Ukraine President Sees Tensions Easing as Truce Tested

By Aliaksandr Kudrytski, Ilya Khrennikov and Daryna Krasnolutska

Photographer: Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko speaks to the press in front of Ukraine's state... Read More

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said tensions in the country’s easternmost regions have been easing, even as a truce agreement was being violated.
Casualties have dropped to a fraction of the level seen before the Sept. 5 cease-fire agreement and groups “allegedly” not controlled by the rebels or Russia were mostly responsible for the breaches, Poroshenko said yesterday on the state-run UT-1 television station. The government and the insurgents earlier traded accusations of violations even after agreeing to create a buffer zone to strengthen the pact.
“No matter what some people say, we see de-escalation now,” Poroshenko said. “Ukraine was doing and is doing everything possible to stick to the
peace plan and to fulfill all obligations. The cease-fire is being violated. But the number of casualties is tens of times less than what we had before.”

Standoff in Ukraine

Daily clashes have threatened to capsize the truce since it was signed. The country’s bloodiest conflict since World War II has left more than 3,200 dead and 8,000 injured, according to the United Nations. Fighting in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions started after Russia annexed Crimea in March.
Ukraine’s hryvnia, this year’s worst-performing currency, strengthened 8 percent to 13.25 per dollar today in Kiev, having plunged more than 12 percent on Sept. 19, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The ruble was 0.6 percent weaker in Moscow.

Photographer: Anatolii Stepanov/AFP via Getty Images

Ukrainian troops patrol in an armored vehicle in the Donetsk region, on Sept. 20, 2014.

‘Fully Implemented’

The agreement to create a weapons-free zone of 30 kilometers (18 miles) was reached early Sept. 20 in Minsk, Belarus, by former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, the heads of the Donetsk and Luhansk separatist forces, the Russian ambassador to Ukraine, Mikhail Zurabov, and Heidi Tagliavini of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
“A lasting cease-fire remains key to the success of the current efforts to reach a sustainable political solution,” the European Union said yesterday in a statement. “All elements of the Minsk Protocol and of this agreement must now be fully implemented by all sides.”
The buffer zone brackets troop positions from both sides as of Sept. 20. Weaponry on either side will be pulled back at least 15 kilometers, creating a buffer between the front lines, with the OSCE monitoring the no-fire zone, according to Kuchma.
Ukrainian forces will only pull back if the rebels hold fire and only simultaneously with the separatists, Andriy Lysenko, a military spokesman, told reporters yesterday in Kiev. Ukraine must strengthen its borders and reinforce its military in case the cease-fire fails, according to Poroshenko.

‘Illegal’ Groups

The army has set up checkpoints to maintain the buffer zone, military spokesman Vladyslav Seleznyov said today on Facebook. “Illegal, uncontrolled armed groups” are shelling Ukrainian positions, with troops only opening fire in response, he said. The army killed a group of militants yesterday evening in the Donetsk region town of Granitne, he said.
Mariupol, on the Sea of Azov coast, remained “stable,” with the city under control of Ukrainian forces late yesterday, though the separatists intensified the shelling of government troops on the outskirts of the city, 1+1 TV reported.
Ukrainian forces detected a Russian drone over Mariupol and two helicopters nearby on Russian territory, Lysenko said. Government forces lost two soldiers and eight servicemen were wounded in 24 hours, he said.

‘Name Only’

“Basically we have a cease-fire in name only,” U.S. Air Force General Philip Breedlove, NATO’s supreme commander for Europe, told reporters in Vilnius, Lithuania, Sept. 20. “The number of events and rounds fired and the artillery used across the past few days match some of the pre-cease-fire levels.”
Meanwhile, a Russian convoy of 185 trucks carrying 2,000 tons of food, clothing, medicine and water arrived Sept. 20 in Donetsk, the unrecognized Donetsk People’s Republic said on its website. The International Red Cross said it couldn’t help with distributing the aid, the third such shipment since the conflict began, without Ukraine agreeing to receive it. All the vehicles have since returned to Russia, the Itar-Tass news service said yesterday.
The fighting has caused about $440 million of damage in the conflict zone, where more than 70 percent of business have shut down and the availability of food is “fragile,” the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a report dated Sept. 19.

‘Completely Capable’

More than 275,000 people have been internally displaced, though the number “can be assumed to be much higher” because of the lack of a registration system, according to the report. About 341,000 people have fled abroad, including more than 300,000 to Russia, it said.
NATO’s Breedlove was speaking in the capital of Lithuania, one of three former Soviet republics that are now part of the trans-Atlantic organization. Russian troops are still in Ukraine, he said, though it was impossible to accurately count how many. Breedlove acknowledged a reduction in forces back across the border into Russia. The government in Moscow denies involvement in the conflict.
Russian forces still lingering near the Ukraine border are “completely capable of doing what they did a little over a week ago, which is cross that border and impart their military will on the Ukrainian military,” Breedlove said.