To its credit the Soviet Union and its successor state, Russia, has long supported UN peacekeeping, a practice that originated in 1960 in the time of UN secretary-general, Dag Hammarskjold, who evolved the concept during the great Congolese civil war when it was in danger of becoming a Cold War flashpoint.
But what Russia has never contemplated is UN troops in its own backyard. “Summoning the UN deep into Russia’s historical space is a serious step”, Dmitri Trenin, head of the Moscow Carnegie Centre, told The Economist.
There does seem to be a shift in Moscow’s thinking on this highly sensitive issue. In 2017 President Vladimir Putin put forward a plan for the deployment of UN troops in south-eastern Ukraine. Not that he imagined their use along the Russian/Ukrainian border- that would be too much- but he wanted them to divide the fighting forces inside Ukraine. An objection is that this would formalise the internal division in Ukraine. But even so it was a bold move as it would mean UN soldiers getting in the way of the secessionist, Russian-orientated, militia in south-eastern Ukraine. They wouldn’t be able to expand the territory they already control without overrunning UN troops.
The idea of a UN peacekeeping operation in Donbas, eastern Ukraine, was first discussed over a decade and a half ago by a small group of independent Russian and American experts on the Finnish island of Boisto. Their proposals were rejected by both the Ukrainian government and Moscow.
Moreover, the cease-fire negotiated at Minsk by Russia, France, Germany and Ukraine in February 2015 was regularly violated and some of the heavy weapons that were pulled back from the demarcation line returned.
The Minsk 11 agreement also lost its initial momentum. Moscow justifiably blames Kiev for not implementing the agreement. Critical promises were not followed through, such as changing the country’s constitution, passing a law to establish the special status of the Donetsk and Lugansk enclaves in Donbas, underlining their Russian-language rights, holding elections and declaring an amnesty.
A divided government led by Petro Poroshenko, partly under the influence of right-wing movements whose pedigree stretches back to Nazi times, was incapable of moving on these vital issues.
Putin still seems to think he can go on hoodwinking the world about Russia’s early role. He maintains that the “soldiers are men following the call of their hearts to fulfil their duty or are voluntarily taking part in hostilities, including in south-east Ukraine”. Russia appeared to believe that without these local militias the Poroshenko government would have just walked in.
Both in Washington and Moscow some macho policy makers and in particular Putin himself, have talked about the necessity of preparations for a limited nuclear war (although, in all probability, there never could be a limited one- recall the joint Ronald Reagan/Mikhail Gorbachev statement that a nuclear war “could never be won and must never be fought".
This is why some of us think Putin’s talk of a UN role is a big step forward. Fyodor Lukyanov, who edits the influential Global Affairs, and who has the ear of the Russian Foreign Ministry, argues that Putin should expand his UN ideas. According to Alexei Arbatov, head of Russia’s Centre for International Security, a UN force must be strong enough to ensure a 100% cease-fire and the withdrawal of heavy weapons. The mission would look less like the failure in Kosovo in 1999 and more like the success in Cyprus that began in 1974, separating the Greek-speaking half of the island from the Turkish-speaking. UN forces have been deployed along the dividing line for over 50 years and are still there. They have held back what many Greeks have long believed is the danger of a renewed threat of ethnic cleansing of the kind that the Turks tried to carry out in 1974. At first the UN troops had to fight their way in.
In the Ukraine case, peace between the two sides in Donbas would not be just a dividing line between pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian forces, it would probably in time bring peace on the Russian-Ukraine border. Putin’s now old idea must be explored. With Ukraine’s army losing out is a good time to explore it as part of an all-encompassing peace deal.
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