Everyone Loses: The Ukraine Crisis and the Ruinous Contest for Post-Soviet Eurasia

The problem for Kyiv is that this frozen-conflict scenario is a non-starter for Moscow. As an authoritative Russian political insider put it, ‘To get Donbas and lose Ukraine represents a defeat for the Kremlin. In that case, it would be better not to have started [supporting the insurgency] in the first place.’[63] Following this logic, Russia has kept up its support for the armed rebels in the Donbas – and for the region’s civilians – while increasing its command and control. This led, as of late 2016, to a conflict more aptly described as simmering than frozen, defined by continuous low-level fighting punctuated by periodic upticks in violence. The ensuing security challenge overloaded the Ukrainian government’s political bandwidth and absorbed a disproportionate share of an already hard-pressed budget. As a result, the Ukrainian economy remained in disarray, and few investors had the fortitude to return. But Moscow calibrated the fighting so as not to spark an all-out war or a more forceful Western response.

By supporting the Donbas insurgency, Russia has effectively been able to keep Ukraine off-kilter. But it is no closer to getting the political settlement it wants. Despite several follow-up Russia–France–Germany–Ukraine summits and numerous ministerial meetings, the most concrete result since the signing of Minsk II was an agreement in December 2015 to extend the deadline for implementation of the deal into 2016. The package of constitutional reforms that would partially fulfil the central political requirement has not made it through the Ukrainian parliament and there is no agreement on procedures for conducting local elections in the conflict zone. Moreover, the amnesty provision has not been passed, and Kyiv has enforced an economic blockade of separatist territory, as well as severe restrictions on freedom of movement across the line of contact. An embattled Poroshenko is loath to expend political capital on unpopular steps that would end up empowering the Donbas, the traditional stronghold of his political opponents.

The domestic stalemate in Ukraine resonates with an international stalemate. The war and Kyiv’s dysfunction have nullified any immediate risk to Russia of losing Ukraine to the West, the worst-case scenario that had driven its behaviour. Yet neither Russia nor the West has made a good-faith effort to find common ground on the geopolitical and geo-economic conflict over Ukraine’s trajectory. US and European officials continue to declare their support for Ukraine’s ‘European future’, while the NATO and EU bureaucracies busily deepen integration with Kyiv. While there is no momentum for formal membership offers in the short term from either organisation, the possibility of such an offer in the future is explicitly still in play, even if that future is a distant one. Moscow, of course, seeks to rule out such a possibility and roll back the integration that has already occurred. Therefore, even if Minsk II can somehow be implemented, the core contestation between Russia and the West over Ukraine will be no closer to resolution.

Neither side has sought an inclusive, negotiated settlement. The negotiations that did take place concerned the minutiae of the several Minsk agreements. But disputes over details such as the rules governing local elections in the Donbas are really proxies for the broader conflict that remains unaddressed. At an October 2014 meeting of EU leaders, Poroshenko and Putin in Milan (after Minsk I but before Minsk II), Merkel pushed the Russian president to commit to hold local elections under Ukrainian law, silence the rebel guns and hand back control over the border. Putin balked, claiming that both sides were failing to make good on their commitments. Poroshenko objected, and the EU leaders took his side. Predictably, the meeting ended in failure, with the EU and Russia blaming each other.[64] Barring a high-level effort to address the first-order issues, such meetings cannot produce breakthroughs. Even full implementation of Minsk II would in effect allow the conflict to continue without the use of military force.

Indeed, in parallel to the war in the east, the geo-economic contest between the EU and Russia over Ukraine continued in meeting chambers in various capital cities. On 26 August 2014, just before the first direct Russian intervention in the Donbas, EU leaders gathered with the presidents of Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus for talks in Minsk. The formal agenda of the meeting was to address the conflict over Ukraine’s DCFTA with the EU. Putin kept many of his public remarks focused on this very point, alleging grave consequences from the DCFTA for Russia–Ukraine trade ties. He said: