Four weeks have passed since the beginning of the truce in eastern Ukraine. Triage’s updates’ purpose is to provide a report on the implementation status of the first three point of Minsk II agreement:
1.Immediate and full ceasefire and its strict fulfilment as of 00.00 (Kiev time) on February 15.
2.Pull-out of all heavy weapons by both sides to equal distance to create a security zone on minimum 50 kilometres apart for artillery of 100mm calibre or more, of 70km for MLRS and 140 kilometres for MLRS Tornado-S, Uragan, Smerch and tactical missile systems Tochka U.
3.Monitoring and verification of ceasefire regime and pull-out of heavy weapons by OSCE.
Minsk agreements were signed on February 11. This is the first of a series of weekly updates aimed to describe the implementation status of the first three crucial point of the agreement:
1. Immediate and full bilateral ceasefire (to take effect from 00:00 local time on February 15),
2. Withdrawal of all heavy weapons by both sides,
3. Effective monitoring and verification regime for the ceasefire and withdrawal of heavy weapons.
The killing of Boris Nemtsov, occurred on February 27 in Moscow, brought a thorny issue back to the public attention, namely the Russian military involvement in Ukrainian crisis. Accusations and denials have been continuously following one another since the beginning of the fighting.
Minsk agreement has not been respected. Almost two weeks have passed since the meeting in Belarus capital on February 11 and the situation in Ukraine is basically unchanged. Both sides have not held to the first three relevant points of the agreement: the ceasefire has been violated, heavy weapons are still on the frontline, and OSCE monitoring mission has found some serious obstacles. OSCE’s Special Monitoring Mission (SMM)[1] that fighting has continued in and around Donetsk airport and in several other locations in the Donetsk region.
Among all of the eleven key points composing the new Minsk agreement, there are three of them that should be considered as crucial:
Seven days has passed since the meeting in Belarus capital and there has not been much of a change on the field.
Eyes will be on Minsk on February 11 as Russian, French, German and Ukrainian leaders are about to discuss a peace plan to solve Ukrainian crisis since the previous agreement signed in September 2014 has not been successful: the crisis has been growing in intensity instead of slowly fading away.
France and Germany called this meeting as they fear that a point of no return might be close to being overpassed. However, there is not so much room for optimism: as UK Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said, it would be wrong to call it Minsk Plus since there is no official deal yet. In Belarus capital, discussions are expected to be focused on some basic measures aimed to slow the crisis down and which would lead to a new and permanent peace agreement.
January 26, 2015. Nine months and eleven days have passed since Ukraine’s acting President Olexander Turchynov announced the beginning of an anti-terrorist operation on April 15 (2014) aimed “to protect Ukrainian citizens, to stop the terror, to stop the crime, to stop the attempts to tear our country [Ukraine] apart”[1]. Whoever thought it could have been a fast and easy campaign, has been proved wrong.
April-June 2014. Ukrainian forces initially focused on Donetsk. Then, on April 22, a military operation was launched to take back separatist-controlled territory in the East. The heaviest fighting involved the cities of Sloviansk and Lugansk and Donetsk.
July 2014. Ukrainian military forces succeeded in retaking control over Sloviansk while separatists were reported fleeing the city. (July 5). Until the end of July, the army and pro-Russia rebels kept engaging each other mainly near Donetsk and Lugansk. According to the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine (NSDC), separatists were slowly losing their positions near Donetsk as well as in mid-southern areas of Lugansk Oblast.
August 2014. By the end of August, on the one hand, Ukrainian army progressively retook control over relevant portions of southern previously separatist-controlled territory (near Donetsk) but, on the other hand, Ukraine progressively lost control over part of its border with Russia. At the same time, separatist forces succeeded in obtaining a bridgehead in southern Ukraine and took control over Novoazovsk.
New developments in Ukraine-Russia dispute over gas supplies: Russian gas company Gazprom is about to restart gas flow to Ukraine and Europe thanks to a three-sided agreement signed by Ukraine, Russia and the European Union on October 31.
Despite the ceasefire in place between the Kremlin and Ukraine, the United States and the EU to impose heavy penalties Putin. This time they were impressed with the interests of all of the closest collaborators of the Russian Prime Minister that in addition to being the oligarchs who run almost all the resources of the country have also held political weight. The Russian economy is in fact based on a methodology in which post-capitalist politicians are also entrepreneurs and managers by superimposing their own interests to those of the party running in this way strategic decisions with greater speed without any opposition both inside and outside in essence a sort of economic monarchy.
