Ukraine president, separatists predict cease-fire but with big 'ifs'
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and leaders of the pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine on Thursday professed readiness for a cease-fire on condition that the other side effectively surrender what it has been fighting for at the cost of thousands of lives.
Expectations of a breakthrough toward ending the 5-month-old war were boosted a day earlier by Russian President Vladimir Putin's proposed seven-point peace plan, starting with the withdrawal of Ukrainian government troops from the two eastern regions seized by the separatists in April.
Poroshenko's own formula for ending the conflict, which he unveiled during his June 7 inauguration speech, requires that the separatists lay down their arms and relinquish seized territory in exchange for negotiations on broader autonomy for their regions within Ukraine.
Both sides said they were prepared to sign a peace deal if their conditions were met during talks in the Belarus capital of Minsk on Friday, when a meeting of the so-called Contact Group on Ukraine convenes.
While Ukrainian authorities in Kiev, the capital, have refused to sit down and negotiate with the rebels they have branded terrorist stooges of the Kremlin, the Contact Group brings together representatives of the government and the separatists, Russia's ambassador to Ukraine and veteran diplomats of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. OSCE is the only international security forum to which both Russia and Ukraine belong.
"Tomorrow in Minsk a document will be signed providing for the gradual introduction of the Ukrainian peace plan, Poroshenko told reporters on the sidelines of a NATO summit in Wales, where leaders of the Western military alliance expressed solidarity in his fight to keep Ukraine intact.
The fighting in eastern Ukraine, which the United Nations says has taken at least 2,600 lives this year, was sparked by Kiev's westward leanings that the Kremlin and its eastern Ukrainian proxies fear could wrest Ukraine from its historic political alignment and economic integration with Russia.
After Poroshenko's election in May to replace ousted Kremlin ally Viktor Yanukovich as president, he signed an association agreement with the European Union that opens lucrative trade opportunities for Ukrainian goods and allows duty-free imports of European manufacture that Moscow fears will undercut its products.
Poroshenko's meetings with NATO officials have demonstrated Western moral support for Ukraine, but the alliance has been hesitant to hold out short-term prospects of its joining the 28-member defense bloc. Ukraine agreed in a 1994 treaty with Russia to remain neutral -- a commitment the Kremlin expects it to continue honoring in spite of Russia's seizure of the Crimean peninsula and what Kiev says is its support for and assistance to the separatists in eastern Ukraine.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused the West of seeking to torpedo any chance of a peace deal at the Minsk talks by holding out hope of Ukraine eventually gaining membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
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Ukraine president, separatists predict cease-fire but with big 'ifs'