Cartoon by Marian Kamensky

If a child or a criminal denies their clear guilt, they can only be put in their place by means of force.

The President of Germany Angela Merkel and President of France Francois Hollande made another shuttle raid to Kyiv and Moscow, once more trying to organize peaceful negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. It doesn’t seem that European leaders believe in a positive outcome of such negotiations, what is proved by the President of France, who after meeting with Putin noted that that was the last chance to settle the conflict.

The main result of the shuttle raid to the countries at war is an agreement for the Normandy Four to meet in Minsk on February 11.

Do Minsk negotiations have a chance to end the Russia-Ukraine war? What is hidden behind the statement of the President of France about the last chance to organize peaceful negotiations?

The chances of the Minsk negotiations are assessed by Uladzimir Matskevich, the head of the Board of the International Consortium “EuroBelarus”.

— In postwar Germany Jürgen Habermas developed a theory of communications, which sees communication as the best way to resolve conflicts and confrontations in the world where there is no war. Apart from developing the theory, he also taught politicians it.

Angela Merkel doesn’t belong to those generation of German political actors and wasn’t Habermas’ student. Despite that, she is a good politician, too. Her failures in negotiations with Russia happen not because she doesn’t know the theory of communication, but because this theory has one serious deficiency: communications are ineffective, or even useless, if one of the parties to the conflict rejects to take part in them.

There are many ways to abstain from communications: from civilized ones to completely improper.

Civilized ways are based on formalist pretexts and linguistic games; improper are divided into infantile and criminal communications.

Infantile way resembles children’s behaviour, when they deny the obvious despite all facts that prove the opposite.

In criminal world this behavior is also sometimes used, when a criminal denies everything unless he or she is caught in the act. And that continues until the court proves the criminal guilty to the jury.

During the last year Russia in the person of Putin, Foreign Minister Lavrov, diplomats, and mass media is using improper ways to abstain from communications. With all the facts of Russian army’s presence in Crimea and in Donbas, the official Moscow denies its participation in aggression against Ukraine.

Apart from improper ways to abstain from communications, President Putin is playing linguistic games, which means that problems, conflicts, and contradictions are to be resolved exclusively by means of language analysis, linguistic games or elocution.

It is extremely hard to fight these approaches: Putin and Lukashenko proved to be masters of linguistic games. During their careers they solved no real problems neither in Russia nor in Belarus; however, thanks to rhetoric and linguistic games they still retain their authority, approval rate, and even manage their countries, and Putin even partly manages the world community.

All that I have to say before answering your questions, as without philosophy one cannot understand what is happening, when all the civilized world that is not used to criminal and infantile forms of communication is diplomacy and politics still cannot recognize and accept such behavior of the head of the used-to-be great empire.

— Europe has introduced a new plan to settle the conflict in Donbas. Merkel and Holland visited Kyiv, Moscow, met with the parties to the conflict in Munich, and talked on the phone on February 8. Can we talk about the preliminary results of the new negotiation process?

— For now we can’t. What we know about the former meetings is what mass media reported after the conference on security in Munich and after Angela Merkel and Francois Holland’s visit to Kyiv. We don’t know what was happening in Moscow; politicians, who took part in the meeting, didn’t make any final statements; and separate comments of European politicians don’t allow us to make general picture from unconnected segments.

We are partially acquainted with the Merkel-Holland plan, which is very weak and doubtful with regard to suggestion of Ukraine’s federalization. By imposing a certain system of government to Ukraine, heads of Germany and France exceeded their authority and basically encroached on Ukraine’s state sovereignty.

Second part of suggestion, which deals with withdrawal of army and formation of demilitarized zone, can easily become the topic of negotiations at the forthcoming meeting in Minsk. Visit to Kyiv and the conference on security cannot be viewed as negotiations; preliminary meetings are only preparations to negotiations.

And what is to take place in Minsk is very likely to become real negotiations; so we should be expecting results from them, unless Putin avoids communication again, taking a criminal stance of denial or immersion into linguistic games.

— A peaceful settlement plan of the Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel and the President of France Francois Holland suggests Ukraine’s federalization and creation of demilitarization zone of 50-70 km. Thus, it is not the question of cessation of war, but the question of freezing the conflict.

