Talks in Geneva between Ukraine, Russia, the US, and the EU produced an agreement last night:
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry outlined the terms of the deal during a press conference in Geneva, Switzerland. All parties agreed that all sides refrain from violence. All illegal groups must be disarmed. All illegally seized buildings in eastern Ukraine must be returned to their legitimate owners. All illegally occupied streets and squares must be vacated.
The deal also calls for amnesty to all protesters who have left their public places and surrendered their weapons, providing they are not accused of crimes. “None of us leave here with a sense that the job is done because these words are on the paper,” Kerry said. “If we’re not able to see immediate progress, we’ll have no other choice than impose further costs on Russia.”
Brij Khindaria analyzes the deal:
Kerry obtained a Russian commitment to a quick de-escalation in coming days without quite knowing how to prevent new outbursts or to sustain the peace. Lavrov got a foot in the door of a constitutional revision that might turn Ukraine into a federation in which Kiev, the capital, does not have administrative control over the east and south. If things go Lavrov’s way, Putin will have got Crimea plus loyal autonomous Russian-speaking cohorts in Ukraine without having to occupy new territory.
President Barack Obama would be left with a fait accompli in Putin’s favor because the Kiev government is in no position to disarm or control the pro-Russian elements in the east and south. In any case, Putin will continue to help them covertly since he already has the Russian parliament’s support for such actions. Perhaps, today was a good day for Ukraine’s independence and domestic peace but much depends on whether the interim government in Kiev fully understands the power equation within the country and makes it compromises with Moscow.
Keating hopes this means the crisis is abating:
Hopefully the deal leads to the de-escalation of a situation that appeared to be on the verge of spiraling into mass violence, but there are a lot of unresolved questions, including how the regional governments of eastern Ukraine will interact with Kiev going forward, particularly on the issue of EU integration, which sparked this crisis in the first place. I’ll also be curious to see what a referendum on the future status of eastern Ukraine will actually look like.
The agreement also doesn’t address the 40,000 Russian troops massed on the Ukrainian border, meaning that Kiev could essentially be negotiating with a gun to its head in the weeks to come. The U.S. sanctions on Russian officials will presumably remain in place and could complicate other areas of cooperation for Washington and Moscow. Then, of course, there’s Crimea, which Ukraine is almost certainly not going to recognize as Russian territory and which Russia will almost certainly not give up.
Julia Ioffe points out that there’s no feasible mechanism for implementing the deal:
[W]ho’s going to enforce this disarmament? As we’ve seen in the last few days, the provisional Ukrainian government has been utterly unable to dislodge anybody from just about anywhere. Now they may have the added confidence of this agreement, but not much ability to follow through.
Moreover, points out, Masha Lipman, a political analyst and editor with the Moscow Carnegie Center, “who speaks on behalf of these men in the east? Who can tell them to disarm?” Same with the broad national discourse and inclusive constitutional reform: with whom would Kiev be speaking?
The Bloomberg editors also express pessimism:
There’s another problem, and no other way to put it: Putin lies. He lied about the role of Russian troops and infiltrators in Crimea (which he now acknowledges) and he’s lying about their role in eastern Ukraine. Putin’s shamelessness in this regard makes Ronald Reagan’s borrowed Russian injunction of “trust but verify” seem downright quaint.
Putin is likely to betray these latest commitments unless he’s convinced that doing so will have consequences. That’s why stiffer sanctions before today’s negotiations would have helped. Today’s agreement works the other way: by raising false hopes it will encourage Europeans opposed to new sanctions to resist all the harder. It’s exactly what Putin wanted.
The Dish 