September 22, 2017

Portnikov: Putin’s peacekeepers proposal is intended to make peace impossible

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By calling for the introduction of United Nations peacekeepers in the Donbas, Vladimir Putin is pursuing a variety of goals foreign and domestic, Vitaly Portnikov says, but they do not include the restoration of Ukrainian sovereignty and peace in the region. Instead, this proposal like all of Mr. Putin’s in the past is intended to make that impossible.

The Ukrainian commentator says that Mr. Putin is not interested in having U.N. peacekeepers make peace but rather to ensure that he will be able to continue his pursuit of plans to dominate Ukraine and prevent Kyiv from succeeding in focusing the attention of the international community on that fact (ru.espreso.tv/article/2017/09/06/myrotvorcy_po_putynsky).

Already some in Moscow and the West are rushing to suggest that with this proposal Mr. Putin is changing course, Mr. Portnikov continues, but there is no reason for such hopes. Indeed, “a careful analysis of Putin’s declaration shows that [he] is interested” in maintaining Moscow’s control of the region and continuing to work to weaken Ukraine more generally.

Citing Mr. Putin’s insistence that U.N. peacekeepers could be introduced into the Donbas “only after a ceasefire and the withdrawal of heavy arms,” Mr. Portnikov points out: “This is the first point of the Minsk Accords” – something Moscow could have done long ago but it hasn’t made any moves in that direction.

Mr. Putin hasn’t hastened to do so, the Ukrainian analyst says, because “the Kremlin understands precisely” that if those conditions are ever met, it would work to Ukraine’s advantage and thus would “clearly not be in Russian interests.”

Moreover, Mr. Portnikov points out, “Putin wants the peacekeepers to appear exclusively along the line delimiting the occupied territories.” Put in more honest terms, he says, this represent a shifting forward into Ukraine of the Russian border and thus the U.N. soldiers would perform de facto the role of Russian border guards.

Mr. Putin talks about restoring Ukrainian control over the Donbas, but with this proposal he makes it clear that he isn’t even prepared to talk about the beginning of such a period. “He wants to keep for himself a free hand in the Donbas – and to back that up with a decision by the U.N. Security Council.”

And finally, Mr. Portnikov observes, the most important aspect of Mr. Putin’s proposal is what he says at its very end. The Kremlin leader says the U.N. peacekeepers can only be introduced if they enter into “direct contact” with Moscow’s puppet states, the so-called “people’s republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Such recognition is what Mr. Putin has been seeking since he began his invasion of Ukraine because he wants to get that in order to give some substance to his otherwise insupportable claim that what is going on in the Donbas is “not an occupation but ‘an uprising’ or ‘a civil war.’ ” Ukraine and its Western supporters must never agree to that.

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