On Tuesday, returning from his diplomatic mission to Moscow and Kiev, President Emmanuel Macron said he was optimistic about the “practical concrete solutions” that can be found to advance peace negotiations in the Ukraine crisis.
Posted at 12:00 p.m.
But the diplomatic ballet we are witnessing is made laborious by contradictory and difficult to reconcile demands. Russia has put forward a number of proposals, some of which were rejected a little too lightly by the West last December. Indeed, it was considered “unacceptable” by the West to close the door to Ukraine’s possible membership of NATO, to give up creating bases or deploying arms in countries that have joined the Alliance since 1997 or countries that are not part of it, and to cease their military activities in the immediate vicinity of the Russian borders.
I think there was nothing in these Russian proposals that was not negotiable. None of them jeopardizes the vital interests of Western countries or the very existence of NATO.
On the Ukrainian side, we play the hard line. On Monday, the Minister of Foreign Affairs insisted on three “red lines” : no compromise on the territorial integrity of Ukraine, no direct negotiations with the pro-Russian separatists in the east of the country and no interference in its foreign policy.
Where are we today ? President Macron’s tour, preceded, it must be remembered, by numerous telephone interviews with President Joe Biden, is beginning to lift the veil on the path taken by Westerners towards Moscow’s positions.
Putin’s red line
Macron acknowledged that “it is legitimate for Russia to raise the question of its own security”. From there, you have to respond to his requests. Ukraine’s NATO membership is the heart of the dispute, Putin’s “red line”. Macron said that it was necessary to “invent a new solution” for Ukraine and did not hide that it could take the form of a “Finlandization” of the country. This status would allow Ukraine to maintain itself as a democracy with a liberal economy, but its foreign policy will have to respect strict neutrality. Macron also mentioned the possibility of inventing “something new by definition”.
On the question of the deployment of military equipment and bases on the territory of new members of NATO since 1997 and non-NATO states, the United States and the Europeans are open to undertaking negotiations aimed at controlling conventional arms in the center of Europe. Russians and Westerners could thus modernize the current treaty on conventional forces in Europe signed in 1990, but frankly moribund. Finally, since armies, whether Russian or Western, need to carry out military exercises to assess their own performance, there is nothing to prevent these exercises from being strictly supervised.
As for the internal conflict between Kiev and the pro-Russian rebels, Westerners unite on the need for all parties to “strictly and fully implement” the 2015 Minsk agreements which provide, among other things, for a certain autonomy for the Russian-speaking regions. . However, it is common knowledge that the Ukrainian government continues to create obstacles to its application.
PHOTO SERGEI SUPINSKY, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Volodymyr Zelensky, President of Ukraine
Moscow and Kiev have shown great interest in the Western proposals, of which we do not know all the details.
Putin welcomed certain ideas put forward by Macron while not giving up on the essential, that is to say NATO.
For his part, his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenski, spoke of the organization of a summit between the three presidents shortly to take stock of the situation.
This is no doubt going a little hastily. The proposals put forward by the West to respond to Russian demands and their urgent injunction to Kiev to seriously engage in negotiations on Minsk risk triggering a heated debate within the Ukrainian government between the hard-liners and those who are aware that it is indeed Ukraine, the stake in the East-West tension, which will have to give in on many points.
After all, to use what Macron said about Ukraine’s future international status, “the solution can only come from the Ukrainians”.
* Jocelyn Coulon was political adviser to the Minister of Foreign Affairs in 2016-2017. He just published Canada in search of an international identity.