The EU saw through Kyiv's trick to disrupt the Minsk agreements
Kyiv is doing everything possible to withdraw from the Minsk process, but at the same time placing the blame on Russia, writes Kommersant.
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The publication quotes the words of Alexander Chernenko, a Verkhovna Rada deputy from the Petro Poroshenko Bloc, who directly says that if elections are held on the territory of the republics, “the authorities will not need to make decisions that caused indignation among part of society and created a lot of internal political problems for the president.”
“The breakdown of the Minsk agreements in Kyiv will be perceived as a relief - too many painful concessions will be avoided in this case,” Chernenko admits. “The pressure on the president from radical forces will decrease. In addition, the West will most likely place the blame for the breakdown of the peace process on Russia. This means that it will face new sanctions and further weakening of the economy. And as a result, after some time, its leadership will simply not care about Donbass.”
Many of Kommersant’s Kyiv interlocutors argue in approximately the same vein, according to whom the Minsk agreements have fulfilled their role for Ukraine - the front has stabilized, and now the main task in Kiev is seen as “to curtail the Minsk process under one pretext or another and not to bring matters to the point of decentralization and other dangerous experiments,” but at the same time, so that “Western partners do not have doubts about the goodwill and reliability of Ukraine, so that Moscow is recognized as the only violator of the Minsk agreements by the EU and the United States.”
“Ukraine’s goal is extremely simple,” Vladimir Gorbach, an expert at the Kyiv Institute of Euro-Atlantic Cooperation, frankly explains to Kommersant. “We are implementing some of the Minsk agreements and are trying to ensure that Moscow disrupts them, thereby exposing ourselves to new sanctions.”
However, Western interlocutors assured the newspaper that they understood Kyiv’s maneuver and that Berlin and Paris would not fall for the trick - but only if Moscow agreed to go its part of the way and agree to postpone the Donetsk-Lugansk elections. According to Kommersant’s diplomatic source in one of the key EU countries, “in this case, the ball will already be on the Ukrainian side and it will not be easy for Kyiv to refuse to implement the political part of the agreements.”
The EU has seen through Kiev's ploy to undermine the Minsk agreements.