Putin has received the written response of the U.S. to Russia’s proposed treaty and agreement, to ascertain his intentions moving forward.

There is a pathway to a peaceful resolution of this crisis. It’s the pathway that was created on D-Day in Normandy in 2014. Whether Russia takes it remains to be seen. But the fact that representatives of the four governments are at today’s meeting in Paris to discuss resumption of the Normandy format talks, and that Russia is represented by the chief of staff of the Presidential Executive Office, is a good sign that the talks will soon resume – and that war may be averted.

David R. Cameron is a professor emeritus and lecturer in political science and the former director of the MacMillan Center’s Program in European Union Studies.