Foreign Minister Heiko Maas (SPD) with his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba in Kiev
Photo: Valentin Ogirenko / APMoscow, St. Petersburg, Beirut, Libya, United Arab Emirates, Slovakia: Heiko Maas (SPD) is currently making one short visit after the next. The foreign minister is doing what was meanwhile difficult to do because of the corona pandemic. He meets personally with his colleagues. Station on Monday: Kiev, meeting with Dmytro Kuleba, Foreign Minister of Ukraine.
At the beginning of the visit, Maas and Kuleba lay flowers on a meter-long memorial plaque for the fallen of the Donbass War. The dead can be seen in small photos. Germany, says Maas on the Ukrainian Independence Day in Kiev, stands as a "friend and partner by your side".
War has been raging in eastern Ukraine for six years, with government troops fighting pro-Russian separatists. The peace plan from the Minsk Agreement, which the heads of state and government of Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine agreed on in 2015, is still awaiting implementation.
Maas' predecessors in office Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Sigmar Gabriel failed to create peace in Ukraine. Except for the occasional ceasefire, not much came of it.
Possible meeting in Paris in September
Now there is once again a ceasefire that has apparently lasted 29 days - longer than the other ceasefire times before. Hope is growing that this could become more. Maas therefore not only visits the Foreign Minister in Kiev, but also Prime Minister Denys Schmyhal and President Volodymyr Selenskyj. He also meets representatives of the OSCE who monitor the battle line as observers.
In the spring, the foreign ministers spoke in the so-called Normandy format - Germany, France, Ukraine and Russia - via video link, organized from Berlin. Work is now underway on a personal meeting of the foreign ministers in Paris in the second half of September. The meeting has not yet been clearly set, as Maas makes clear in Kiev. They will certainly not meet to confirm what was agreed at the Paris meeting on Ukraine in early December 2019:
a truce
a control mechanism for its implementation
a separation of the troops
Demining
further transition points on the demarcation line
As long as these points have not been dealt with - or at least begun - a further meeting hardly makes sense from a Berlin perspective.
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In Paris, the most difficult topics are on the agenda, such as elections in eastern Ukraine. "I don't know the solution yet," Maas said at a press conference. For example, the voting processes have not been conclusively clarified. Nevertheless, he speaks of "substantial progress".
The government in Kiev also appears to be cautiously optimistic. Kuleba says that since the beginning of the latest ceasefire, there have been "no casualties, no injuries" on his country's side. The key to "ending aggression" against his country lies in Moscow. Recently there have been "some positive steps by Russia".
Zelenskyi was also confident in his Independence Day speech. "Today is the 29th day without casualties in the combat zone in eastern Ukraine." It is a good morning when there is no news of the dead and wounded. "May days of silence turn into months, years, centuries and later millennia."
The focus is on Belarus
It is not just the conflict in eastern Ukraine that determines the agenda for Maas' trip to Kiev. His motorcade drives past an Independence Day demonstration in the center of the city. Several thousand people came.
What is happening directs attention to the neighboring state of Belarus. Hundreds of thousands protested peacefully against ruler Alexander Lukashenko over the weekend in the capital Minsk and other cities. Maas said in Kiev that Lukashenko had to "recognize the reality on the streets of his country and in people's minds". His counterpart Kuleba adds that they want an "independent and democratic" Belarus. Who is at the top there is only "a second question".
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The concern about an escalation in Belarus and a Russian intervention becomes clear. Only last week the EU Council of Heads of State and Government agreed on sanctions, including rejecting recognition of the recent elections in Belarus (read more about the sanctions here). At the same time, the EU is trying to avoid a direct confrontation with Moscow - to this day, Russia's 2014 coup in Ukraine is seen as the work of the West. It is unlikely that Moscow would have an interest in intervening in Belarus as long as the country does not orient itself towards the EU and NATO.
At the press conference in Kiev, the Ukrainian Foreign Minister was asked whether today's protests in Belarus are comparable to those in Ukraine in 2014. Kuleba says no. Ukraine only received help from the West after its victory on the Maidan - when "we signed the association agreement with the EU".
Meanwhile, Maas faces the next task on his journey. It goes to Athens, then to Ankara. A dangerous situation has arisen in the eastern Mediterranean in recent weeks after Turkey sent a test ship to drill gas into a region claimed by Greece.
Maas wants to sound out whether the two NATO members are ready to enter into a dialogue. Turkey would have to stop test drilling for the duration of the talks, the Greeks are not sending ships, it is said in diplomatic circles.
The next crisis is waiting for the German Foreign Minister.
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