MOSCOW: Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has announced a breakthrough in negotiations with Russia over Kyiv’s duty-free trade deal with the European Union – a much needed ray of hope in the ongoing war.
But the announcement came amid scandal, as Ukraine offered what it called irrefutable evidence that the Kremlin has continued to send troops to stoke the war in the eastern Donbas, despite the Minsk peace agreement in February.
The timing of these two recent developments brings Western leaders to a fork in the road: either heed the alarm bells being sounded by Ukraine’s Defense Ministry or give Russian President Vladimir Putin the benefit of the doubt in light of its new concessions.
“The capture of these allegedly Russian servicemen will not change the situation at all. Those who believe Russia is involved in Donbas already believe this, Russia officially will fully deny any responsibility and disavow these people, and the West right now is primarily interested in preventing a full disintegration of the cease-fire and a summer offensive. So they won’t make much noise about these Russian officers,” said Pavel Felgenhauer, an independent Russian political and military analyst.
Felgenhauer said that the West is not” selling out Ukraine,” but rather trying to prevent further escalation. He said the recent visit to Moscow by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland was meant to “bait Putin into not launching an offensive.”
Moscow has been just as clever in its recent moves, said Volodymyr Fesenko of the Penta Centre for Political Studies.
Moscow’s decision to back down over Ukraine’s free trade pact with the European Union was not so much a breakthrough as a strategic maneuver on the part of the Kremlin in order to appease the international community, he said.
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