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09-02-2015

UKRAINE: NEW PEACE TALKS IN MINSK

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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.

Unfortunately, there are some very hot topics. Among all of them, the potential United States plan to deliver heavy weapons to Kiev. Clearly, should that happen, Minsk talks would be a fiasco.

In the meantime, Europe is hitting the brakes: Paris and Berlin clearly stated that weapons delivery can’t be considered as a valuable option. From Munich Security Conference, Angela Merkel  said that it is not imaginable a situation in which a better equipped Ukrainian army would make Putin so impressed that he thinks he is losing militarily. From Moscow’s point of view, US plan would only cause further troubles: according to Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov it would be a plan fraught with unpredictable consequences.

It is unclear how far Russia is willing to go. It seems, though, that Russian arm wrestling over Ukraine is the umpteenth effort of a wounded super power to prove itself strong: is the internal economic crisis pushing the Kremlin for a political victory? 

(image source stratfor.com)

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Alessandro Mazzilli

Degree in International Relations at the Faculty of Political Science of the University of Turin.

Expert in Foreign Policy of Defence and Security and the relationships Euro - Atlantic.

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