After 5 years of conflict, Ukraine’s barrier to peace is still ‘Russia’s political will’

Of course, yes, of course. The second piece of seeking a peace and resolution here is to hold out a hand of being willing to negotiate to bring that territory back under Ukrainian control. There are several formats for doing this. You have the Minsk Agreements, by which Russia has already agreed to return the territory to Ukraine alongside some political steps that the Ukrainians would take. That has been, frankly, spinning its wheels for years; has not resulted in an agreement yet.

You have a France-Germany-Ukraine-Russia negotiating format called the Normandy format. And then we’ve had a bilateral US-Russia channel where we’ve had some exchanges to see whether the Russians are willing and ready to engage about this, as well. Thus far, we’ve not had much progress on the diplomatic track. Russia still denies its responsibilities for leading the occupying forces and for paying for them and for preventing a ceasefire, not withdrawing their heavy weapons, not disbanding the illegal armed groups. So Russia’s in denial about that and trying to put the blame on to Ukraine. I hope, however, that with the new Ukrainian president, new Ukrainian government, there will be some new opportunities here for negotiation, as well, and that’s what we’re going to be testing in the next few weeks.

Well, the Normandy format was created by France and Germany with Ukraine and Russia. They very much want to keep that format the way it is and, as you heard from President Putin, he likes the format the way it is, too — the four of them without the US being a part of that grouping.

So what we do instead is we coordinate very, very closely with Ukraine directly, and then also with France and Germany so that we have a very unified and coherent message about the substance of what needs to happen to the peace established and to see the territory restored to Ukrainian control.

The problem is not the format. The problem is Russia’s political will.

They do not acknowledge what they are doing in Eastern Ukraine. They have not taken steps to bring about a meaningful ceasefire, to withdraw the heavy weapons and equipment that they have there, to stop their leadership and control and training and support of the military forces that are occupying that part of Eastern Ukraine. What we need is a more constructive Russian approach. We haven’t had that for five years. Maybe as Ukraine gets stronger and more stable and it’s clear that Russia is not gaining anything by this conflict that Russia will be, in fact, willing to eventually negotiate a solution.

I would hope that. I’m frankly not optimistic about that, given what we have heard from the Russians, they refused to even discuss it. So I think of this more like the situation with the Baltic states, where we had a situation where the Soviet Union took over their territory and tried to forcibly incorporate them into the Soviet Union. We issued a declaration in 1940 called the Welles Declaration, where we’ve rejected that forcible takeover and it lasted a very long time. But eventually, the Baltic states did get their independence back. And I see a similar or a parallel here with Crimea. We’re not going to see quick movement on Crimea, but likewise, no one is going to accept that it’s been taken over by Russia. And at the end of the day, I would expect that it eventually will become restored as a part of Ukraine — it’s just going to take a very long time.

Well, I think that he said in his very first meeting with President Putin that Ukraine matters and that this is in the way of establishing a better US-Russia relationship. And that is proven to be true over the last couple of years, that we haven’t made progress anywhere as this is still in the way. So I’m in very close contact with the entire team. I’ve met with the president and we’ve talked through where we are. The president is very skeptical, frankly, that Russia has the intention to end the conflict or walk away or come to a real resolution, but he’s willing to keep a hand outstretched to try, if Russia is willing. And that’s what we need to be doing.

We have a great team of people here, and I think the fact that I can do this on a voluntary basis — I spend a lot of time on this, I’m off to Ukraine again this weekend, I was there last month. I’ve had four meetings with the new president since he started running for election. There’s a lot of engagement here. And in addition to my efforts, we have a lot of other people that are committed to this. I work very closely with all of them. And I think it has actually produced, I have to say, a more positive result than some people might have thought a couple of years ago … [that has] strengthened the situation for Ukraine and made Russia’s invasion, occupation less and less tenable.