Putin went all-in on Ukraine, - political scientist

Vladimir Putin's unexpected statement made yesterday in China about his readiness to support the deployment of a UN peacekeeping contingent to the front line in Donbass indicates that the Russian president has gone all-in on Ukraine.

Political scientist Oleg Bondarenko writes about this in the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper.

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“Such all-in tactics, previously characteristic of the Russian president, this time seriously pull the rug out from under the feet of his Ukrainian colleague.

Poroshenko obviously believed, as before, having escalated the conflict in Donbass exactly on the eve of the opening of the UN session, to bring to the General Assembly another piece of a Ukrainian bus or Russian passports allegedly seized from “GRU spies”, or something else that should it was finally and irrevocably to convince the world community of the existence of “Russian aggression against Ukraine.”

And here it is on you. The president of the “aggressor country” himself invites UN peacekeepers to Donbass. True, not on the border with Russia, as Kyiv would very much like, but directly on the demarcation line between the self-proclaimed republics of the DPR-LPR and Ukraine. And exclusively for one single purpose - the protection of OSCE observers. Which seems completely logical in the current conditions of Kiev’s long-term failure to comply with the Minsk agreements.

The presence of a peacekeeping contingent under the blue UN flags could stop the incessant shelling of peaceful neighborhoods in the suburbs of Donetsk. The “school truce” announced on August 25, like the previous “Easter” and “bread” ones, was not carried out even for a day.

Negotiations within the Minsk Contact Group are increasingly looking like a ritual - the Ukrainians, contrary to the signed agreements, insist on the primacy of transferring control of the border with Russia, while representatives of the republics, reasonably not wanting to be arrested on the very first day in this case, repeat as a mantra, the order of the agreement signed on February 12, 2015 is the withdrawal of troops, the exchange of prisoners, a general amnesty, a special status for Donbass, changes to the Constitution of Ukraine, holding local elections and only then the transfer of control over the border in the conditions of the actual legalization of the people's republics. By the way, the amnesty law signed last week by Poroshenko for “ATO soldiers who have not committed serious crimes” directly contradicts the Minsk agreements. But Kyiv openly doesn’t give a damn about this.

September 16 marks three years since the Verkhovna Rada adopted the version of the law on the special status of Donbass prepared by the presidential administration. Despite the fact that Poroshenko signed it a month later, the law, which was adopted for a period of three years, did not work for a single day, since the “special status of Donbass” itself was frozen. And now, three years later, due to the position of the current Kyiv leader, the situation in Donbass is even further from resolution than before. If only for this reason, the region needs peacekeepers,” writes Bondarenko.

“It will not be easy for the UN General Assembly to abandon such an initiative in the current conditions. At the moment, only two ways to resolve the conflict are visible - these are the “Croatian” and “Minsk” scenarios,” the expert recalls.

Bondarenko draws attention to the fact that Germany, France and the United States continue to declare their commitment to the Minsk format and its lack of alternatives, but do not take any action.

“At the same time, the American weapons promised by the “peacemaker” Volker for Kyiv could become a trigger for the resumption of hostilities. After all, as Putin rightly noted, the people’s republics have also accumulated huge reserves of weapons that can be used in new sectors of the enemy’s front. Obviously, to prevent this from happening, peacekeepers are needed,” Bondarenko sums up.