Waiting game in Ukraine as ceasefire holds

A month after the ceasefire deal which German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande thrashed out with Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Petro Poroshenko at marathon talks in the Belarus capital Minsk in February, a peace of sorts is holding in eastern Ukraine. The artillery and rockets that pounded the towns and villages of the Donbas region over the past year have been pulled back from many parts of the frontline, as called for by the Minsk agreement. And while government forces and pro-Russian separatists continue to trade fire in a handful of areas, civilian casualties have dropped dramatically, triggering a refugee trickle homewards. But if Ukrainians, still reeling from a war they see as not of their making, have learnt anything this past year it’s to keep their guard up. From the capital Kiev, home of the Euromaidan protests that sent Russian-backed president Viktor Yanukovych packing last year, to Donetsk, capital of one of two regions that rose up against Kiev after his ouster, the peace is invariably described as doomed. The ceasefire is also viewed with suspicion in the rebel statelets of Donetsk and Lugansk “people’s republics”, where months of shelling caused massive destruction in some areas, leaving a deep well of resentment towards the government in Kiev. The failure of an under-resourced monitoring mission from the OSCE to properly vet the ceasefire has added to the climate of suspicion, with both sides accusing the other of keeping heavy weapons close at hand to fight another day. Seen from Kiev, that fight is likely to be over the majority Russian-speaking port of Mariupol, which Ukraine suspects Moscow of coveting. The government has accused the separatists of massing forces near the city but while skirmishes continue close by, the much-feared march on Mariupol against which Western leaders had warned Moscow has failed to materialise. But the situation  remains brittle. Russia will be looking with deep suspicion at the joint military drills of  Nato allies Bulgaria and the US, that are to be held over the next three and a half months. Some 350 US Army officers are in Bulgaria to take part in the bilateral drills which begin tomorrow. The exercises will  involve US armoured personnel carriers, helicopters and tanks. Bulgaria and other ex-communist countries in eastern Europe that are now inside Nato and the European Union have certainly  been rattled by Russia’s annexation of  Crimea and its support for separatists in eastern Ukraine. The European Union, in its latest move against Russia, yesterday prolonged a second batch of sanctions that it has issued over the crisis in Ukraine, including people with close links to President Putin. The bloc has implemented several rounds of restrictive measures in a bid to halt the violence in Ukraine. The sanctions extended yesterday were those issued over actions that “undermine or threaten the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine”.All these show that the situation still remains tense.