Does Zelenskyy have a strategy for managing the Donbas conflict?

Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to the frontlines in May of last year. “To stop the fighting” was the main slogan used by Zelenskyy during the election campaign. Photo (CC) president.gov.ua: https://www.president.gov.ua/photos/prezident-ukrayini-volodimir-zelenskij-vidvidav-peredovi-poz-2929

In 2019, the Ukrainian state faced three theatres of conflict with Russia – eastern Ukraine, Crimea and the Black and Azov seas. The new president, elected in April 2019, needed to formulate his vision for all of them. If the previous Poroshenko administration saw them as integral parts of one policy, even if reacting with various levels of attention and intensity, the current perception is that different methods and approaches should be created for all three regions. The Black and Azov seas are viewed as de facto responsibilities of the defence ministry and navy. Crimea continues to sit on the backburner of official discourse. Only at the end of February did Tamila Tasheva, the deputy permanent representative of the president of Ukraine for Crimea, announce that within a year, a strategy for Crimea’s de-occupation would be developed. This process, however, has not yet started. Therefore, the Donbas dimension of the conflict is the only one that really provides enough information to analyse the strategies of the new Ukrainian president.

Old state of affairs

The security situation in Donbas has not changed during the last year. This is despite agreements on a ceasefire and Zelenskyy’s hope that he could normalise the situation by enhancing informal negotiations with Russia. Desires for rapid solutions and a quick peace agreement expressed by Zelenskyy during his presidential campaign showed an unrealistic approach and a lack of understanding of the situation on the ground. There are several reasons why his position has been evolving within the last months: first, his increasing understanding of the situation; second, a realisation that the Russian outlook will not change and peace is not one of its goals; and third, the presence of a well-organised minority which has been reacting sharply to dubious or risky propositions for managing the conflict.

“To stop the fighting” was the main slogan used by Zelenskyy during the election campaign. But questions remained as to how this goal could be achieved since no clear plan had been presented. While the general idea of military disengagement eventually prevailed, a new level of nuance had appeared by the time of the controversial Paris meeting of the Normandy Four last December. In February this year, during the Munich Security Conference, Zelenskyy said he wanted to “conduct local elections on the whole territory of Ukraine, including the separate districts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, in October 2020… but to do so without basic security and political conditions, violating the constitution of Ukraine and international standards of the democratic elections is impossible for us.” This statement bares a striking resemblance to Poroshenko’s idea of “security first” and has clearly shown the difficulty of maintaining a naïve view of the conflict in light of the situation on the ground.

Indeed, there is no single strategy that could define a Zelenskyy approach towards the conflict settlement. This is due to the fact that there is no clear understanding of the roots of and reasons for the conflict. Attempts are made to divide the problem into several dimensions and to propose ideas that stand in parallel. This does not, however, create a comprehensive vision. For the first six months of Zelenskyy’s presidency, all efforts were simply an assortment of tactics rather than actual strategies. It was a search for quick success within three specific dimensions: the humanitarian situation, the security situation on the contact line and relations with Russia. These dimensions dominated both political discourse and the process of developing plans. A human-centric approach is one of the declared approaches. As a result, Kyiv’s humanitarian and security concerns are often complementary despite not always correlating with each other.

New ideas?

At the end of October last year, at the Mariupol Unity Forum, Zelenskyy announced a “strategy for Donbas reintegration”. According to the plan, reintegration should consist of three stages: a full ceasefire; social reconciliation and a search for consensus; and full reintegration. It should be based on four principles – transparency, consensus, realism and implementation. As of writing, a full document is yet to be presented.

Last year brought a new emphasis on possible direct dialogue with the uncontrolled territories. But identifying who would be the “representatives” of the other side is not easy. “We are convinced that an effective mechanism is achieved via a direct dialogue with the so-called local authorities in the ORDLO (a reference to the temporarily occupied and uncontrolled territories of Ukraine – editor’s note). We are ready for dialogue with the civilians of these territories, not with those who are not recognised in terms of international law and therefore cannot represent the local population of Ukraine,” Zelenskyy said in Munich this February. Considering that “local administrations” mean the representatives of the occupying/separatist forces or those who supported them, logical questions arise: Who are these “local authorities” that it is supposedly possible to speak with? Who are the “civilians” and who are “those who are not recognised”?

Similarly, it is unclear whom Zelenskyy is referring to in his idea of joint patrols of the uncontrolled territories by Ukrainian law enforcement units, representatives of the temporary occupied territories and OSCE representatives. Observers interpreted this as “representatives of the non-recognised authorities or militia”. This perception was supported by Ukrainian foreign minister Vadym Pristayko’s statement: “An idea of joint patrols has been discussed since the beginning of the Minsk process. And this topic raises hot discussions – can the militants be involved in such patrols?” Three days later, the minister of interior, Arsen Avakov, clarified that these patrols should operate during the election campaign and be composed of “Ukrainian police, international peacekeepers and civilian unarmed representatives of local communities, and in no case would include militants”.

