ADVERTISEMENT

Putin and Zelenskiy Didn’t Waste Their First Meeting

Putin and Zelenskiy Didn’t Waste Their First Meeting

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Nobody expected miracles from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s first meeting with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. But as became clear in the wee hours of Tuesday, the two have taken a step away from an unresolved conflict that doesn’t work for either of them and toward an unresolved conflict that could work for both.

The Paris meeting, mediated by French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, was the first since October 2016, when Zelenskiy’s predecessor, Petro Poroshenko, represented Ukraine. The lengthy pause was essentially Poroshenko’s doing. In 2014 and 2015, when Ukraine’s military was caving under the blows of Russian troops imported into the country’s east to help pro-Moscow separatists, he signed a set of accords — known as the Minsk agreements — that would grant broad autonomy to the Russian-speaking region and allow for an election to be held there before Ukraine regained control over its eastern border.

Poroshenko then refused to go through with the plan, arguing (correctly) that it would mean handing de facto control of eastern Ukraine to Russia. Putin, for his part, failed to restrain the separatists as they ignored the agreement’s military conditions — a pullback of troops from the separation line, no use of heavy weaponry, and unhindered monitoring of the situation by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. This meant the conflict has continued to fester. Since 2017, the OSCE has counted 147 civilians killed. Although this is an improvement — more than 3,000 were killed in 2014 and 2015 — it could hardly be called peace. 

That means the situation is untenable for Zelenskiy, who was elected earlier this year on a promise to end the fighting, and for Ukraine in general: Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced internally, and the continuing instability hinders economic progress. For Putin, too, the status quo isn’t ideal: Although he’d like to keep Ukraine off balance and unable to join key Western alliances such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, sanctions imposed over the conflict are a costly nuisance.

At some point, then, Zelenskiy and Putin were bound to start talking. But there remains a limit to what’s politically feasible. For Zelenskiy, giving the east enough autonomy to turn Ukraine into a federation is a red line, and allowing an election before regaining control of the border could result in a nationalist rebellion; Poroshenko and his allies assembled thousands of protesters in Kyiv before Zelenskiy’s trip to warn him that such a concession would be unacceptable. For Putin, even the status quo is preferable to letting Ukraine water down the area’s autonomy and take over the region before an election is held. That would open a clear path toward Ukraine’s NATO membership, which would be impossible for him to accept. 

Both presidents reiterated these positions at a press conference after the talks. Even so, the meeting wasn’t pointless. There’s an imperfect, middle-of-the-road solution that could be acceptable for all sides, and it drew closer this week. 

In a short statement the four leaders signed, Russia and Ukraine committed to a complete prisoner exchange by the end of the year, the pullback of troops in three “pilot areas” and a total ceasefire. Such pledges have been made and broken before, but both Russia and Ukraine have better incentives to keep their ends of the bargain now.

Faced with domestic resistance to resolving the conflict as agreed in Minsk — that is, on Putin’s terms — Zelenskiy still needs to be able to say that he stopped the war. The prisoner exchange and the disengagement go a long way toward that goal. His strong motivation to prevent fighting makes life easier for the separatists and allows Putin to prod the European Union to ease up on sanctions. He can only do that by ensuring the military provisions of the Minsk deal are followed to the letter and then claiming the political conditions — the election and autonomy — are being impeded by Zelenskiy’s domestic concerns.

Both leaders agreed to work on the political terms before their next meeting. They’re unlikely to get anywhere on this, but if by March they make enough progress on military disengagement, it’ll be up to Macron and Merkel to decide if sanctions should be eased.

If they go for it, Europe will get another deep-frozen conflict like the one in Moldova, where a pro-Russian enclave, Transnistria, is tolerated and largely integrated into the broader economy. There’s no fighting and no deaths, and life in Transnistria is no humanitarian disaster. Such a situation would let Zelenskiy claim success without getting overthrown, allow Putin to keep Ukraine out of NATO and give Macron an opening to pursue his ambitious plans for reforming Europe’s security architecture. 

If sanctions remain, Putin will make sure the ceasefire lapses again. That’s his leverage to keep Zelenskiy on the hook and France and Germany engaged.

The only interested party for which such a scenario would be unacceptable is the U.S. It wants to keep Russia engaged on as many fronts as possible: That way, it’s less of a threat to NATO and to American interests in the Middle East and Africa. But the U.S. has become distracted from real-world Ukrainian affairs by the imaginary Ukraine of the impeachment proceedings. It’s not a party to the process that led to this week’s meeting and will continue after it. 

Perhaps it’s better that way. As long as people stop getting killed, geopolitics can take a backseat — and, this time, a ceasefire actually has a chance to hold, at least for a while.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Timothy Lavin at tlavin1@bloomberg.net

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Leonid Bershidsky is Bloomberg Opinion's Europe columnist. He was the founding editor of the Russian business daily Vedomosti and founded the opinion website Slon.ru.

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.