Meanwhile, an op-ed in "The Moscow Times" has been pouring cold water on Poroshenko's peace plan:
[T]his long-awaited plan has very little chance of success. This is not because Poroshenko is incapable of implementing its provisions or because the plan is somehow defective, but because the main outside players — Russia on the one hand and the U.S. and the European Union on the other — have not yet resolved their fundamental geopolitical differences. Until Russia and the West reach a political compromise, it is unlikely that anyone, including Poroshenko, can stabilize the situation in Ukraine.
The fault in Poroshenko's plan is that it is primarily tactical, and not strategic.
The tactical elements of the peace plan are clearly outlined. The plan calls for the militias to disarm, end their occupation of public buildings and cities and free their hostages in return for amnesty for those not guilty of serious crimes, safe passage to Russia for the separatists and their mercenary cohorts and the creation of a 10-kilometer-wide buffer zone along the Ukrainian-Russian border. The plan also calls for Ukrainian television and radio broadcasts to resume and regional and local authorities to return to work.
The strategically important elements of Poroshenko's peace plan, meanwhile, call for constitutional reform, new parliamentary elections, the redistribution of some national income to regional and municipal budgets, the decentralization of authority and economic development aid for the eastern and southern regions.
However, the plan bypasses the strategically important question of the status of the Russian language as well as the overall issue of ideological tolerance for the values and beliefs of ethnic minorities, primarily in the country's south and east.
Read the entire article here.
LATEST news from Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine based on info received until 23 June 2014, 18:00 http://t.co/6YOc3buSbA .@OSCE_SMM
— OSCE (@OSCE) June 24, 2014
Not only UKR Twitter alight with schadenfreude at Belgium 1-0 Russia but TV commentator sang "Putin khuilo" chorus https://t.co/HnFjBJy1jV
— Shaun Walker (@shaunwalker7) June 24, 2014
Here my remarks on borders, Crimea, revisionism and peace at the Bosch Academy in Berlin. http://t.co/63zDY2uaVI
— Carl Bildt (@carlbildt) June 24, 2014
Ukraine foreign minister @PavloKlimkin eyes EU membership within 10 years | euronews, Europe http://t.co/BGh2pHoGEg
— MFA of Ukraine (@MFA_Ukraine) June 24, 2014
Good that Russia President proposes Federation Council to repeal resolution on invading Ukraine. Was grave violation of international norms.
— Carl Bildt (@carlbildt) June 24, 2014
But key to Russia intentions is whether it stops flow of fighters and weapons across border into Ukraine. That’s the core EU demand now.
— Carl Bildt (@carlbildt) June 24, 2014
Will Moscow tell the rebels to lay down arms? Senator Klimov tells me:“We never asked anyone to take up Kalashnikovs, you'll never prove it"
— Steve Rosenberg (@BBCSteveR) June 24, 2014
Now Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has responded to Putin's move saying it's the "first practical step" by Russia toward settling the crisis in the country's east.
In this piece, Paul Goble picks up on some comments by Moscow commentator Igor Eidman, arguing that "Putin is Carrying Out ‘Biggest Information Special Op’ in Modern Times."
They were “consciously led to a state of mass psychosis. The irrational fear and hatred of the Russian speakers to the new Ukrainian authorities was intentionally provoked with the help of a brainwashing campaign, the dissemination of panic rumors, and the work of Russian media and political technologists.”
No one threatened Donetsk or Luhansk, least of all Kyiv, until the revolt forced the Ukrainian army to intervene. “The population [of the two oblasts] did not need a war” and it has not brought them anything but suffering. “But there are forces interested in provoking the conflict and using the population of these regions for their own selfish interests.”