Ukraine’s President said yesterday there could be no military solution to his country’s crisis and said he hoped “a very fragile” ceasefire in the east would hold, allowing him to focus on rebuilding the shattered economy.
Petro Poroshenko also said a new wave of European Union sanctions against Russia underlined Western solidarity with Kiev, and that the Ukrainian and EU parliaments could both ratify a deal on closer economic and political ties on Tuesday.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who denies Western and Ukrainian accusations that he is fuelling the conflict, said the new sanctions were aimed at disrupting the peace process. Washington also expanded its own sanctions yesterday.
Investors will come when they feel safe in this country
Ukrainian forces have been battling pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine for five months in a conflict in which more than 3,000 people have been killed. The two sides have been broadly observing a ceasefire since last Friday, despite sporadic violations.
“There is no military solution for this crisis,” Poroshenko told EU and Ukrainian lawmakers and businessmen at the annual Yalta European Strategy conference – held in Kiev, not Yalta, due to Moscow’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region in March.
“I hope the very fragile but efficient peace process which started exactly one week ago will have a continuation, for the [sake of] stable peace and security on the continent,” he said, speaking in English.
Poroshenko said Ukraine’s “association agreement” on closer EU ties, due to be ratified next week, provided a road map for the reforms that he said would be a priority after a parliamentary election on October 26, provided that peace held in the east. But he stressed national security had to come first.
“Investors will come when they feel safe in this country. That is why we are reforming the very ineffective security system and army, our court system. If we do not reform these things, even after the war, investors won’t come,” he said.
“I know personally how harmful the state can be for the investment climate,” added Poroshenko, a billionaire former businessman once nicknamed the “Chocolate King” for making his fortune in confectionery.
Ukrainian military spokesman Andriy Lysenko, citing government data, said the conflict in eastern Ukraine had so far cost around 1 billion dollars. Another government official said at least 270,000 people had been displaced by the war.
Eastern Ukraine has been largely quiet in recent days, and the tension following the ceasefire has gradually eased.
Overnight, Ukrainian forces and the separatists each handed over 37 prisoners-of-war at a site north of the rebel-held city of Donetsk. The exchange of all captives is one of the key elements of the ceasefire.
Interfax news agency quoted Andrei Purgin, “deputy prime minister” of the self-proclaimed “Donetsk People’s Republic”, as saying the next exchange would take place tomorrow.
But Purgin also repeated the rebels’ position that the regions they control would not be reunited with Ukraine.
“We will not be in a unitary, federal Ukraine. We can preserve some economic model which allows us not to break the tie with the rest of Ukraine or to keep some socio-cultural connections.
“We have earned with our blood the right to do this,” he told Reuters.
Poroshenko said Kiev could only offer them some autonomy.
“To keep the country united, we need some decentralisation of power ... The key issues of security, foreign policy, strategic points of development must be in the hands of the central power,” he told the conference in Kiev.
The crisis in Ukraine erupted late last year when Poroshenko’s Moscow-backed predecessor, Viktor Yanukovich, rejected the association agreement with the EU and sought closer economic ties with Ukraine’s communist-era overlord, Russia.