A dangerous moment for Ukraine’s fragile ceasefire
Behind the scenes, U.S. diplomats are rediscovering Ukraine as a foreign-policy priority.
On Jan. 15, Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland met with a key Kremlin adviser at Russian President Vladimir Putin’s beachfront residence on the Baltic Sea. Nuland, the top U.S. diplomat responsible for European affairs, had traveled to Russia’s heavily militarized Kaliningrad region to sit down with Vladislav Surkov, Putin’s lieutenant overseeing the rebel regions in eastern Ukraine. Their six-hour “brainstorming” session, Surkov later told Russian journalists, touched on the thorniest issues of Ukraine’s tenuous peace process and proved both “constructive and useful.”
To call the meeting unusual would be an understatement. Russian state media has consistently portrayed Nuland as the puppet-master of Kiev’s pro-Western Maidan revolution two winters ago, while Surkov, the designer of Putin’s decorative democracy, is viewed in the West as one of the masterminds behind the Crimea annexation. Because of his role, Surkov was blacklisted from entering the United States and the European Union in March 2014.
As President Barack Obama starts his last year in the White House, Washington is leading a final effort to defuse the still ticking time bomb that is Ukraine. Key European allies — German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande — have been seriously distracted by the continent’s refugee crisis and newfound terrorism threat.
The Kremlin, chastened by low oil prices and a dim overall economic outlook, has signaled its readiness to implement the so-called Minsk peace agreement. Just as Putin did with eastern Ukraine, he has gone into contortions to be part of both the problem and the solution in Syria. By inserting Russia into the Middle East as a military actor, Putin forced Washington to take notice. On the eve of Nuland’s peace mission, Obama picked up the phone to urge Putin to do his part. After the meeting, Secretary of State John Kerry held talks with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, and declared that Ukraine-related sanctions on Russia could be eased if the Minsk deal gains traction in the coming months.
http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2016/01/25/a-dangerous-moment-for-ukraines-fragile-ceasefire/
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