Called for Continuous Efforts to Persuade Russia and Separatist Forces to Cease Fire
Ukraine Deal Imposes Truce Putin Devised
KIEV, Ukraine — After five months of intensifying combat that threatened to rip Ukraine apart and to reignite the Cold War, the Ukrainian government and separatist forces signed a cease-fire agreement on Friday that analysts considered highly tenuous in a country that remains a tinderbox.
Previous attempts to stop the fighting have failed. But the prime difference this time was that the main thrust of the plan was not just endorsed, but laid out, by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, whom Western leaders accuse of stoking unrest to prevent Ukraine from slipping out of Russia's orbit.
Whether a cease-fire persists will probably be determined by negotiations over the political future of the southeastern region, where rebel separatists have been fighting the government since April.
The cease-fire was agreed to after a two-week rebel counteroffensive backed by Russian troops, armor and artillery that threatened to roll back most of the gains the Ukrainian military had made. Russia has not acknowledged the presence of any of its military units on Ukrainian soil, and there was no mention of their removal as part of the agreement.
From the moment the crisis erupted in November — when Ukraine's president at the time, Viktor F. Yanukovych, rejected a trade agreement with the European Union in favor of a deal with Russia — Kiev and the West have accused Moscow of destabilizing the country, first with a stealth invasion and annexation of Crimea and then by inspiring and covertly arming the rebels in southeastern Ukraine.
The conflict ignited the most serious East-West confrontation since the end of the Cold War, with Europe and the United States looking largely impotent as Moscow upset the postwar order by altering borders by force. The West has imposed some economic sanctions, and it is threatening more, but the Kremlin has dismissed their impact and made it clear that it no longer feels itself beholden to Western nations or institutions.
The agreement reached Friday laid out the first tentative steps toward both an immediate cessation of hostilities and the promise of greater political freedom in the future. Artillery exchanges tapered off after it was put in effect at 6 p.m., and quiet prevailed through the initial hours.
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President Obama, speaking at a news conference at the end of a NATO summit meeting in Wales, said he was "hopeful but, based on past experience, also skeptical" about the strength of any cease-fire.
Dmitri S. Peskov, Mr. Putin's spokesman, issued a statement lauding the agreement and expressing hope that it would be observed in full.
The 14-point peace plan includes some references to the cease-fire itself, some practical steps toward returning government control to the southeast Donbass region and some nods toward future political changes, according to a summary published by the Ukrainian national information agency.
The agreement resembles, almost verbatim, a proposal for a truce issued by President Petro O. Poroshenko in June.
It includes amnesty for those who disarm and who did not commit serious crimes, and the exchange of all prisoners. Militias will be disbanded, and a 10-kilometer buffer zone — about six miles — will be established along the Russian-Ukrainian border. The area will be subject to joint patrols. The separatists have agreed to leave the administrative buildings they control and to allow broadcasts from Ukraine to resume on local television.
It was unclear how "disarmament" would be defined, and it emerged as a potential stumbling block. The separatists have demanded that Ukrainian forces withdraw completely from the area, a condition that Kiev considers a nonstarter. The militias will also be unlikely to abandon their weapons.
For the future, the agreement says power will be decentralized and the Russian language protected. An early, failed attempt by more extreme members of the Ukrainian Parliament to ban Russian as an official language was one element that spawned the uprising.
The agreement says the executive in control of each region, the equivalent of a governor, will be appointed after consultations with each region. It also promises early elections and a job-creation program.
The negotiators, meeting in Minsk, Belarus, said they would reconvene on Monday to discuss the mechanics to carry out the agreement.
Mr. Poroshenko lauded the agreement in a statement posted on the presidential website, paying tribute in his announcement to the fact that Mr. Putin called for a cease-fire with a seven-point plan released Wednesday. Both men said before Friday that they expected an agreement.
A spectrum of politicians, civil society activists, diplomats and other analysts welcomed the proposal but expressed serious doubts that it could hold given the wide rift between Kiev and the restive eastern regions.
"I am pleased; it is impossible to solve this conflict by military means," said Georgiy Kasyanov, a civil society activist and historian who supported the antigovernment protests that erupted in central Kiev last November and eventually led to the overthrow of the government and the conflict. "People are tired and suffer from psychological depression; we have all been living in a state of shock since November."
But he, like many, recognized the hurdles ahead. The majority of Ukrainians want peace, he said, but some will be angry about any compromise with the separatist fighters the government has condemned as terrorists for months. In addition, neither side exerts perfect control over the range of fighters in the Donbass region. It will be hard to rein them all in, and any spark could easily reignite the fighting.
The goals of the separatists have never been clear, nor whether they agree even among themselves. "We are planning to continue the course toward secession," said Igor Plotnitskiy, the prime minister of the self-declared Luhansk People's Republic, according to the RIA Novosti news service. "The cease-fire is a necessary measure. There is a lot of work ahead of us."
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The other side laid down a hard line, too. Prime Minister Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk said on Twitter that transforming the cease-fire into a lasting peace would require three things: a long-term cease-fire, the withdrawal of the Russian Army and a wall along the border.
Yuriy Syrotyuk, a member of Parliament from the right-wing Svoboda party, said he expected no results. "This is a truce; it is not peace," Mr. Syrotyuk said in an interview. "There will be no result because Ukraine will not give up Donetsk and Luhansk and Russia will not stop."
In response to an email query, Clifford Kupchan, a director at the Eurasia Group, a Washington consulting firm, and a former State Department official, wrote, "I fear it won't hold." The main stumbling block, he said, is that Russia seeks federalization, including the right for each region to conduct its own foreign policy, whereas Mr. Poroshenko has offered only decentralization and would face a political backlash if he went any further.
Many analysts said the probable outcome would be a frozen conflict, much like those Russia created in Georgia and Moldova to keep them destabilized.
At the negotiations in Minsk, Ukraine was represented by a former president, Leonid Kuchma, and the rebels by Aleksandr Zakharchenko, the prime minister and military commander of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic.
Russia's envoy was its ambassador to Kiev, Mikhail Zurabov, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, acting for Europe, was represented by Heidi Tagliavini.
Ukrainian forces suffered heavy setbacks in the past two weeks, with the separatists breaking out of their isolation in the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk and opening a third front along the strategic southern coast around Mariupol.
The Russian-backed rebels, who seized control of the coastal town of Novoazovsk last week, had advanced about halfway from Novoazovsk to Mariupol in fighting that continued through Friday morning.
Officials interpreted the opening of a new, southern front as an attempt by Moscow to convince Mr. Poroshenko that he had to reach terms at the negotiating table because he could not win on the battlefield.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/06/world/europe/ukraine-cease-fire.html
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