Eastern Ukraine after the Normandy Summit

On December 11, 2019, the Institute for Foreign Affairs and Trade (IFAT) held a roundtable discussion entitled “East-Ukraine after the Normandy Summit”. The participants included Sándor Ackermann (Analyst of IFAT), Anton Bendarzsevszkij (expert on the foreign relations of the post-Soviet region) and György Ilyash (Research fellow of IFAT). The event was moderated by Ferenc Németh, Research fellow of the Institute for Foreign Affairs and Trade. The topics of the event were the results of the Normandy Summit on December 10, and the current relations between Russia and Ukraine.

The roundtable discussion started with the short summary of the Normandy Summit. Sándor Ackermann described the summit as a milestone: its participants had not held a meeting on such a high level since 2016 and the conflict – which has more than 13.000 victims as of today –started more than five years ago. An other reason worth mentioning is that the newly elected Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky named the resolution of the conflict as one of the top priorities during his campaign. The results of the summit include the parties’ renewed commitment to the ceasefire that has already been declared in the Minsk Agreement as well as the prisoner exchange agreement between Ukraine and Russia.

Anton Bendarzsevszkij started with the analysis of media reactions. The British media was disappointed; their opinion is that the conflict had been conservated while the Russian media described the meeting as one without any feasible results. These arguments are countered by the positive reactions of the Ukrainian media: the fears that Zelensky would not be able to hold himself against Putin proved to be wrong.

György Ilyash highlighted the emerging idea of broadening the summit with the possibility of other countries joining in. Ukraine favored the idea of those candidates being the USA (and perhaps Great Britain), because they have been supporting Ukraine since the start of the conflict. Nevertheless, the new participants would mean that the dynamics of the conftlict’s possible settlement would be restricted and as a result, it would likely restart the whole negotiation procedure. Until the next summit – scheduled to be held in four months –, the participating countries will proceed with working on the fulfillment of the Minsk Agreement. This also ensures the continued existence of the Normandy Format.

The work procedure, however, has one serious difficulty as the Minsk Agreement itself has various interpretations, mainly in the possible timeline of its fulfillment. The Steinmeier-formula was supposed to resolve these disagreements but the differing opinions of both Russia and Ukraine had hindered the agreement’s implementation.

All the experts pointed out the active participation of French president, Emmanuel Macron during the forum. This could be an aspect of the Parisian aspirations for the leading position in European politics, which contrasts sharply to the ever more passive role of German chancellar, Angela Merkel in international questions.

One of the main topics of the roundtable discussion was the fate of the Russian-Ukrainian gas talks. The current gas contract ends in December and because of the large transit toll, Ukraine would prefer a new long-term contract, at least for ten years. On the other side, Russia would be in favour of a short-term contract as the Nord Stream 2, TurkStream as well as the Power of Siberia towards China pipelines are currently under construction. As the Nord Stream 2 and the TurkStream do not have the capacity even together to fulfil the energy-need of the European market, the need to use the Ukraininan lines with the current transit-tolls is inevitable. The new transit routes, however, strengthen the side of the Russian negotiators, who only offered a one-year long contract.

At the conclusion of the event, the guest speakers answered the questions of the audience. These included the impacts of the Russian decision to give passports and citizenships to the locals of Donbass, and the rising French influence in the Normandy Summit. Outside of these topics, other questions aimed at the changing popularity of Putin and the possibility of the escalation of the crisis in Eastern Ukraine.

The main takeaways from the discussion were the different interpretation about the Normandy Summit and about its importance in the relations to Russia and Ukraine from a European and from a Transatlantic perspective.