Scotland and Ukraine

While the OSCE has not yet posted an English version of Friday’s agreement involving Russia and Ukraine, there is one available on www.slavyangrad.org that reads well (I can’t judge whether it is accurate).

The text isn’t as bad as Ukraine’s parlous military situation suggests it might have been.

A good deal of it is unobjectionable:  the ceasefire, OSCE monitoring and verification not only of the ceasefire but also of the border on a “permanent” basis, removal of unlawful military forces, release of detainees, national dialogue, humanitarian relief, and economic recovery. Details are lacking, but these are all things that the international community, the Ukrainians and the Russians know how to do if there is political will to do them.

The tougher things are point 3

Implement decentralization of power, including by means of enacting the Law of Ukraine “With respect to the temporary status of local self-government in certain areas of the Donetsk and the Lugansk regions” (Law on Special Status)

and point 6

Enact a law prohibiting the prosecution and punishment of persons in connection with the events that took place in certain areas of the Donetsk and the Lugansk regions of Ukraine.

There is also (point 9) provision for early local elections in Donbas.

Moscow is headlining the decentralization associated with the Law on Special Status, which is to be passed in the future. The Russians will seek maximum powers of self-governance for Luhansk and Donetsk. It will also seek some means by which its proxies there can block European Union and NATO membership for Ukraine as a whole. But the fact that the self-governance will be established by a law passed in the Ukrainian parliament gives Kiev an upper hand, especially on the question of any veto powers over Ukraine’s affiliation with Euro-Atlantic institutions.

The question of amnesty (point 6) is also fraught. It is difficult to picture an amnesty that would cover the downing of Malaysia Air 17, or some of the other atrocities perpetrated in the Donbas region in recent months. But that appears to be what has been promised. We’ll just have to wait and see what that provision means. Amnesty, like the new special law on status, will need to pass in the Ukrainian parliament.

Nothing in the current agreement appears to offer or promise to the rebels in Donbas or to Moscow anything like a veto over EU or NATO membership. No doubt the Russians would like an arrangement like the one in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the Serb entity has a veto over just about anything it wants to block. I find it hard to believe that something like that isn’t lurking, likely in the national dialogue. But its outcome is far from certain, and implementation of its results could be long in the making.

Much as Ukraine may have suffered in recent days on the battlefield, Corey Flintoff’s interesting report this morning on Russia’s handling of its combat deaths suggests that President Poroshenko isn’t the only one anxious to stop the fighting. Russians are starting to feel the pain. Vladimir Putin no doubt also hopes to forestall European expansion of sanctions, which has been imminent for a week. Russia is no democracy these days, and Putin is riding high, but maybe his nervousness about whether he can make it last is showing.

That said, it is one more sad fact of our current events that Scotland votes September 18 on independence from the United Kingdom. If that goes in the “yes” direction polls are now pointing, we can expect the repercussions to be felt not only in Ukraine but also in the Balkans, the Caucasus and elsewhere. Scotland has nothing to do with those other places, but demonstration effects can be powerful.