Russia: Moscow puts pressure on Kiev by threatening to recognize the independence of eastern Ukraine | International

The peace agreements for the Donbas region have been deadlocked for almost seven years, and the Russian government is tightening the screws. “The recognition (of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk republics) must be seen in the context of our firm line for the West to force Kiev to abide by the Minsk agreements. In that case, everything will be in order,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned during a round table with Russian media broadcast on the Internet. Moscow’s notice comes nine days after the leadership of the Communist Party presented a petition to Vladimir Putin in the State Duma to recognize the breakaway regions.

Lavrov stressed that the unity of Ukraine is enshrined in the Minsk protocols. The peace agreements were first signed in September 2014 by Russia, Ukraine, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the then heads of Donetsk and Lugansk (both without official recognition, one killed in an attack in 2018 and another fled after an internal coup in 2017 in a dispute between the intelligence services). However, the prolongation of the war led to the revision of what was agreed in February 2015, Minsk II, after several defeats of Kiev against the separatists supported by the Russian armed forces.

“Russia does not want a war, but I do not rule out that someone wants to provoke military action. The Kiev regime does not control a large part of its military on the front,” said the Russian Foreign Minister, who estimated the force deployed by Kiev on the contact line at around 100,000 soldiers, where the truce has not prevented a constant trickle shot and killed these seven years. “If it depends on Russia, there will be no war. We do not want a war, but we will not allow our interests to be trampled on, to be ignored,” Lavrov stressed during the meeting.

The Minsk protocols are 13 points that contemplate not only the granting of a special status to the Donetsk and Lugansk territories, but also the withdrawal of all foreign forces from the area, the exchange of prisoners and a law that guarantees amnesty ” of the people connected to the events that took place” in the region.

The problem for its implementation is who gives in first. The diplomat Alexándr Jara, assistant to the Minister of Defense in 2020 and former member of the Security Council of Ukraine, points out that it is impossible to hold free elections in those territories with Russia controlling the levers of regional power. “With Russian soldiers and proxies there we cannot have courts, police or delegations of the Ukrainian Government, not to mention political parties and media”, Jara assures El País.

“They tell us: change the constitution, legitimize the agents of the Russian forces, and then we will withdraw the troops from the border. It is as if in the Second World War elections were held in a concentration camp. How are you going to legitimize them?” says the expert.

“I was born in Donetsk, I am a Russian speaker,” adds Jara, who stresses that “it is not a civil war.” “Russia introduced special forces to undermine Ukrainian sovereignty. They failed in Kharkov, Odessa, Dnipropetrovsk… but they managed to create this appearance of revolt in Donetsk and Lugansk”, points out the analyst before pointing out that the main thing is the military de-escalation on the border. “Our governments have changed the legislation a lot since 2014 and power has been decentralized to the regions. Lugansk and Donetsk could benefit from that, they would have more autonomy than in 2014″, adds Jara.

During his press conference, the Russian Foreign Minister stated that the Kremlin is willing to discuss bilateral relations with the Ukrainian president, Volodymir Zelensky, but not about that conflict. “If you want to talk about Donbas, go to the Contact Group which, as decided by the Normandy Format (made up of Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France), must deal with all issues between Kiev and Donetsk, and Kiev and Luhansk.”

The United States is not part of that negotiating structure. According to Lavrov, US President Joe Biden promised Putin at their June 14 meeting in Geneva that he would pressure Zelensky to enforce the Minsk agreement and grant Donbas special status. Yesterday, Biden and Zelensky spoke by phone and once again reiterated the commitment that has guided the negotiations over these months between Russia and NATO members: “Nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.”

Discrepancies about an imminent attack

However, Kiev and Washington differ on the imminence of an attack on Ukraine, which the Eastern European country says is not feasible now. During his press conference, Lavrov hinted that something could happen. “Who has evacuated their embassies? Americans, British and Canadians. They know something that the rest do not know. Perhaps we too should take precautions in anticipation of any provocation from them,” he wondered rhetorically.

Lavrov accused the West of fueling a war by delivering weapons to Ukraine, something that Putin’s party has also proposed this week with the separatists, although in this case it would be officially because there are numerous indications that they already received supplies before.

After several years of a certain calm, in recent months accusations against Kiev of preparing provocations to justify a war have increased. In a meeting with the Russian president held on December 27, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu claimed to have information that the West was preparing a chemical attack in Donbas, and in the same meeting Putin assured that the United States “could arm the extremists of the neighboring country and push them against some Russian regions”, where he explicitly alluded to Crimea.

Likewise, these weeks there have been more arrests in Russia of alleged Ukrainian saboteurs, and the press began to report two days ago that the explosion of a bus in Voronezh last summer, so far attributed to reasons that have nothing to do with Ukraine, it could have been provoked by suspected agents from Kiev.

The Russian Foreign Minister announced during the press conference that there will be new negotiations between the Moscow and Washington delegations over the next two weeks. Asked about the possibility of new sanctions, such as the disconnection of Russian banking from the international system, Lavrov warned that this “would be equivalent to breaking relations.” “I don’t think anyone is interested in this,” he added.

Follow all the international information in Facebook Y Twitter, o en our weekly newsletter.