Written by Nikolaus von Twickel<\/p>\n
Summary<\/strong><\/p>\n The separatists hailed a new agreement reached in Minsk which they said opens the path to direct negotiations with Ukraine for the first time \u2013 while Kyiv downplayed it. At the same time, the coronavirus crisis reached Donbass when Ukraine announced the closure of the crossing points into the non-government-controlled areas. The number of Russian passport holders in the \u201cPeople\u2019s Republics\u201d continued to rise and the \u201cDNR\u201d abolished Ukrainian as a state language.<\/p>\n Pushilin says \u201cdirect dialogue\u201d agreed in Minsk talks with Kozak and Yermak<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cDNR\u201d leader Denis Pushilin said on 12 March that the Trilateral Contact Group would introduce a new platform enabling direct talks between the separatists and Ukraine. \u201cSuch a format would enable a fast and effective solution of the conflict,\u201d Pushilin said in a statement<\/a>. He suggested that this was achieved thanks to the presence of representatives of both Ukraine\u2019s and Russia\u2019s leaders.<\/p>\n The Minsk talks on 11 March were attended by Dmitry Kozak, the Kremlin\u2019s only point man for Donbass since the resignation of Vladislav Surkov last month, and by Andriy Yermak, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy\u2019s new Chief of Staff. The official statement<\/a> of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) says that a decision has been taken to establish \u201can Advisory Board\u201d at the Contact Group\u2019s Political Working Group. It added that the Board\u2019s task will be to \u201cdevelop recommendations on political issues\u201d.<\/p>\n That decision caused fury among those in Ukraine\u2019s politics who reject any legitimization of the \u201cPeople\u2019s Republics\u201d \u2013 especially after Ukrainian media revealed<\/a> that Kozak and Yermak signed the talks\u2019 protocol with the word \u201capproved\u201d (soglasen<\/em> in Russian). More than 50 MPs from Zelenskiy\u2019s Servant of the People party signed a petition<\/a> against it.<\/p>\n The Minsk talks, which have been ongoing since 2014, officially include only Ukraine, Russia and the OSCE (making them \u201ctrilateral\u201d), while separatist representatives are present but do not have official status. In order avoid direct governmental contact with the separatists, Ukraine is represented by former President Leonid Kuchma \u2013 who also signed the Minsk agreement. Yermak\u2019s signature under the 11 March protocol was seen as a breach<\/a> because it is the first time that a government official signs a document that also bears separatist representatives\u2019 signatures.<\/p>\n Direct dialogue between Kyiv and the separatists has been a long-standing Russian demand that Ukraine has consistently rejected by arguing that the separatists are merely Moscow\u2019s puppets. The Minsk \u201cPackage of Measures<\/a>\u201d (often called Minsk II) does not explicitly call for this but stipulates that Ukraine must conduct \u201ca dialogue\u201d about local elections and the non-government-controlled areas\u2019 political status – leaving open with whom the dialogue should be.<\/p>\n Yermak tried to downplay the Advisory Board by saying on March 13<\/a> that it would not possess any decision-making powers and that the final decision for its creation would be made at the next Contact Group meeting on 25 March. Speaking later on Ukrainian television<\/a>, he stressed that the Minsk format remains unchanged \u2013 \u201cRussia and Ukraine, with the OSCE in between\u201d.<\/p>\n Curiously, \u201cLNR\u201d leader Leonid Pasechnik did not mention the apparent success \u2013 neither on his website<\/a> nor on Twitter<\/a>. \u201cLNR\u201d foreign \u201cminister\u201d and chief negotiator Vladislav Deinego also made no comments except for a brief statement<\/a> with his \u201cDNR\u201d colleague Natalia Nikonorova in Minsk. The official LITs website mentioned the agreement only once – in an interview<\/a> with a youth activist on 12 March.<\/p>\n Aseyev denounces outreach<\/strong><\/p>\n The issue of how Ukraine should deal with the \u201cPeople\u2019s Republics\u201d also came to the fore when Serhiy Sivokho, a Zelenskiy ally and an advisor to the Security Council, presented a \u201cNational Reconciliation Platform\u201d in Kyiv. The 12 March presentation was disrupted<\/a> by radical nationalists who accused Sivokho of treason and pushed him to the floor.