Insight
How the West can contain – and end – the conflict in Ukraine by Luigi Scazzieri 15 September 2017
New US sanctions on Russia prevent a backroom Trump-Putin deal on Ukraine, but they also threaten Western unity. They should prompt the EU to re-invigorate the Minsk agreement. When a reluctant US President Donald Trump signed new US sanctions into law on August 2nd, it signalled two things. First, any rapprochement between the US and Russia is impossible in the near term. There will not be a Trump-Putin backroom deal on Ukraine over the heads of Ukraine and the EU. The subsequent forced reduction in US diplomatic staff numbers in Russia, and the closure of Russian diplomatic and trade offices in the US, underline both the deterioration in relations and the disappointment of Russian hopes in Trump. Second, however, the new sanctions risk opening up a serious transatlantic split. Their economic effect on Russia is likely to be small, but they have the potential to affect the viability of joint Russian-European energy projects, such as the Nord Stream II pipeline, and have a chilling effect on previously unsanctioned EU business with Russia. And, as the new sanctions do not specify what steps Russia has to take to get them lifted, they undermine the common transatlantic position on Ukraine, which has linked the lifting of sanctions to a peace deal in the Donbas. The sanctions may therefore undermine the Minsk II agreement of February 2015, the only existing framework that addresses the conflict, at a time when the situation on the ground is worsening. Over the summer there was intense fighting, and in mid-July the leader of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) declared the founding of “Malorossiya’’, a new entity including the whole of Ukraine (except Crimea). On a visit to Kyiv in August, US Defence Secretary James Mattis strongly hinted that the US might supply Ukraine with lethal weapons. And at a press conference on September 5th, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that if this happened, conflict might spread to other parts of Ukraine. The West as a whole has much to lose from a further increase in tensions with Russia. With channels of communication closed or not used by Russia, there is already a significant risk of incidents from miscalculation or miscommunication, both in Syria and in Europe. Moscow plays a key role in preventing CER INSIGHT: How the West can contain – and end – the conflict in Ukraine 15 September 2017
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