Over the past few days, Ukraine has taken a significant turn for the worse. Fighting between rebels and government forces has intensified, the civilian death toll has increased, and the war of words between Ukraine and Russia has further escalated.
To understand why this is the case and what it might mean, two questions should be asked: what has caused this deterioration and is this yet another step towards an increasingly inevitable full-scale and open military confrontation between Russia and Ukraine?
More than four months ago, on Sept. 5, 2014, the government in Kyiv and rebel leaders signed a ceasefire agreement in Minsk, followed by a memorandum on its implementation two weeks later. But there was no follow-through from either side. The best that can be said about the period since September is that violence became more sporadic, the rate at which people were killed in fighting, or as a consequence of it, slowed down, and neither side pushed overly hard for further territorial gains.
Yet, even this picture might be too optimistic. There were almost daily shoot-outs between pro and anti-government forces along the frontlines in the east of Ukraine—some 1,000 people have died since September (out of a total of almost 5,000 casualties over the course of the crisis) and fighting has been particularly intense around Donetsk airport. The airport—now reduced to rubble—remained a highly prestigious “prize” for either side, and fighting there continued even if only because of its symbolic value.
Digging In
Earlier in the year, it had appeared that the Ukrainian government had the initiative—its forces re-captured some territory from the rebels prior to the September ceasefire agreement. But Kyiv’s military campaign quickly ran out of steam. To all intents and purposes, both sides were digging in—and the ceasefire agreement seemed to confirm a new status quo. Ukraine withdrew services and deliveries from the rebel-held areas and the rebels in turn continued to build their own institutions. It was not a phony (civil) war by any account, but for the most part it seemed as if each side was primarily interested in consolidating its gains, or containing its losses.
All of this changed about one week ago. Amid an intensifying battle over Donetsk airport, talks among the foreign ministers of the Ukraine Contact Group (Russia, Ukraine, France, and Germany) ended without progress and triggered the cancellation of a summit of heads of state, planned for Astana on Jan. 15 2015.
