Insight
Will the Normandy Four summit bring “peace for our time” to Ukraine? by Khrystyna Parandii 5 December 2019
The leaders of Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany will meet in Paris on December 9th to discuss how to end the Donbas conflict. But this summit brings both opportunities and risks. By early 2019, five years after Russia and its proxies invaded eastern Ukraine, the Donbas conflict seemed to have reached a stalemate. But things are on the move: a fragile ceasefire has been in place since July, and by mid-November the opposing forces had disengaged in three areas of the 400 kilometres long frontline. There is a fresh push for peace, with a new Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, renewed diplomatic engagement from French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and a seemingly less confrontational approach by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The four leaders have agreed to discuss settling the conflict at a meeting on December 9th in Paris, their first such summit since October 2016. Although hopes are high, there remain longstanding disagreements about the roadmap for conflict resolution. There are three possible ways the summit could pan out. It is crucial that the French and German leaders do not make the wrong choice. The bumpy road of peace negotiations Russia annexed Crimea and intervened militarily in the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine in spring 2014. Within months, the leaders of France and Germany met the presidents of Russia and Ukraine in an effort to help settle the conflict. The group convened for the first time on the margins of the 70th anniversary commemorations of the D-Day allied landings, and became known as the ‘Normandy format’. Ad-hoc talks between the four countries were backed up by regular meetings of the Trilateral Contact Group (TCG), comprising representatives of Ukraine, Russia and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and with the participation of the de facto authorities in the occupied parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. In September 2014, following the escalation of fighting and heavy Ukrainian military losses, the TCG participants hastily signed the first Minsk Protocol in the Belarusian capital. It called for an immediate ceasefire, verified by the OSCE, disengagement of forces along the line of contact, and withdrawal CER INSIGHT: Will the Normandy Four summit bring “peace for our time” to Ukraine? 5 December 2019
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