Another new idea that has been circulating is the necessity to widen the representation of those who can speak on behalf of the uncontrolled areas and include those who left and chose to live in government controlled territories. This idea was originally expressed before the Paris Normandy meeting last December in London by Andriy Yermak, who is now the head of the presidential administration. Speaking at a conference called “Ukraine: Great expectations”, which was jointly organised by the Ukrainian Prism and Chatham House, Yermak emphasised that the “people of Donbas” are represented not only by the so-called “DNR” and “LNR” authorities but also 1.5 million internally displaced persons. In his view, and what has been later proposed, 36 representatives – 18 selected by the Ukrainian side and 18 (one from each district) from the uncontrolled territories – should create a group that would select six people (three from Donetsk and three from Luhansk) to become “representatives of the territories” to work within the Minsk Format.

Zelenskyy continued with this idea, insisting that the voice of Donbas is not only limited to the current residents of the occupied territories, but includes at least one and a half million displaced people from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. That is why his team has initiated the creation of a public dialogue platform called “Peace of Donbas”, in which the internally displaced would be involved “in consultations within the Minsk platform and actively participate in discussing their future in united Ukraine.”

The “Peace of Donbas” platform looks similar to a project that had been announced in November 2019. This was the Platform for Unity and Reconciliation for Donbas Reintegration that was supposed to be organised by the National Security and Defence Council. Its presentation was scheduled for February 19th this year but it was postponed due to the fighting in Zolote. Initially it was stated that the platform would be based on the experiences of Northern Ireland and Bosnia. The choice of these conflicts raised serious questions. On the one hand, both conflicts have a long history of peace-building and reconciliation, so there is definite relevance to the situation in Donbas. On the other hand, both of these conflicts were deeply tied to issues related to faith and ethnicity and were largely internal confrontations where third parties played a minor role in triggering their respective disputes. Using the narrative that the Donbas conflict is an intra-state one is risky – as it goes well with the Russian narrative describing the war as a “civil war”. Moreover, a government-created system in both Northern Ireland and Bosnia after the heated stage of the conflict has already shown the hidden risks of re-escalation and the dysfunctionality of governmental institutions.

Serhiy Sivokho, an advisor to the National Security and Defence Council who is behind this project, explained that he expected dialogue to be based “on the language of sport, culture, and business”. This seems to mean a return to the basic principles of confidence-building measures that can be effective in the case of a stable ceasefire, guaranteed security, and an understanding of the amnesty principles.

The road to Normandy?

How likely is it that the next Normandy Four meeting will actually take place in April this year? Despite the fact that in Paris last December it was agreed that the next meeting would take place in four months without any preconditions, the situation remains similar to what we saw in the fall of 2019. Back then, the Russians had been calling for new pre-conditions to meet. In the spring of 2019, the Kremlin declared that they were ready to talk to anybody except Poroshenko, so that they would wait for the results of the presidential election. Later, conditions such as prisoner exchange (including very controversial figures) and acceptance of the so-called “Steinmeier formula” (a sequence of steps that involved withdrawing military forces from the line of contact on both sides, holding local elections in the Donbas region under Ukrainian law and OSCE supervision, restoring the Ukrainian government’s control over the state border and granting special self-governing status to the Donetsk and Luhansk regions – editor’s note) were named as reasons for postponing the meeting until December.

More and more voices from Moscow are now insisting that Ukraine has not been fulfilling the Paris Agreements, thus putting the necessity of the next meeting under question. Among the pre-conditions, the following were specifically outlined: to disengage forces in three new locations; to open new checkpoints; to expend de-mining activities; to exchange prisoners; to include the “Steinmeier formula” in Ukrainian legislations; and to agree to all legal aspects of the Donbas’s special status and to guarantee this status’s permanency. In Moscow’s view, only the prisoner exchange has been achieved. While the Ukrainian side has initiated further military disengagement under the so-called sectoral principle, increased violations of the ceasefire close to previously disengaged locations undermine Zelenskyy’s initiatives.

In contrast to the hopes of Zelenskyy and his team, the road to peace has not been smooth or straightforward. The emphasis on humanitarian issues cannot neglect the security situation on the ground and the unchanged position of the Kremlin. While most of Kyiv’s new ideas fall within the definition of tactics, with each month and each new round of negotiations, the theoretical question of “tactics vs strategy” is becoming more and more critical. The necessity of solving humanitarian issues, thinking about future reconciliation and separating high politics from the situation on the ground is not an excuse for a lack of vision and conflict management strategy. “To stop the fighting” is a good slogan only when it is backed by a clear strategic appraisal and an understanding of the counterpart’s intentions and strategic foresight.

Hanna Shelest is the editor in chief of Ukraine Analytica and board member of the Foreign Policy Council “Ukrainian Prism”.

Donbas, Ukraine, War, Zelenskyy