Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has yielded to Russia in accepting the Steinmeier formula, a procedure for implementing the Minsk accords on Russian-defined terms (see Eurasia Daily Monitor, September 17, 24, 25, 26). On October 1 in the Minsk Contact Group, Ukraine agreed to incorporate the core part of the Steinmeier formula into Ukraine’s legislation. Russia, the Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics” (DPR, LPR) and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE, the mediator in the Minsk Contact Group) co-signed the documents alongside Ukraine (Ukrinform, Interfax, October 1, 2).
Mr. Zelenskyy’s presidential office authorized the public release of Ukraine’s own letter of acceptance. It did not reveal the fact that the DPR-LPR are co-signatories alongside Ukraine; but Moscow leaked the full documents to the press (Kommersant, October 2).
Ukraine had resisted this formula ever since 2015, when Germany’s then-minister of foreign affairs, Frank-Walter Steinmeier (currently head of state), proposed it and Russia embraced it. Mr. Zelenskyy has now accepted it in hopes of inducing Russian President Vladimir Putin to “end the war” in short order.