By
Michael Birnbaum
A high-stakes meeting between
the leaders of Ukraine and Russia ended Friday with little progress in
resolving the conflict in eastern Ukraine, highlighting the increasingly
intractable struggle there between government forces and Russian-backed rebels.
On a day when heavy fighting
continued in the rebel-held city of Donetsk, Russian President Vladimir Putin
and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko left meetings in Milan saying that
they had made little headway in resolving Ukraine’s abundant problems.
A September cease-fire deal has
been repeatedly violated. The specter of a natural gas shortage this winter
looms over Ukraine. And Russia and the West remain embroiled in the worst
tensions since the Cold War, with European leaders Friday offering gloomy assessments
of the lack of progress in talks with Putin.
Putin, meanwhile, said that
Russia is not involved in the conflict but that his government is ready to
mediate to ensure that both rebels and Ukrainian forces pull back from current
positions and live up to the cease-fire deal reached in September in Minsk,
Belarus. Ukraine and its Western allies have said that Russia has fueled the
seven-month conflict by sending troops and weaponry across the border, a charge
the Kremlin denies.
“The parties firmly remain in
support of the Minsk memorandum and are focusing their efforts on fulfilling
all its provisions,” Poroshenko told journalists Friday.
Friday’s summit was only the
third meeting between Putin and Poroshenko since the Ukrainian president’s
election in May. The last meeting, in August in Belarus, took place shortly
before columns of troops and tanks rolled into Ukraine from Russia, inflicting
massive damage on Ukraine’s army and forcing Poroshenko to sue for peace.
In exchange for a cease-fire
deal, the Ukrainian leader conceded broad rights of self-governance to areas of
eastern Ukraine that are under rebel control. Similar pro-Russian separatist
enclaves in Moldova and Georgia have allowed Russia to exert pressure on the
governments of those former Soviet republics.
Putin said the first priority
should be to solidify a line of separation between Ukrainian and
rebel-held territory to which
both sides agreed in September. Those borders would essentially demarcate a new
pro-Russian enclave inside Ukraine. Witnesses in recent days have said that
Ukrainian border guards have started manning checkpoints in areas leading into
rebel-held territory.
The line of separation “should
be finished, and this is exactly what would help finally end the shelling and
the deaths of peaceful, innocent people,” Putin told reporters in Milan after
his meetings with Poroshenko. In his remarks, Putin repeatedly called the
rebel-held territory Novorossiya, or New Russia, the rebels’ term for what they
hope will be their new state. Putin’s use of the term was just the latest
signal that Russia has little interest in helping Ukraine regain control of
territory that until April formed the core of its industrial heartland.
Despite the cease-fire
agreement, intense fighting has continued for control of Donetsk’s airport,
which is the final outpost of Ukraine’s military near the rebel stronghold
city. A Ukrainian military spokesman, Col. Andriy Lysenko, said Friday that
three soldiers were killed in the previous 24 hours. Donetsk city
administrators said explosions, shelling and shooting could be heard throughout
the city center.
Fighting has also continued in
other areas of eastern Ukraine, although the daily death toll has fallen
markedly since its height in late August and early September.
Early Friday, a meeting between
Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel — Europe’s most powerful interlocutor
with Russia — ended in an impasse. Both sides used unusually blunt language to
characterize the encounter.
Merkel and Putin “continued to
express serious differences in views on the source of Ukraine’s domestic
conflict, as well as the root causes for what is happening there today,” the
Kremlin said in a statement.
“I cannot see any breakthrough
so far,” Merkel said. “The key point is whether the territorial integrity of
Ukraine is really being respected.”
In addition to the basic
question of peace in eastern Ukraine, Russia and Ukraine are fighting over
natural gas deliveries, which the Russian state-owned company Gazprom cut in
June, citing nonpayment of debts.
Ukraine does not have enough
stocks of natural gas to last it through the winter, meaning that it faces a
shortage with potentially tough costs for its citizens. Natural gas is the
primary fuel used for heating in Ukraine.
Poroshenko said the sides made
little progress toward a deal, but he expressed hope that they could reach an
agreement next week. Ukraine is holding parliamentary elections Oct. 26. Rebels
plan to hold elections of their own Nov. 2.
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