04.09 Professor Sobell: West’s Uncompromising Policy in Ukraine Collapsing
MOSCOW, September 4 (RIA Novosti), Daria Chernyshova - The West’s uncompromising policy in Ukraine is collapsing, as the Russian and Ukrainian Presidents have apparently found common ground in solving the crisis in the country’s east, New York University professor in Prague Vlad Sobell told RIA Novosti.
“While rolling out yet another round of sanctions – and almost certain to come up with more tough talk and moves towards the militarization of Central Europe during NATO’s summit in Wales – the West will be loath to acknowledge the obvious: its uncompromising policy in Ukraine is collapsing around its ears and the Kremlin’s long-standing calls for serious negotiations can no longer be ignored,” Sobell said.
“The broad agreement apparently reached by Putin and Poroshenko on the main points of a peace process is a hopeful sign that Kiev and its Western backers are finally beginning to come to their senses,” he added.
On Wednesday Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Petro Poroshenko discussed the first steps to bringing an end to the bloodshed in eastern Ukraine over the telephone, and Putin said that both presidents' views to exiting the crisis were similar.
On the same day, Putin outlined a seven-point plan for the settlement of the crisis in Ukraine, calling on Kiev to withdraw its troops from the country’s southeastern regions and militia to cease its military advances.
All that comes on the back of military advances made by Ukraine’s self-defense forces, who, as Sobell put it, are “turning the expected ?mopping up operation’ by Ukraine’s forces into de facto rout.”
He also stressed that Ukraine’s “long-suffering population is beginning to seriously question the wisdom of sending its men to die in the name of a hopeless cause, while recent military setbacks have intensified tensions within the regime, not least in the military leadership, as hardliners look for ?traitors’ as potential scapegoats.”
Moreover, as winter looms and the Ukrainian economy is in tatters, Sobell eyes increasing potential for unrest.
“Last but not least – and a factor that helps concentrate minds in the EU – continued conflict spells the risk of the transit of Gazprom gas to Europe being curbed,” Vlad Sobell told RIA Novosti.
“There is now a faint hope that the West, having disastrously miscalculated over its adventure in Ukraine, is beginning to look for a way out – at least in the short term,” he concluded.
Putin’s seven-point plan announced Wednesday includes proposals for an international monitoring force, the establishment of a humanitarian corridor, a ban on the use of combat aircraft over urban areas, an exchange of prisoners in an “all for all” formula and direct access to destroyed infrastructure for repair crews in the war-ravaged areas.