<\/p>\n Stanislav Aseyev, the Donetsk journalist who was released in December after spending more than two years in \u201cDNR\u201d prisons, argued that it was impossible to talk about dialogue while the separatists are torturing prisoners: \u201cIt is absurd to reach out to the Germans while Auschwitz is functioning\u201d, he wrote on Facebook<\/a>. Aseyev, whose name is spelt Asyeyev in Ukrainian, has said<\/a> that he was tortured with electrical shocks and that this remains a common practice inside the \u201cDNR\u201d.<\/p>\n Sivokho\u2019s platform includes a new Russian-language-TV channel that is supposed to broadcast in Donbass and Crimea. The plan evoked a massive reaction from the Donetsk Information \u201cMinistry\u201d, which within three days in February published at least four interviews<\/a> with separatist TV figures denouncing the Ukrainian channel.<\/p>\n Contact Group agrees prisoner swap, new crossing points<\/strong><\/p>\n The Minsk negotiators also made progress toward another prisoner swap by agreeing to present final name lists by 25 March and propose three new locations for military disengagement along the Contact Line, according to photos of the 11 March protocol published by Ukrainian media<\/a>. They also agreed to present modalities for the opening of new crossing points in Zolote and Shchastia in the Luhansk region. Opening two new crossing points would greatly improve the situation in the region, where civilians can so far cross only via a footbridge in Stanytsia Luhanska.<\/p>\n However, Ukraine announced on 15 March<\/a> that it would close all existing crossing points due to the coronavirus scare \u2013 the one in Stanytsia for two weeks and the four in the Donetsk region until 13 April. And a meeting of political advisors in the \u201cNormandy 4\u201d format, due to take place on 12 March, was cancelled and will be held as a telephone conference, according to Yermak<\/a>.<\/p>\n Coronavirus looms large<\/strong><\/p>\n While the separatists did not confirm any infections with the new virus, both sides used the crisis to spread disinformation about each other. The Donetsk separatists claimed on 11 March<\/a> that tuberculosis and pneumonia were rampant among Ukrainian servicemen stationed along the Contact Line. And Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said on 13 March that there were 12 cases of infections in Horlivka, the second-biggest city inside the \u201cDNR\u201d \u2013 the Donetsk Health \u201cMinistry\u201d denied<\/a>.<\/p>\n The \u201cDNR\u201d had said on 10 March<\/a> that a local woman was hospitalized for observation after returning from China. Three days later, the Health \u201cMinistry\u201d said<\/a> that tests had found that she was not infected. The young woman, who studies in the north Chinese city of Harbin and identified herself only as Yelena, said on Instagram<\/a> that she wanted to see her parents in Yenakiieve but had been forced into a quarantine in the hospital of Horlivka, where a soldier with a gun was guarding her room.<\/p>\n Ukrainian Security Council Secretary Andriy Danilov made similar allegations<\/a> on 13 March by citing Ukrainian intelligence findings and suggesting that the virus had been brought by a student from China.<\/p>\n Both \u201cDNR\u201d and \u201cLNR\u201d on 14 March<\/a> introduced mandatory self-quarantine and other restrictions for people arriving from countries with reported infections \u2013 including Ukraine but notably not Russia. The \u201cDNR\u201d apparently<\/a> has no facilities to test coronavirus infections and has to send samples to laboratories in Russia. However, Health \u201cMinister\u201d Olga Dolgoshapka said on 16 March that testing equipment had been received \u2013 without saying from where.<\/p>\n Dolgoshapka also said that 43 people had died of swine flu this year in the \u201cRepublic\u201d. \u201cOther than coronavirus, we have a big problem with (the virus) H1N1\u201d, she said<\/a>.