Ukraine ceasefire: European leaders sceptical peace plan will work

European leaders have praised Germany and France for brokering a ceasefire and peace plan for Ukraine, but privately voiced scepticism that the pact struck after a marathon all-night summit in Belarus would work. They worried that an upsurge in fighting before the truce is supposed to take hold in eastern Ukraine on Sunday could quickly turn into a bloodbath.

“The next 48 hours will be crucial,” said one EU diplomat at a summit in Brussels dominated by the Ukraine breakthrough.

There was new shelling reported in the rebel held cities of Donetsk and Luhansk on Friday morning, but no confirmation of casualties.

Pro-Russia separatist forces have up to 8,000 Ukrainian troops surrounded at the strategic railway hub of Debaltseve in eastern Ukraine and are demanding their surrender.

Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, emphasised the issue in his first remarks following the summit in Minsk with Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, the French president, François Hollande, and Ukraine’s president, Petro Poroshenko, who western officials and diplomats believe came off worst in the negotiations.

The pro-Russia separatist forces around the town, Putin said, “have surrounded a significant grouping, from 6,000 to 8,000 men. They, of course, assume that this grouping lays down its arms and ceases resistance”.

The conflict in east Ukraine has claimed at least 5,400 lives. Nine people were reportedly killed and 35 wounded in east Ukraine on Thursday.

The ceasefire is intended to pave the way for a comprehensive political settlement of the country’s crisis. It was agreed early on Thursday in Minsk, following a fraught 16 hours of overnight negotiations.

The marathon summit in Minsk resulted in a pact providing for a ceasefire between Ukrainian government troops and Russian-backed separatists from Sunday, a withdrawal of heavy weaponry from the battle zone which is to be demilitarised, amnesties on both sides and exchanges of prisoners and hostages.

The agreement is clearly fragile, previous attempts at a truce have utterly failed, and expectations are high of an upsurge in fighting ahead of the Saturday deadline.

But Merkel spoke of a ray of hope that the agreement might take the edge off what has quickly become the worst security crisis in Europe since the end of the cold war with the potential to assume much more dangerous dimensions.

But western mistrust of Putin has soared over the past year, with the result that there was no euphoria over the pact. Putin sounded satisfied. “It’s not the best night of my life,” he said, but it is, in my view, a good morning because we managed to agree on the main things.”

Washington was guardedly positive about the outcome in Minsk. “The agreement represents a potentially significant step toward a peaceful resolution of the conflict and the restoration of Ukraine’s sovereignty,” said a White House statement.

But US officials also said they were not taking sanctions off the table and bluntly warned the separatists against seizing more land before Sunday’s ceasefire formally takes effect.

David Cameron, the British prime minster, urged EU leaders to stand firm on maintaining sanctions against Russia, saying it was “actions on the ground rather than just words on a piece of paper” that mattered.

Cameron, speaking from Brussels, said he welcomed the efforts made to bring an end to the conflict, but insisted that the ceasefire must be “genuine”.

“I welcome and thank François Hollande and Angela Merkel for the hard work that they have put in,” he said. “If this is a genuine ceasefire, then of course that would be welcome.”

On Thursday night, after an EU summit in Brussels, the leaders of Germany, France and the European Council said wider sanctions were possible if Russia violated the ceasefire agreement.

If the early peacemaking measures take effect, they are to be followed by more ambitious political moves aimed at an overall political settlement by the end of the year when Ukraine is supposed to have a new constitution, the rebel-held areas are to be granted decentralised “special status” and cross-border links with Russia, local elections are to be held in the breakaway areas while Kiev is also slated to take control of the border with Russia.

The US said success of the agreement would hinge on whether the Kiev government was able to restore control of its border with Russia.

Under the plan, that is not to take place fully for almost a year and the agreement gives the Donbass rebels a veto over the key issue, stating that the government in Kiev may only secure its own border with Russia with the agreement of the separatists. This was a demand that the rebel leaders tabled earlier in the week in the preparations for the summit.