Let me repeat that Ukraine’s federalization is above the authority of the parties to negotiation.

As to the demilitarization zone — it can become a real topic of negotiations. The negotiations won’t fully resolve the problem, but they can stop hostilities and give certain guarantees to civilians in Donbas and to the parties to the conflict.

However, the concept of “demilitarization zone” is to be consistently and fundamentally specified with regard to the disposition of the Ukrainian army and army of the foreign state in the area of military conflict. Ukrainian army is in Donbas, at the Ukrainian territory, on absolutely legal grounds; whereas the presence of the Russian army in the zone of military conflict is unjustified. Creation of the demilitarization zone rests on withdrawal of the Russian army from the territory of the foreign state. If the civilian population of Donbas doesn’t want to see Ukrainian army at its territory, then it is third parties — UN, NATO, or some other countries-mediators — can be the guarantors of peace maintenance.

Without specification of the concept of demilitarization zone its creation becomes absolutely speculative.

— Putin’s plan is kept secret. And only through some information leaks we can assume that it is a question of introducing peacemaking army under the auspices of OSCE and Russia. Kremlin is suggesting legalized occupation of the seized territories, isn’t it?

— OSCE has no army. The control of the demilitarization zone by the peacemaking contingent with participation of the Russian army is out of question — Russia is a party to the conflict, and its army is to be withdrawn from the territory of another state. This is a language trick that Russia is trying to introduce in the peaceful settlement plan in Donbas and which cannot be fulfilled.

Denying its participation in the war, through negotiations Russia is seeking to legalize the presence of its army in Ukraine, which is in Donbas de facto.

— The only real result of Europe’s efforts is an agreement about a new meeting in Normandy Format on February 11 in Minsk. Why is it held in Minsk specifically? It is at Russia’s suggestion that Minsk is chosen as a place of negotiations, isn’t it?

— Let’s reestablish the situation.

Lukashenko’s opinion, the opinion of the official Minsk wasn’t considered when the place of negotiations was being chosen; no one was asking him. So the place of negotiations and the participation of the Belarusan state in it are two absolutely different things that we shouldn’t mix.

Minsk consultations took place, and the reached agreements were named Minsk Format. This term has already become a proper name; but we should distinguish between the language games and the real situation. The forthcoming negotiations will have an absolutely different format. If in former negotiations Russia was represented by Russia’s marionettes in the person of the so-called “DPR” and “LPR” representatives, now President Putin is to come to Minsk. This is an absolutely different format that does look like real negotiations.

The choice of Minsk as a place for negotiations is dictated by the desire to hold negotiations in the former Minsk Format. Putin is trying to scale down the status of the meeting, which he has to attend under the pressure of sanctions and arguments brought to Moscow by Merkel and Holland.

It is very important that the negotiations in Minsk go according to the Normandy Format and Merkel and Putin don’t compromise with Putin’s games. Even though obviously, Putin will do everything to scale down the status of the negotiations and reduce them to consultations similar to the Minsk Format.

— After the meeting with Putin the President of France stated that this is the last chance to peacefully settle the conflict. What did Holland mean by that?

— Being a civilized diplomat, Holland recalls that by reaching a full-fledged dialog of the two parties at war we got a real chance to settle the conflict. And we should use this chance. The negotiations will bring results only if Russia enters it as a party in the war. If Putin disrupts negotiations again, this chance will be missed.

The conflict has already been stuck; so the European politicians will have to take the responsibility of its settlement. If the peaceful negotiations collapse, there is only one way to reach this goal — by force.

If a child or a criminal denies their obvious guilt, they can only be put in their place by means of force. Earlier there were no attempts of coercive pressure on Russia; the world wasn’t ready for a full-scale global war.

Now the world faced with a completely new situation: never before criminal elements were actors of the international politics at such high level. Even if there were such precedents, they have immediately become a reason for a coercive interference.

The conflict in Ukraine has been lasting for more than a year now – since November 2013, when by means of threats and blackmail Kremlin made Yanukovich refuse to sign EU Association Agreement, by this disrupting the right of a sovereign state. Only the impossibility of such reality allowed Putin to make a Gordian knot out of this situation, which now can only be cut.

After the disruption of real negotiations in Minsk time for the coercive resolution of the conflict comes.