<\/p>\n Number of Russian passports nears 200,000<\/strong><\/p>\n Meanwhile, russification policies continued in both Donetsk and Luhansk. \u201cLNR\u201d Interior Minister Igor Kornet said on 5 March<\/a> that 85,313 Russian passports have been handed to local inhabitants since June and that another 15,000 applications were pending. The \u201cDNR\u201d said last month<\/a> that almost 75,000 of its inhabitants received Russian citizenship, and that 16,000 applications were pending. The phenomenon that the bigger \u201cDNR\u201d has lower numbers might be explained by the fact that more people in the smaller \u201cLNR\u201d own \u201crepublican\u201d passports \u2013 a requirement for Russian passports \u2013 because Luhansk began issuing them one year earlier (in 2015) than Donetsk (2016).<\/p>\n The \u201cDNR\u201d parliament on 6 March voted<\/a> to remove Ukrainian as a state language from the constitution, where it had been one of two official languages, the other being Russian. The decision followed a proposal by separatist leader Pushilin in December, who argued that this would help integration with Russia (see Newsletter 68<\/a>). The move is first and foremost symbolical because Ukrainian was basically never used by the separatists. However, it paved the way for amendments in the \u201cDNR\u201d education law adopted on the same day<\/a>, which basically removes Ukrainian as a language of instruction from all schools and universities \u2013 leaving only Russian.<\/p>\n No such reforms were introduced in the \u201cLNR\u201d, whose constitution explicitly says that Russian is the sole language of official communication.<\/p>\n Language policy has caused tensions between Moscow and Kyiv since the 1990s because Ukraine has always refused to give official status to Russian. In 2012, Kyiv allowed Russian to be used officially on regional levels, but that has since been reversed in a number of regions.<\/p>\n In another nod to Russia, Pushilin on 3 March called<\/a> for Russian citizens living in the \u201cDNR\u201d to take part in the debate about reforming the Russian constitution after this was initiated by President Vladimir Putin. On 14 March, some 250 separatist functionaries took part in a hearing<\/a> where participants stressed the importance of article 69, where a sentence has been added that Russia supports its ethnic kin living in other countries.<\/p>\n Ex-energy minister accused of embezzlement<\/strong><\/p>\n In a sign that conflicts from the Zakharchenko-era are still being carried out, the Donetsk Interior \u201eMinistry\u201c said\u00a0 on 14 March<\/a> that it had completed its investigation in former \u201cDNR\u201d energy minister Eduard Golenko. It said that Golenko, who was arrested in February 2018 along with more than 20 officials, had embezzled more than one billion roubles (12 million euros) from state enterprises. The case had been linked to two more sackings in the same year – then transport \u201cminister\u201d Igor Andrienko and Igor Badusev, who oversaw the \u201cDNR\u201d fuel monopoly (see Newsletter 34<\/a>).<\/p>\n The arrests were widely seen as crackdowns against corruption, which flourished under then separatist leader Alexander Zakharchenko and his powerful deputy Alexander Timofeyev. Zakharchenko was killed in August of that year by a bomb attack that also wounded Timofeyev, who was subsequently forced to flee to Russia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Written by Nikolaus von Twickel Summary The separatists hailed a new agreement reached in Minsk which they said opens the path to direct negotiations with Ukraine for the first time \u2013 while Kyiv downplayed it. At the same time, the...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[244,245],"tags":[294],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/civicmonitoring.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1905"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/civicmonitoring.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/civicmonitoring.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civicmonitoring.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civicmonitoring.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1905"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/civicmonitoring.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1905\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1908,"href":"https:\/\/civicmonitoring.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1905\/revisions\/1908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/civicmonitoring.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civicmonitoring.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civicmonitoring.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}