Paris summit: hopes and solutions on the table of challenges

Russian President Vladimir Putin met his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskiy for the first time on Monday at a summit in Paris aimed at advancing efforts to restore peace to eastern Ukraine.

Zelenskiy and Putin are holding talks together with the leaders of France and Germany in a renewed effort to end a conflict that has killed more than 13,000 people since 2014.

Diplomats however caution that the prospects for peace are bleak, with Zelenskiy, a comedian-turned-president, politically constrained at home and wary of conceding too much, and Putin showing little interest in bending to outside pressure.

The Presidents, Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky, agreed to implement a full-fledged ceasefire in the war in the Eastern Ukrainian region of Donbass by the end of 2019, during a summit the so called “Normandy Format”, also attended by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron.

At the summit in Paris on Monday night mediated by France and Germany, the leaders of Ukraine and Russia also agreed to exchange prisoners of war.

The Normandy Format meetings have been designed to restore peace in Eastern Ukraine, after the eruption of a pro-Russian insurgency in Ukraine’s Donbass back in 2014. The Donbass insurgency broke out in the months after Russia seized the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in March 2014.

The Normandy Format meetings of the leaders of France, Germany, Russian, and Ukraine in 2014 and 2015 crafted the Minsk Agreements, which have reduced the intensity of the fighting. It does not deal with Russia’s annexation of Crimea, which is not recognized by the West and a large part of the international community.

More than 13,000 people have been killed in the war in Donbass in Eastern Ukraine so far, according to UN data, while millions have been displaced.

Monday’s meeting in Paris was the first summit of the Normandy Four leaders since 2016, and was largely made possible by Zelensky’s election to the Ukrainian Presidency in the spring of 2019. It was preceded by a prisoner exchange, with Zelensky making the achievement of peace in Donbass his top priority.

“The sides commit to a full and comprehensive implementation of the cease-fire, strengthened by the implementation of all necessary ceasefire support measures, before the end of the year 2019,” said the joint communique of the Normandy Format summit in Paris on Monday night.

The communique of the summit, which saw the first ever official meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, also stipulated for an “all for all” prisoner exchange by the end of the year.

Speaking after the summit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said it had helped revive the 2015 Minsk II Agreement for restoring peace in Donbass, which has stalled.

“I say very openly, we have a lot of work to do, but my feeling from this meeting here today is that there is goodwill to resolve difficult questions,” Merkel declared.

The Minsk II Agreement had called for the withdrawal of heavy weapons, the restoration of Kyiv’s control over its borders, and wider autonomy and local elections for the separatist regions.

French President Emmanuel Macron, who has been especially active in trying to mend relations between the West and Russia in recent months, made it clear that Zelensky and Putin had failed to agree on a timetable for holding elections in the territories held by the pro-Russian separatists in Donbass.

However, he said he hoped a compromise could be reached by the time another Normandy Four summit is held in four months’ time.

Although Zelensky held his line at the Normandy talks, it was clear that Ukraine and Russia interpreted some of the agreements very differently.

Zelensky said security of the Ukrainian-Russian border was a prerequisite to further progress in talks. Putin retorted that a political “permanent solution” is needed for the occupied territories, including changes in Ukraine’s constitution, before security issues are resolved.

When Zelensky spoke about prisoner exchange, he said: “Countries [agreed] to contribute to the mutual release of detained persons by December 31, 2019 in all-for-all format.”

Putin, however, insisted that the exchange will only concern “all identified.”

The official communique laid out the third, more iterative interpretation of the same agreement of the presidents: “They encourage the Trilateral Contact Group to facilitate the release and exchange of conflict-related detainees by the end of the year, based on the principle of “all for all,” starting with “all identified for all identified,” with the understanding that international organisations including the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) be granted full and unconditional access to all detained persons.”

The sides commit to a full and comprehensive implementation of the ceasefire before year-end, but Zelensky doubted it could be achieved.