That media headlines are focused elsewhere, particularly Syria, makes it all the more important not to lose sight of the conflict on our own threshold in eastern Ukraine.
The reduction in violence and destruction in the Donbas is welcome, giving a chance to restore services and make the region safer for the people who live there. Painstaking OSCE-led mediation is addressing immediate security and political questions, with reducing danger from landmines and other unexploded ordnance one urgent priority. But it would be extremely short sighted to assume all will be well as long as the shooting stops. We need also to pay close attention to the circumstances.
Hanging over the practical efforts are important questions about Ukraine’s control of its own territory and future. In my line of work the phrase ‘frozen conflicts’ trips all too easily off the tongue (some say ‘protracted’). There is no single definition, but some features of unresolved disputes in Nagorno-Karabakh, Georgia, and Moldova are: uncertain or contested status; absence of effective central government influence; local leaders subject to external manipulation; and, in all cases, an apparently indefinite peace process in which Russia is involved.
The OSCE is involved in all these long running mediation processes. In the absence of the good faith and political will on all sides that are essential ingredients of genuine conflict resolution, management of low level conflict at best is possible. The risk with freezing a conflict is that it can hinder rather than help post-conflict healing and reconciliation, leaving ordinary people – and indeed local leaders – in limbo between war and peace.
To prevent a similar outcome in eastern Ukraine, the ceasefire needs to be made sustainable through full withdrawal of heavy weapons and foreign fighters (as set out in the Minsk agreements), and supported by unfettered access for the personnel and equipment of the OSCE monitoring teams. Conditions for democratic elections that meet internationally recognised standards must be created. And, with winter approaching, humanitarian actors like Médecins sans Frontières must be allowed to resume their work caring for the civilian population.
Ukraine must be able to regain full control of its borders, sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence in line with the OSCE’s founding Helsinki principles, not to mention international undertakings.
Frozen conflicts perpetuate rather than cure instability. They mean not only sporadic lethal violence, but also long term disruption and inconvenience for hundreds of thousands of people. They get in the way of international cooperation on other common challenges. No state committed to security and co-operation in Europe would have an interest in seeing another one on the European continent.