Exclusive: Former
ambassador to Nato Kurt Volker tells the Guardian US and Russia still divided
on how to deploy UN peacekeepers to end four-year war
Washington is ready to expand
arms supplies to Ukraine in
order to build up the country’s naval and air defence forces in the face of
continuing Russian support for eastern
separatists, according to the US special envoy for Ukraine.
In an interview with the
Guardian, Kurt Volker said there was still a substantial gap between the US and
Russia over how a United Nations peacekeeping force could be deployed to end
the four-year war, and predicted that Vladimir Putin would wait for
presidential and parliamentary elections in Ukraine next year
before reconsidering his negotiating position.
However, Volker argued that
time was not on Putin’s side. He insisted pro-western, anti-Russian sentiment
was growing in Ukraine with every passing month. And he made clear that the
Trump administration was “absolutely” prepared to go further in supplying
lethal weaponry to Ukrainian forces than the anti-tank
missiles it delivered in April.
“They are losing soldiers
every week defending their own country,” said Volker, a former US ambassador to
Nato. “And so in that context it’s natural for Ukraine to build up its
military, engage in self-defense, and it’s natural to seek assistance and is
natural that other countries should help them. And of course they need lethal
assistance because they’re being shot at.”
He added: “We can have a
conversation with Ukraine like we would with any other country about what do
they need. I think that there’s going to be some discussion about naval
capability because as you know their navy was basically taken by Russia. And so they need to
rebuild a navy and they have very limited air capability as well. I think we’ll
have to look at air defence.”
In May, Congress approved
$250m in military assistance to Ukraine in 2019, including lethal weaponry.
Congress had voted for military support on a similar scale in the past but was
blocked by the Obama administration, fearful of triggering a matching
escalation from Moscow. The Trump
administration lifted that restraint in December 2017 and then
approved the shipment of Javelin missiles.
“The Javelins are mainly
symbolic and it’s not clear if they would ever be used,” said Aric Toler,
a researcher
at the Atlantic Council. “Support for the Ukrainian navy and air defence
would be a big deal. That would be far more significant.”
Russia continues to arm
separatists in the Donbass region. Drone footagereleased in
August by monitors from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe
(OSCE) showed convoys of lorries crossing the border on a dirt road at night.
US officials believe there are
about 2,000 Russian troops in eastern Ukraine, with most of the fighting being
done by local separatists. The frontlines are frozen and the war has settled
into a low-intensity conflict taking lives each week to add to the estimated
10,500 already killed.
Under an agreement reached in
Minsk more than three years ago, Russia was supposed to withdraw its troops and
Ukraine was to assign special status to Russian-majority districts in the
Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
The Ukrainian president, Petro
Poroshenko, has made some moves toward decentralisation but the most critical
legislation has been stalled in parliament and is unlikely to see progress
until next year’s elections. Russia shows no signs of withdrawing.
Volker appeared to make
progress in January with his Russian counterpart, Vladislav Surkov, a Putin
aide. At talks in Dubai, the two discussed a compromise proposal on how a UN
peacekeeping force might function. The suggestion, put forward by the US,
Germany and France, is that peacekeepers initially deploy to the frontline,
where Moscow wants them, and then over time move through the Donbass and
establish a presence on the border with Russia, which is where Kiev and its
western supporters would like the UN blue helmets to be.
In January, Surkov described
the plan as “a
balanced approach”. But there has been no official Russian response. Volker
said he outlined the plan in more detail on paper but the Kremlin appeared less
willing to compromise than it did in January. It is insisting that the
peacekeepers’ mission be restricted to protecting OSCE monitors and that it not
be deployed until the rebel entities, the Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s
republics”, are recognised and given special status. Those conditions are
unacceptable to Kiev and Washington.
“Russia wants Ukraine to take
these steps before relinquishing control of the territory,” Volker said. “And
that’s just not feasible. You can’t have elections in a condition where
territory is occupied.”
The Russian foreign minister,
Sergei Lavrov, said last week that Volker and Surkov would meet “soon”. Volker,
however, was sceptical.
“It’s clear that we have some
significant differences in our perspective,” he said. “I think we’ll do a few more
rounds of talking before deciding whether it’s going to be productive to do
another big meeting.”
Volker was pessimistic that
there would be any substantial progress until after Ukrainian elections next
year.
“There have been some
indications that Russia is probably not going to do much until after those
elections,” he said.
The envoy denied that his
efforts to maintain consistent western pressure on Russia have been undermined
by Donald Trump’s far softer rhetoric, in which the president has repeatedly
expressed his desire to lift sanctions and reportedly
told fellow G7 leaders Crimea was Russian because everybody there
speaks Russian.
“What the president is doing,
it seems, is trying to keep open a channel of dialogue with Putin so that if
there is a chance of resolving the issues we have a vehicle for doing so,”
Volker said. “I think it is actually smart and important.”
The envoy added that he was
confident Trump maintained the US position on Ukraine at his summit with Putin
in Helsinki in July. He argued that time was against Putin in Ukraine as the
war turns its people against Moscow.
“It has alienated the
Ukrainian population, especially the younger generation, [it has] produced a
more western-oriented country than before, with a stronger national identity,”
Volker said.
The Ukrainian presidential
elections remain a wild card, with no clear frontrunner and an electorate
disillusioned by corruption and human
rights abuses.
“The problem is the Ukrainian
government is not doing what they are being urged to do by all their western
partners which is really to deal with their own corruption domestically and
build the rule of law,” said Angela Stent, a former national intelligence
officer on Russia and Eurasia, now a Georgetown University professor.
“As long as the system itself
remains unreformed, there is room for the Russians to make inroads … That is
the other piece of it that only the Ukrainians can do.”
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