Tabnak - The Munich Security Conference is going to be closed today, while during the last three days, various governmental and non-governmental figures form different countries and organizations talked about a wide range of issues relating to the global peace and security. In this context, one of the most important issues raised as a serious concern for many European and non-European participants, was the situation in Ukraine and how to end the conflict in this post-Soviet country.
In an important development related to this issue, the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said after consultations with his European counterparts that since Monday, a new ceasefire will go into effect in eastern Ukraine, where the pro-Russian separatists are long attempting to obtain an autonomous status and have engaged in a lengthy conflict with the central government.
The ceasefire deal was announced after a number of Western officials criticized in their speeches at Munich Security Conference the way Russia conducts in Ukraine and called for a commitment by various sides to the provisions developed in the previous international negotiations.
The German Chancellor Angela Merkel was one of these officials, which, according to "NBC News”, in her address to the conference spoke about the long conflict in Ukraine and lamented that the Minsk Protocol — brokered in September 2014 to halt the armed conflict in the Donbass region — had not been followed by the Russian-backed separatists.
"The Minsk agreement is the only channel we have to bring a solution to this conflict,” Merkel said. "The Minsk agreement started on the assumption that there was a road map, but when it was enacted there was no continuous ceasefire.”
Actually these comments could be regarded as a follow-up to the latest positions taken by the US officials, including the US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, who, during a recent speech at the UN condemned Moscow’s policy toward Ukraine and especially emphasized that any move by Washington to lift the Russian sanctions would come only after Russia’s withdrawal from Crimea.
Such a straightforward and strict position, similar to the former US President Barak Obama’s approach to the issue, was in fact a clear sign representing that Washington is stick to the long-lasting viewpoint that Russia is an "aggressor power” in its periphery and for any kind of rapprochement to happen between the US and Russia, a sensible change in Russia’s behavior is a basic precondition.
Now, after the Munich Security Conference became a venue to express similar views to the Ukraine issue by other Western officials, from Merkel to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, it seems that Russia is taking the issue seriously and given the undeniable influence Moscow has on the Ukrainian separatists, announcing a ceasefire means that Russia wants to show its willingness to resolve the issue and does not have any plan to further pull the separatists to its side.
At the same time, such a move has been delicately planned to show the limits of Russia’s flexibility in this issue. In other words, Russia wants to reiterate that from its point of view, the so-called "Ukraine Crisis” means just the conflict in eastern provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk and does not involve the situation in Crimea.
Indeed, after 2014 referendum in Crimea and the annexation of the Black Sea peninsula to the Russian Federation, the Russian officials have persistently said that the Crimea issue is non-negotiable and Moscow will never give it back to Kiev. So, in fact it seems that Russia wants to keep open the window of opportunity for a rapprochement with the US, while not giving too much in order to make a deal.
