Ukraine's warring sides begin pullback of weapons

[bemildred]

Maybe this time.

Ukrainian army and pro-Russian rebels have begun pulling back weapons from a buffer zone in eastern Ukraine following a fresh agreement in Paris.

Vladyslav Seleznyov, an official representative of Ukrainian forces, said on Saturday that the army started listing the weapons of less than 100mm calibre and coordinating the process with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).

"Now the process of making the list and coordinating with OSCE is going on for withdrawal of weapons of less than 100mm," Seleznyov told Russian news agency Itar-Tass.

Meanwhile, the Luhansk People's Republic group, pro-Russian separatists in rebel-held east Ukrainian region of Luhansk, said that they had begun withdrawing their tanks from the buffer zone.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/10/ukraine-warring-sides-pullback-weapons-151003095557859.html

[bemildred]

1. Paris talks end in Russia-Ukraine 'truce'

Russia-Ukraine talks in Paris ended Friday (2 October) with a deal on rogue elections and weapons pull-backs.

But French leader Francois Hollande, who hosted the event, said there's no prospect of fulfilling the so-called Minsk ceasefire pact by the end of the year, creating a new timetable which bears implications for EU sanctions.

"We don't want elections to be held in eastern Ukrainian territories under conditions that would not respect Minsk”, he told press.

“It's therefore likely, even certain now, that - since we need three months to organise [the] elections [in Russia-occupied Ukraine] - we would go beyond the date that was set for the end of the Minsk [process], that is to say [beyond] 31 December 2015”.

https://euobserver.com/foreign/130535

[bemildred]

2. Ukraine Is Being Told to Live With Putin

By Leonid Bershidsky

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has long had trouble understanding that the Western support of his government is conditional. Now the leaders of France and Germany have told him that in no uncertain terms: The ceasefire agreement for eastern Ukraine has just been recast to put the onus on Poroshenko, rather than on Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Going into Friday's negotiations with French President Francois Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Putin in Paris, Poroshenko was looking belligerent. He had just delivered a hard-hitting speech at the United Nations, entirely devoted to Russia's depredations against his country. His interior minister, Arsen Avakov, was boasting that the Ukrainian National Guard had "finally" received U.S. sniper rifles and anti-tank grenades.

French diplomat Pierre Morel, who has been in close contact with Moscow and the Russian-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine, prepared a plan for the Paris meeting of the four leaders to approve. According to Morel's proposal, Ukraine would need to pass a special law setting out rules for the local elections in the rebel-held areas of Ukraine. That was a cunning way to defuse a time bomb planted under the Minsk cease-fire deal reached last February. Back then, Russia and its proxies agreed to an election under Ukrainian law by the end of the year, but they were clearly not prepared to hold it under the current legislation, which doesn't differentiate the rebel areas from all the others in Ukraine. They were threatening to hold their own polls in mid-October, something that might cause the war to reignite.

Poroshenko, however, swept the French diplomat's suggestion aside as "Mr. Morel's personal opinion." He was going into the meeting to demand Russia abide by the Minsk ceasefire, cancel what he called "fake elections" and return control of Ukraine's eastern border to Kiev by the end of the year.

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-10-05/ukraine-has-no-choice-but-to-live-with-putin

[bemildred]

3. Ukraine Sees IMF Bailout Continuing Even With Russia Bond Unpaid

Ukrainian Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko said she’s optimistic the International Monetary Fund will continue its aid program even if the war-torn nation breaches the lender’s policy by going into arrears on payment of a $3 billion bond owed to Russia.

Support from the Group of Seven industrialized nations is strong enough to prevent the IMF from halting its $17.5 billion aid program for Ukraine over the debt due to Russia in December, Jaresko said in an interview in London on Monday. She has ruled out repaying the bond when it comes due Dec. 20, and Russia has refused to negotiate the bond it bought from the regime of former President Viktor Yanukovych shortly before his ouster and President Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea.

"I’m confident that if we stay on our reform program, we’ll be able to get through any potential decisions that occur,” Jaresko said. "The G-7 would not want to see Ukraine be pushed out of an IMF program which we are otherwise fully complying with simply because of this."

Ukraine risks losing IMF financing if the country misses payment on the Russian debt because the fund’s policy dictates it can’t lend to countries in arrears to sovereign creditors. While the government in Kiev has insisted that all bondholders, including Russia, should be treated equally in its $18 billion debt restructuring to meet IMF conditions, Russia has warned it will seek legal action and question the validity of the IMF program if the bond isn’t paid back in full.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-05/ukraine-sees-imf-bailout-continuing-even-with-russia-bond-unpaid

[bemildred]

4. Ukraine crisis: OSCE encouraged as rivals confirm pullback

The opposing sides in eastern Ukraine - government troops and pro-Russian separatists - are both withdrawing tanks and other weapons from the front line, Ukraine's military command says.

The pullback is part of the ceasefire accord signed in Minsk in February.

A spokesman for international monitors in the area, Michael Bociurkiw of the OSCE, said there was "encouraging" movement of heavy weapons, but storage sites would still have to be verified.

The move is happening first in Luhansk.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-34442127

[bemildred]

5. Russia-Backed Rebels in Ukraine to Delay Disputed Elections

KIEV, Ukraine—Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine said on Tuesday they would postpone the disputed elections that were threatening to derail peace talks.

The move was immediately welcomed by Moscow and Kiev as another step toward implementing a peace plan signed in February in Minsk, Belarus. While a cease-fire has largely held in the region for a month, both sides have balked at political concessions aimed at reintegrating the areas into Ukraine with increased local powers.

Separatist officials said in a statement carried by their official news agencies they would postpone elections originally scheduled for the coming weeks until next year.

Kiev and its Western backers, which have demanded that free and fair local elections take place according to Ukrainian law, had said that elections held on the rebels’ terms would be a violation of the peace deal.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/russia-backed-rebels-in-ukraine-to-delay-disputed-elections-1444140302

[bemildred]

6. . nt