Merkel downbeat as world awaits Putin’s response to latest Ukraine peace plan Analysis Fear of Putin grows in EU capitals amid spectre of ‘total war’ Fear of Putin grows in EU capitals amid spectre of ‘total war’ More weapons won't help Ukraine, says Merkel Moscow summit Putin and Ukraine leader to hold phone talks
Merkel downbeat as world awaits Putin’s response to latest Ukraine peace plan
German chancellor ‘disappointed’ by Russian attitude but says proposal for demilitarised zone to end conflict is ‘worth trying’
Ukraine president Petro Poroshenko with Angela Merkel and the US
vice-president Joe Biden at talks in Munich to try to further the
ceasefire plan. Photograph: Lazarenko Mykola/Corbis
Vladimir Putin
is expected to give his response on Sunday to the Franco-German plan
for a Ukrainian ceasefire, enforced with the creation of a demilitarised
zone along the frontlines.
The plan, according to the French president, François Hollande,
proposes a buffer zone of 50km to 70km and requires Russian-backed
separatists to withdraw to ceasefire lines that were agreed in Minsk in
September. In return, the eastern provinces would be given greater
autonomy. Angela Merkel,
who travelled with Hollande to Moscow on Friday evening to set out
their proposal, was downbeat about its prospects on Saturday. The German
chancellor told the annual Munich Security Conference: “It is uncertain
whether it will lead to success but, from my point of view and that of
the French president, it is definitely worth trying.”
She conceded that it was “disappointing” that Russia had failed to
abide by the Minsk agreement. On Russian guarantees, she admitted “the
experience has not been good” but added: “The answer to this can’t be
not to enter any agreements at all. Of course we have to try again and
again.”
Also speaking at Munich, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said
he hoped the latest diplomatic drive would “produce results, and those
results will be supported by the parties to this conflict”.
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Hollande and Merkel are expected to speak by video link on Sunday to Putin as well as to Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko
in what Hollande portrayed as a last-ditch bid to contain the conflict,
in which 5,300 people have so far died. “If we don’t manage to find not
just a compromise but a lasting peace agreement, we know perfectly well
what the scenario will be. It has a name, it’s called war,” he told
reporters in the city of Tulle in central France.
In a highly charged appeal to an audience of senior European and
American officials in Munich, Poroshenko said: “We need simple things.
We need a ceasefire. Can you imagine that anyone in the 21st century can
be against a ceasefire? We should have an answer in just a few hours
and, if not, then days.”
The conference revealed the deep and widening divide between the west
and Russia, with the audience openly laughing at claims by Lavrov and
other Russian officials that Moscow had no troops in the Ukrainian
conflict.
However, the conference also highlighted an emerging rift on how to
respond if the peace initiative fails and fighting escalates. It pits
eastern European nations and increasingly vocal members of the US
Congress, who want to send arms to the Ukrainian government, against
western European states who are against such a move. In the middle is
the Obama administration, which says it has not made up its mind.
Speaking in Munich, vice-president Joe Biden maintained the ambiguity
of the White House position. “We will continue to provide security
assistance to Ukraine,” he said. “We believe in an honourable peace. We also believe that Ukrainians have the right to defend themselves.”
The US has previously agreed to provide non-lethal military
assistance to Ukraine, but according to its own accounting, reported by
the Bloomberg news agency, only half of the $118m of American equipment
has so far been delivered. Among the items not yet delivered are
armoured trucks and other vehicles, medical supplies, binoculars,
sleeping bags and tents.
In his Munich speech, Poroshenko derided Russian denials of military
involvement in his country, brandishing the passports and identity cards
that he said belonged to Russian soldiers killed or captured while
fighting in Ukraine. He suggested sarcastically that they had “lost
their way” in military vehicles with full fuel tanks.
The Ukrainian president issued a passionate appeal for arms. “People
will either support a sovereign and independent Ukraine, or Russia wins.
This conflict must be resolved, not frozen,” he said. “We are an
independent nation and we have a right to defend our people … Our lack
of defensive capability triggers offensive attacks and brings
escalation.”
He suggested equipment Ukraine needs did not have to be lethal,
saying that anti-artillery radar, communications and jamming technology
would improve defences.
Despite repeated challenges from eastern European leaders, and Bob
Corker, chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, Merkel
remained opposed to supplying more arms to Ukraine. “I am firmly
convinced that the conflict cannot be resolved by military means,” she
said. “The progress that Ukraine needs cannot be achieved with more
weapons. There are already a lot of weapons there … I cannot envisage
any situation in which improvement in the equipment of the Ukrainian
army so impresses Putin that he concedes militarily. You have to look
reality in the eye.”
The British foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, said Britain shared
the German position. “We are not for the current time considering the
supply of lethal equipment to the Ukrainians,” he told journalists,
adding that the policy could change if there was a radical change of the
situation. He noted that the American voices calling for arming Kiev
were so far mostly from Congress and that “no decision has been taken by
the US administration”.
“There can’t be a military solution to this problem. It has to be a
political solution. As long as there is something approaching a military
stalemate, the focus must be on finding a political solution.” He said
European sanctions were already a powerful coercive tool to persuade
Putin to make peace. Hammond acknowledged that the election of a
pro-Russian government in Athens would make it harder to get EU
consensus to renew sanctions, but he said the Greek government would
ultimately have to make a deal with the troika of the EU, the
International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank.
“Of course the Greeks will want to use their bargaining power to get
the best deal they can but they will also be aware you can flex a line
but if you break it, that will have negative consequences for you.”
Hammond said that the Franco-German peace proposal recognised that
the frontline in Ukraine has shifted since the Minsk agreement in favour
of the separatists. But he insisted it did not concede those gains, but
laid down means to roll back the lines to where they were. “We have to
start with the reality that the line of contact is now in a different
place from where it was last November,” he said. “That does not mean
accepting that line of contact, but it does mean the disengagement plan
has to start from the recognition of the reality of where the line of
contact is now.”
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