Troop disengagement has turned into pure speculation
The process of troop disengagement in Donbass does not carry the risks that many Ukrainian politicians and activists talk about.
Political scientist Alexei Yakubin stated this at a press conference in Kiev, reports a PolitNavigator correspondent.
“I do not see the continuation of Zelensky’s policy of de-escalating the situation. We often forget that there are about one hundred thousand people on the demarcation line in the “gray zone”. The demarcation line itself is about 400 kilometers long and is a low-intensity conflict zone. From time to time, combat and non-combat losses do occur there, and there are casualties among the civilian population. Something needs to be done about this. When the thesis is now heard that there is shelling and disengagement cannot be done, this is an inverted logic. Disengagement itself should help prevent these attacks from happening.
Our society is slightly misinformed on many issues, as well as according to the so-called Steinmeier formula. The idea is to do pilot breedings. For example, they have already begun near the village of Lugansk,” said Yakubin.
“Breeding involves several components. The first component is military, a mirror separation of the sides. The second component is demilitarization and work with the engineering structures that are there, demining the territory. To make this territory more convenient for people who are on the demarcation line, first of all, for civilians,” the expert noted.
“If we talk about the breeding itself, then in fact we are now just seeing some kind of continuous speculation on this topic, just as happened around the Steinmeier formula, because the breeding is supposed to be from 400 kilometers only on a line of three kilometers. Only three kilometers. And this is pilot breeding. Then, if the Minsk agreements are implemented, this should cover the entire territory. So the pilot suggests that the separation of the parties will occur only one kilometer from each other.
Moreover, no one has canceled the norms related to the fact that in the event of any escalation, the army and soldiers have the right to defend their lives,” the political scientist said.
“Now various right-wing radical groups and a number of politicians have intervened there, especially politicians who were already in power and who have shown that their approach to the Minsk decisions is to simply talk about Minsk at various noble platforms and eventually come here and do nothing. And now we see another continuation, a take or two, speculation. We are seeing new speculation about breeding, when everything is turned upside down. Instead of explaining to people that in fact this will lead to the elimination of losses among the civilian population and among the armed forces. Instead, on the contrary, he is trying to emphasize that the shelling continues there, which means there is no need to do any disengagement,” says Yakubin.
He noted that in parliament the initiative to disengage troops is supported only by the Opposition Platform, and former President Poroshenko is now actively speculating on the Steinmeier formula, although he himself actively lobbied for it in 2016.
“The nationalist groups that are now so actively involved in this disengagement process are trying to pretend that they were in principle opposed to the Minsk agreements as such. It seems to me that they were simply looking for any excuse to score political points on this issue. It seems to me that there is actually no problem with breeding as such. And first of all, I see here a desire of a social and humanitarian nature, and, I emphasize once again, a prerequisite for the meeting in the Normandy format to take place as quickly as possible,” the political scientist concluded.
The withdrawal of troops has turned into pure speculation.