Donald Tusk, the former Polish prime minister who chairs EU summits, is known to be sceptical that the peace plan will work. The Polish government was also critical. Britain appeared less than impressed. Privately, diplomats also said that the International Monetary Fund, which on Thursday announced $17.5bn in assistance for Ukraine, had used the financial package to press Poroshenko into accepting the peace terms.

The World Bank said on Thursday it would provide Ukraine with up to $2 billion in support in 2015, with assistance focused on aiding the poor, supporting reforms and fighting corruption. The World Bank said the financing would be part of a package from the international community. “It is vital that Ukraine undertakes comprehensive reforms quickly,” the World Bank president, Jim Yong Kim, said in a statement.

In European concessions to Putin, the Russian leader was told he would be party to negotiations over the detail and impact of Ukraine’s free trade pact with the EU, a number of conditions were attached to the special rights to be granted to the pro-Russia territories, central government funding of social and welfare benefits was to be restored to the pro-Russia areas and Germany and France promised to facilitate the financial transfers and repair the broken banking system.

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Merkel and Hollande went to Minsk to see Putin and Poroshenko for what was seen as a fateful summit following days of the most intensive diplomacy on Ukraine since the crisis erupted a year ago. Failure, it was feared, would have resulted in a major escalation of the conflict, with Poroshenko warning he could impose martial law on the entire country.

“It was worth it,” said Merkel, capping one of the most frantic weeks of her 10-year chancellorship and before dashing to Brussels for an EU summit. But she cautioned against over-optimism and was guarded about whether the 13-point peace pact would be observed and implemented. “We have a glimmer of hope ... but no illusions.”

The negotiations appeared extremely tense and highly combustible amid simmering hostility between Putin on the one hand and Merkel and Poroshenko on the other. At various points during the night, the talks looked close to collapse, with Poroshenko leaving the negotiating table and and talking of being confronted with “unacceptable conditions”.

“We have a very long night behind us, but we have managed to come to an agreement, to a ceasefire and a comprehensive political settlement for the Ukraine crisis,” said Hollande.

A sticking point was whether the separatist leaders, also in Minsk but not taking part directly in the summit, would sign off on the deal agreed by the four heads of state. Putin sought to force Poroshenko to negotiate directly with the separatist leaders.

In the end the two main rebel leaders, from Donetsk and Luhansk, signed the plan which also included an annex on the detail of the autonomy foreseen for their fiefdoms.

The ceasefire is to come into force at midnight on Saturday, following which heavy weapons on both sides are to be withdrawn by up to 140km from the frontlines depending on the range and calibre of the weapons. The withdrawals are to take a fortnight. The ceasefire and weapons pullback is to be monitored by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

The more ambitious political aspects of the pact stipulate that Kiev is to draft a new constitution by the end of the year, with a “key element’ entailing decentralisation and special status for the breakaway regions. An eight-point annex to the accord lists elements of the special status, including local control of police, court, and judicial systems and a regime of cross-border cooperation between the eastern regions and Russia.

Moscow fiercely resisted Ukrainian and European demands for Kiev control over the eastern border with Russia, arguing that this would lead to the encirclement and eventual suppression of the secessionist rebellion. The agreement says that Ukraine will start to exercise control of the border once new local elections are held in the east, but will only finalise its border control once the new constitution and the special status regime are in force and “in consultation and in agreement with” the separatists.

There are certain to be sharp disputes on these arrangements in the months ahead. Poroshenko promptly declared that Ukraine will “always be a unitary state” and will never be “federalised.”

A separate document signed by the three presidents and the chancellor committed Putin to respecting Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, although clearly last year’s Russian annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula will be ignored here.

The French and the Germans agreed to trilateral talks between Russia, Ukraine, and the EU on energy issues and Russian gas supplies, on the EU-Ukraine free trade agreement concluded last year, and to joint monitoring of and negotiations over the peace pact.

“There’s a real chance to turn things for the better,” said Merkel. “We pledged to monitor the implementation. I assume that this will also be necessary.”