Lack of trust may undermine truce
DONETSK, Ukraine — From the narrow hole of a machine gun nest, a rebel fighter squinted toward no man’s land and listened for the whump of artillery and the intermittent crackle of automatic weapon fire.
From these trenches, the war in eastern Ukraine is seen in almost exact mirror image to that in the west: it is the Ukrainians on the other side who started the war; it is they who are violating the ceasefire; and it is the Americans, not the Russians, who are stoking the conflict by arming proxies.
But rebel soldiers here do have one thing in common with rankand-file Ukrainians a few hundred metres away: an almost complete lack of faith in their enemy’s willingness to fulfil the Minsk peace agreement.
“The Ukrainians will not keep to the Minsk agreement, we are certain of it — (Ukrainian President Petro) Poroshenko does not want peace,” said the separatist commander.
It is that deep mistrust that threatens the success of what German Chancellor Angela Merkel called the “last chance” to end the war.
A relative lull in violence here in the past few days has raised hopes there could be peace after all.
Ukraine said Thursday it would begin to withdraw heavy artillery out of range of the front, saying it had gone two days without taking casualties — a sign the truce is beginning to work.
The separatists announced the start of their own withdrawal on Tuesday. If both sides keep to the commitment, and the ceasefire holds, the diplomats may be able to work on the next stage of the deal: organizing mutually acceptable elections in a bid to build a lasting settlement.
Several hundred metres from the Ukrainian army’s stronghold in the village of Peski on Donetsk’s northwestern edge, this warren of trenches and machine gun nests was at the centre of ferocious fighting just over a month ago.
“Our company was thrown in here and we held it practically surrounded for two and a half months, before the Ukrainians were pushed back and we were properly secured,” said the rebel commander, who goes by the call-sign “Zhora.”
Zhora said he joined the separatist’s nascent army at the beginning of the uprising, after he saw “the deaths of children” by the Ukrainian army in Slavyansk, the rebel’s first stronghold.
Men in his battalion say it is the Ukrainians getting foreign help, and it is the U.S., not Russia, that is arming proxies.
“Look at that,” said Zhora, presenting the nose cone of some spent ordnance. “It bears Latin lettering. There is no way that is from Ukrainian or Russian stocks. So they are definitely getting arms from abroad. We’ve seen them with American weapons — M-16 rifles. Where do you think they got that?”
“It’s all a lot of nonsense this stuff about Russians here. I wear a Russian flag shoulder patch because I like that country, I used to take my holidays there. If there are Russians here they are volunteers. We’re all locals, and we’re fighting for our land.”