Reintegrating Donbas is starting to look like a Russian trap.
FROM her roadside stall in eastern Ukraine, Svetlana Tsymbal watches the cars creep past the Mayorsk checkpoint. This used to be a peaceful provincial highway. Now it is a border crossing at the front line of a conflict that has left some 10,000 people dead. Parents return home “to the other side” after visiting children. Pensioners cross to receive payments on Ukrainian-held territory. Traders lug supplies and sometimes contraband back and forth. The road is lined with mines.
It has been nearly three years since Russian-backed separatists seized chunks of eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions. The Minsk agreements, signed in February 2015, envision Russia returning control over the border and withdrawing its troops, and Ukraine holding local elections and granting the occupied territories “special status”. A stretch of relative quiet in 2016 raised hopes of progress. But in late January, combat erupted around the industrial hub of Avdiivka. The fighting has slowed, but the outbreak showed how intractable the conflict has become. “How can we go back to the way things were?” asks Ms Tsymbal. “Blood has been spilled.”
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WNU Editor: When Ukraine President Poroshenko ran for President .... he ran on a platform to compromise and make peace with Ukraine's Russian populations in the east. Unfortunately .... when he was in power .... a different policy was implemented and we are where we are today. And while this war is now entering the third year .... there are many in Kiev who still want to end this war using the military .... regardless of the cost. As to what is my take .... the only hope for a unified Ukraine is to adopt a federal system (like Canada or Switzerland) .... and to respect Ukraine's Russian speaking citizens rights when it comes to their language, education, and culture. Compromise is necessary .... and it has to come from the Ukraine government first. But while this is my hope .... I also know that in the current environment it is not going to happen. The country is bitterly divided along language/culture/and sectarian lines .... and there are too many Ukrainian nationalists with too much power and say in the Kiev government who are going to make sure that such a peace does not take place. My prediction .... Ukraine' moderate leaders have given up on the idea of a unified Ukraine .... but the nationalists who have the power have not. As a result this war is going to grind on for the next few years until new leadership takes hold .... and that will not happen until the next Ukrainian Presidential election in 2019.
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